The Telltale Treatment

To say the guys at Telltale are geniuses is pretty accurate, if not a massive understatement. They’ve achieved some incredible stuff over the years with The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us, with a few minor missteps along the way with the Michonne miniseries for example, which even then wasn’t that bad. I’ve been a massive fan of Telltale’s work since the Walking Dead originally came out, I’m also a massive nerd for Batman, so naturally, excitement got the better of me when I learned that Telltale were developing their very own Batman game similar to the fashion of their other titles. Does episode 1 show promise for the next 4 episodes to come, or does it simply use the caped crusader in a struggle to please its fans. I’m glad to say that for the most part, Batman: The Telltale Series Episode 1: Realm of Shadows is looking to be one of Telltale’s best pieces of work yet.

Crime Fighter, Detective, and Entrepreneur

Set during the start of Bruce Wayne’s attempt to make Gotham a safer place, Realm of Shadows follows the story of a troubled Bruce Wayne solving crime, influencing politics, and still dealing with the death of his parents. Realm of Shadows does a fantastic job at establishing various characters like Vicki Vale and Jim Gordon, characters are easily likeable, or quite the opposite in the case of a villain. Convincing voice performances are everywhere, and Troy Baker does a good enough job as the Dark Knight, although I can’t help but feel it can be a lot better. Key choices are tense, I often felt like whatever I said could potentially end in consequence, and moments of immense pressure had me panicking. Who knew something as simple as choosing whether or not to shake a hand could be so intense?

Combat is fairly standard for a Telltale game, it’s purely pressing the right buttons at the right times. It’s definitely fun to watch but don’t expect any Arkham-like combat here. One thing that really surprised me was the detective aspect of Realm of Shadow. You have to look for evidence and piece together what happened using logic chains. It’s refreshing, intriguing, satisfying, and extremely enjoyable to finally piece everything together. Last but not least, visuals and performance are fairly standard for a Telltale game. It uses the same trademark cel-shaded art style and looks all the better for it. Gotham is captured perfectly with this art style, and it brings out the sort of beautiful grittiness found in Gotham. I hadn’t experienced any crashes throughout my experience, but I did experience frame drops fairly often, which was quite annoying.

Verdict: 8.5/10

Realm of Shadows does a fantastic job at starting up Telltale’s next series. I thoroughly enjoyed my experience with Realm of Shadows from start to end, I’m incredibly excited for the rest of the series to come out, and I’m definitely going to go through again to make different choices. If you’re a Telltale fan, buy this game right now, trust me, it’s more than worth it. For those who are curious, it took me just under 2 hours to finish Realm of Shadows, which is fairly long for Telltale.

Positives

-Likeable characters

-Pressuring choices

-Detective segment

-Well-captured Gotham City

Negatives

-Frame drops

Thanks for reading guys! Up next is No Man’s Sky which should be up in few weeks or so. Harry.