It’s been four long years since TT Games delivered LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, but is a Bat-packed nostalgic return to Gotham City worthy of the wait?
How times have changed. Set the wayback machine to 2019 and an announcement trailer for LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga dropped at that year’s E3 event, an official reveal of an exciting new licensed TT Games title, one that would eventually keep players hanging on until April 5, 2022 to see the light of day and feature a troublesome in-house game engine.
Fast forward to August 2025 and the developer finally announced its next highly-anticipated project, LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, a return to the DC Comics universe that would this time be powered by Unreal Engine 5. The game would go on to shrug off the seemingly endless delays of its predecessor (along with reports of crunch at the company) and arrive a whole week earlier than originally planned, minus any discernible controversy.
That period from reveal to delivery seems to have somewhat restored TT Games' slightly-tarnished reputation, with a steady drip feed of information, images and social media posts managing to successfully build up LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight as being the biggest and most impressive digital outing for the Caped Crusader to date.
To achieve that lofty ambition, LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight draws upon more than 86 years of lore, taking inspiration from TV shows, movies, comic books and even previous TT Games titles to deliver a unique new third-person action-adventure story and a sprawling open world, with Gotham City becoming a living, breathing entity in its own right.
Players can expect to tackle 22 main story missions that follow the life of young Bruce Wayne from orphaned child to winged vigilante. Along the way, gamers are introduced to a number of key allies, each of which has their own unique abilities and is added to a roster of seven playable characters in total: Batman, Robin, Catwoman, Jim Gordon, Batgirl, Nightwing and (for some reason) Talia al Ghul.
That’s a whole lot less than the hundreds of faces included in previous TT Games titles, but there’s a clear emphasis in LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight on quality over quantity. There’s simply no need to add in multiple versions of characters that are all essentially reskinned iterations of each other, when a handful will do the trick, although that's still likely to prove a bone of contention with some players.
Once all of the story missions have been completed (more on that shortly), players can then explore every grimy nook and cranny to be found in Gotham City, as they explore the sprawling location for a seemingly endless number of collectibles, Easter eggs and bonus challenges.
What’s more, LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight has launched in both physical and digital Standard and Deluxe Editions, the latter adding in future DLC that will add to and expand the game further, with the title slated to be supported through at least September.
So, with all of the above in mind, is this the ultimate LEGO Batman experience? Well, yes and no. For starters, most players should be able to easily breeze through the game’s story missions in around 13 hours, a lot less than LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, which came in at roughly 19 hours, although achieving 100% completion will still take at least 50 hours minimum.
Along the way, the talented TT Games team has somehow managed to weave in an intricate plot that somehow successfully combines the likes of Batman Begins, The Batman, Batman '89, Batman: The Animated Series, the Dark Knight Trilogy and more into a cohesive whole, complete with an impressive voice cast led by the Caped Crusader’s Shai Matheson.
However, despite official PR messaging flagging up just how much Bat-history has been squeezed into LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, there are some glaringly obvious omissions. For instance, Tommy Lee Jones’ Two-Face from Batman Forever makes an early appearance in one story mission, but there’s no boss battle with the character.
Likewise, Jim Carrey’s Riddler is MIA, although a version of the puzzle-based villain does at least offer up plenty of challenges in the open world of Gotham City, despite the fact that there’s never any actual face-to-face meeting with the character.
Spend enough time in Gotham City and cracks start to appear too. Police bulletins become repetitive, NPCs mutter the same phrases over and over again, Riddler and Cluemaster challenges start to take on familiar patterns and an endless line-up of driving, fighting and traversal trials soon begin to tire.
In some ways, Gotham City is also almost too open and massive, forcing you to rely more on the in-game map in order to make your way around and find items, rather than exploring the location inch-by-inch, a criticism that was also levelled at LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga.
However, why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves up. What shortcomings LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight may have are easily overshadowed by its many strengths, with the TT Games team delving into its magical bag of gaming goodies once more and proving that they’re still a development force to be reckoned with.
Players may start LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight as mere novices when it comes to battles, but will soon learn to take down even the toughest of foes thanks to an upgrade system that allows each character to expand beyond their humble origins.
What's more, not only is it possible to switch between one of two characters at any time, but choosing the right member of the Bat-family and employing their own abilities and gadgets at key points is the only way to complete certain tasks or overcome head-scratching puzzles.
