Batman: The Enemy Begins Review Episode 1: The Enigma

Batman The Enemy Within R01

Batman returns in Season Two of Telltale Games Series with Batman: The Enemy Begins.  Coming off the end of Season One which ended just 8 months ago, this new season invites new villains and stories, and brings along some familiar faces from before.

Developer: Telltale Games
Publisher: Telltale Games
Platform: PC (reviewed), PS4, Xbox One
Released: August 8, 2017
Copy provided by publisher




This is considered a standalone title which doesn’t require the first game, but choices from the first game can influence the story.  As the episode title ‘The Enigma’ suggests, the Gotham’s oldest criminal The Riddler is at the center here.  But on top of that, there are other layers of relationships which make this episode intriguing: 1) a new adversarial figure in Waller, and 2) John Doe is out from Arkham Asylum up to who-knows-what.

Batman The Enemy WithinNew puzzles, riddles, and detective sequences are fun to solve.

Graphic adventure games are more focused on the narrative than the gameplay, and so the characters here play a huge role.  Toss away any preconceived notions you may have about John Doe — Telltale has written this character so you just can’t quite place his motives.  DC Comics has given Telltale creative freedom and they are leveraging it.

Batman The Enemy Within R03The perfect mix of good intentions, lack of social tact, and psychopathy.

A new additional stat is introduced: tracking relationships.  Depending on the choices you make, your relationships with certain characters will change.  This is unlikely to modify the main narrative, but adds certain twists to to how characters may respond in the future.  One character may become more vengeful, and will look past Batman’s use of brute physical force.  To use a metaphor, the tree trunk will be the same but the limbs that extend outwards will be different for every player.

Batman The Enemy Within R04Relationships are shaped by choices you make.

As for technical issues, I encountered no stuttering or crashes.  This was for the PC platform so my experience may not be the same for consoles.  The below score is based relative to other Telltale Games (this is important!).  I recommend.

Score: 8 out of 10

My Playtime (estimated): 2 hours.  I actually played through this twice (4 hours total) — the second time for walkthrough capture.  Expect the average playthrough of this first episode to be a bit over 2 hours.  It’ll obviously be more if you decide to play through again to choose different choices.

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