Batman: Arkham City GOTY – Beginner’s Combo Guide

Getting good is all about doing big combos. For this you need the following: Countering, camera control and special enemies.

In the main story, at 3% progress, I encountered a group of 16 thugs who work for Two-Face. They were joking at how easy it would be for them to take Batman down…

I restarted that fight about 50 times because every time, my combo would be broken. Maybe 90% of those failures is because I would get hit. So I restarted and tried again and again. And then, after maybe 45 attempts, something changed in my approach to combat. I started to understand the flow!… 5 attempts later I would string all 16 thugs together, with a 5 variation and 1 gadget bonus for a 73 combo! Without being hit, of course.

Since then, I have greatly improved my results in the challenges. Below is what I would have needed to read, in order to understand faster how to be good in combat.

I decided to add this section since it did really help me. I am playing on PC with mouse + keyboard. I must admit to absolutely hating the Spacebar double-tap.
My left thumb rests sideways on my keyboard’s spacebar while the tip of my fingers reach the WASD keys. Right-hand on the mouse. It is for me much easier to double-tap, say letter E, than it is to double-tap spacebar.

As such, many times, I wanted to evade but the game never got a double-tap of the key. My thumb is just not good at pressing down sideways repeatedly fast. So the game would see this as “Run” instead of evade and it would break my combo.

So I remapped the Evade to “E”, while leaving Spacebar also mapped to Evade. That meant reassigning “E” which does a Combat Take down, to letter “U”. This means that it’s now much harder for me to do a combat take down. I don’t care. I can still do it, but the letter “U” is more difficult to reach in combat than letter “E”. Also there’s R-Ctrl+Strike to do a takedown on the ground.

But the advantage is that now, I can reliably press “E” twice, along with “W” or “S” to select my direction to evade to. So another neat thing is that pressing both “E” and Spacebar at the same time does an evade instantly! A disadvantage is when I want to evade right. My left index is pressing “E” and cannot also press “D”. So in that case, I have to press “D” with my index and do a double Spacebar tap to evade.

I did all of Arkham Asylum just before starting Arkham City and I used Spacebar all along in AA. But then again, I really didn’t use it much in combat. So coming to Arkham City, I still have the muscle memory to evade with spacebar. So now mapping “E” on top of that just gives me a super easy evade now.

IMO, countering is the single most important aspect of improving your combo success.

-To “respect the counter” means that you should rarely ignore the attacks that are coming.
-On normal difficulty, you can tell who is about to attack you by seeing those blue light things above their heads. Attackers don’t have blue lights above their heads in Hard mode, I think.
-You can ignore the attacks sometimes, if for instance, your camera points to a target far away and that you are in Combat Freeflow mode. Then, if an attacker comes from behind, Batman will jump all the way to reach the far target and the attacker will miss. So sometimes, you can place in a strike instead of a counter.
-Sometimes, you might prefer to strike a target that is attacking you instead of countering it. Striking in time will negate their attack (and do damage). It’s risky!
-Sometimes, one attacker shows up and then another, a bit after. This allows you, if you wish, to strike one of them and then quickly counter the other. It’s risky.
-Other than cases such as described above, you should ALWAYS counter the attacks (Right-click once for each attacker)
-When you counter, time will slow down, giving you time to position your camera for your next attack.
-Countering does little to no damage, which lets you string longer combos together since the counters count towards the combo.
-Countering leaves most enemies stunned, maybe even on the ground, stunned.
-Countering is irrespective of your camera. The camera doesn’t matter when you counter.
-Countering is irrespective of your orientation (ex: Batman facing North)
-AFAIK, you cannot counter a group of attackers, to then have to counter another immediately. From my experience, you should right-click once for each attacker, then move, or strike, or capestun or evade, etc. before another group of attacks starts. So what I mean is that you’ll never end up with 6x right-clicks. The most would be 3 consecutive right-clicks (for 3 attackers). Then you’d press a movement key or left-click or press Q, before possibly countering a new group or single attacker.

Of course, if you counter 3 attackers, and then do nothing, you can then be attacked immediately by another group. But that would break your combo.

If an object is thrown at you, a counter will catch the object. Makes countering even better as it has this double function.

Think of combat a bit like boxing: Left-click to jab, quick strikes, right-click for a big right hand, except here, your big right is a counter.

You can experiment with different mindsets going into battle:
1) Run and begin the fight with strikes to feel like an aggressive mindset. This is not what you want to get good at first. You should not be aggressive until you get better at combat.