The result is a perfectly-honed learning curve, with LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight not only rewarding players with vital new skills and device-enhancements, but also with an endless array of swappable suits, vehicles in which to race around Gotham City's streets, cosmetic-enhancing Red Bricks, desirable Batcave trophies and much more content.
Those digital goodies can be safely stored away in the Batcave, with the Caped Crusader’s customisable underground lair expanding as the game goes on, providing access to a garage, outfit storage, crime lab, Batcomputer (complete with red Bat Phone) and even its own Bat-Mite Store.
The latter is where the pesky fifth-dimensional imp can be found, selling all manner of goodies for the right number of shiny LEGO studs. Players will find themselves returning time and again to these locations (also found throughout Gotham City) to stock up on a near-endless supply of items, each of which comes with its own hilarious description that's worth the price of admission alone.
Completists should therefore be more than satisfied with LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight’s exhaustive scavenger hunts as they attempt to track down every single collectible the game has to offer, a challenging feat worthy of the World’s Greatest Detective.
LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight’s attempt to offer up the ultimate superhero experience for fans of the DC Comics character can be felt in almost every aspect of the game, from the ability to grapple, climb and soar majestically over the inky black skies of Gotham City and stealthy drop down into a tense mob fight, to spotting the most obscure references to all kinds of pop culture scattered throughout the most random of locations.
All of that exploring, combat and sleuthing is of course seen through the hilarious lens of the TT Games machine, which manages to find family-friendly humour in even the darkest of moments – whether that be the death of Bruce Wayne’s parents or the untimely demise of The Flying Graysons.
In fact, there are a surprising number of truly laugh-out-loud points in LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, with even jaded older gamers who’ve seen it all likely to utter a chuckle or two as to how the Caped Crusader’s world has been handled.
As is the norm with such TT Games titles, LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight only includes two-player local co-op, but that option merely adds to the social fun of the gaming experience. Many hours will be spent teaming up and cleaning up the streets of Gotham City, with players keeping a watchful eye on their companion’s backs and joining forces to take out the trash.
Speaking of which, LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight boasts a true rogues gallery of villains that includes the Penguin, Poison Ivy, Mr. Freeze, Firefly, Scarecrow, Calendar Man, Killer Moth, Kite Man, Deathstroke, Solomon Grundy, Black Mask and the Crown Prince of Crime himself, The Joker, even if some of those only appear as mere blink-and-you’ll-miss-them cameos.
The majority of those characters are fully voiced though, with Matt Berry’s hulking Bane proving to be a standout turn, and even archival recordings of the late Adam West and Kevin Conroy being employed as poignant reminders of their essential contributions to the Dark Knight’s historical tapestry.
The end result is essentially LEGO Batman Evolved, with TT Games taking what’s worked so well previously (if it ain't broke, don't fix it) and pumping it all the way up to 11, ticking multiple boxes along the way in an attempt to deliver a near-definitive take on the blocky Caped Crusader.
When LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight really succeeds, it does so with style, ingenuity and sheer talent. Yet, by attempting to be all things to all Bat-fans, the game does fall slightly short of what it ultimately might have been.
For many gamers, being unable to play as more characters or indeed any villainous characters will be seen as a serious mistake, but it’s one that should be somewhat mitigated by the arrival of The Joker and Harley Quinn in the Mayhem Collection DLC, which those who purchased the LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight Deluxe Edition can check out in September 2026. (It will also be available to buy separately for those who buy the Standard Edition.)
What’s even more intriguing about TT Games’ latest title is just where the developer might theoretically go next in the LEGO universe and which IPs could be combined with such a potential collaboration.
Taking the basic structure of LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight and delivering a Marvel, Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings version of the game are just some of the speculative ways in which other properties may benefit from the Caped Crusader’s new adventure, but only time will tell in which direction TT Games and the LEGO Group ultimately decide to go.
For now though, LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight proves to be a worthy enough successor to the established line-up of DC Comics-based titles and it’s one that the majority of players will soon discover is up there with the best LEGO and Batman games created to date.
LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight is available to purchase as a Standard Edition and Deluxe Edition on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC via Steam right now. The TT Games title can also be wishlisted on Switch 2 for a release at some point in 2026.
LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight was provided by the LEGO Group for review purposes.
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