2) Stand where you are (arms at rest… hahaha!) and wait for an attack. Begin the fight with a counter. You’ll start the fight with time being slowed down, while feeling invincible. Then make your strikes “campy”. Wait a bit of time to make your strikes… And take every counter opportunity that you find. In this mindset, you are starving for counters (while enjoying the in-between strikes very much). This is the mindset you want in order to improve. Once you enter combat free-flow and take every counter opportunity, you will feel much more in control of combat and you’ll have a much easier time at stringing together a full combo with all of your enemies.

So to resume, to get good, simply strike (left-click) as long as nobody is attacking you. The moment you get attacked, respect the counter (right-click) 1x/attacker, move your camera for your next strike and in the middle of the counter, left click to proceed to this next attack, bringing you back to the start. Continue striking as long as nobody is attacking you…

What I described above is the “main loop”. Once you have that nailed down, it is easy to incorporate capestuns, evades, beat-downs, instant take downs, quick batarangs, bat swarms, etc. All of those can replace a strike.

A very satisfying loop that I’ve experienced is to do Beat-downs, followed by 1 or 2 counters (depending on how many attackers), then continue your beat-down on the same enemy, and counter, again beat-down, etc. The beat-down itself allows each strike to be “campy”, as I said above. And this, along with time-slowed counters, makes the entire loop very satisfying and very rewarding in terms of points. Use this for achievements.

You can practice your skills in the first challenge unlocked in the game. Experiment in the first fight (vs 3 opponents) to ONLY use counters. Notice how Batman can be facing the corner of the room and get attacked from behind and still counter without problems. Batman’s orientation has no impact on countering. You can also practice moving around and evading along with countering.

Also, my 73 combo was probably made up of (roughly) 50 left clicks and 20 right clicks. The 3 other combo elements were from capestuns or quick batarangs. So my point is that you don’t mash the mouse buttons by clicking 500 times during the fight. You click only for meaningful actions.

Since I got all 16 enemies with that combo, that means that on average, you get 4.5 combo points out of each enemy. (16×4.5 = 72)

A successful combat looks like this (with each element roughly lasting 1s real time, except for the counters as they are slowed down):
-Strike, strike
-Counter
-Strike, capestun
-Counter, Counter
-Strike,
-Counter,
-Strike,
-Counter,
-Evade,
-Strike into Beatdown
-Counter, Counter
-Strike into Beatdown
-Counter
-Strike into Beatdown
-Evade,
-Strike, Capestun
-Counter
…

It is overlooked but so fundamental in the Arkham games. The target of your camera is the target of your strikes.

-Moving the camera quickly unto various enemies while left-clicking in sync, will cause ravage and quickly ramp up your combo. Especially with critical strikes.
-While the camera is not used for countering, it is used for capestuns, quick batarangs and Strikes.
-So when attackers begin their blue lights, as they get ready to attack, you can use this time to position your camera. Countering is also a good time to plan your next attack.
-Quick camera movement is necessary to change directions quickly.

My point here is that if you don’t move your camera, you can still perform fairly well, using evades and counters. But to get the most out of your billionaire vigilante, you should act as a cameraman once in while during the fight.

Generally, the end of the fight requires better camera focus since enemies are not everywhere anymore. And missing a strike while so close to the end of your enormous combo is so frustrating. So when the fight nears the end, make sure you know where your opponents are and get ready to direct that scene like a pro! Camera right! Camera left! Annnnnd.. ACTION! BOOOOUUUMMM!

-They are very good at breaking your combo because they have special needs.
-Some need a capestun
-Others need a vertical attack
-Others might need a beat down
-Others might need to be attacked from the rear
-Being able to react quickly to do the right move against these foes is what will truly set you apart.

Putting it all together, you will enter into the flow of combat and react to your opponent’s attacks while striking when you can. A proper camera control will make sure that you reach your intended target and that you don’t strike thin air. Then with time, you will get better with special enemies and the game helps you here since they will trickle in progressively throughout the campaign.

One final thought is also to think about how to “aggro” the enemies. Sometimes, an unusual approach might make the fight much easier. Ex: You could begin the fight against a tight group of enemies by throwing your Line Launcher across the group and then zipping while stunning all of them, only to drop early right behind them and then start your strikes. Or place some gel on the ground (x3) before you aggro the thugs. Throw a Batrang at them and then switch back to the gel to detonate when you see fit during the fight.

To get bigger combos, don’t settle for 2x groups of 3 thugs. Try to run around and herd them all
into a big fight. Then you’ll have 6 meat bags at your disposal to really ramp up that combo! And remember, Arkham needs your help. But don’t forget to have some Batfun out there!