Lego Batman was my most anticipated game of 2026, and honestly, I have to admit I’m pretty disappointed, and I expected WAY more from it. I have a lot to say about my experience. First, on the positive side : I’m not even a big Batman fan, yet the game managed to immerse me in the universe and keep me hooked, so kudos for that. On a technical level the game is great, graphically gorgeous, with an art direction that transcends previous Lego titles. It’s also very well-optimized for 4K with maxed-out settings.

Now for the parts I liked less. The cinematic scale the developers aimed for is well-executed, especially for a Lego game. Paradoxically tho, this cinematic aspect gets totally overshadowed by a highly stereotypical and caricatured style reminiscent of 2000s animated movies that takes absolutely zero risks. Even outside the presentation, the overall plot feels like a generic Hollywood blockbuster designed to appeal to the widest possible audience. It’s a basic revenge story where the characters are just functional archetypes lacking any real depth. You can clearly tell the devs tried to condense decades of Batman lore into a single game with a 10-hour main story, and as a result, everything feels rushed and poorly paced. Written in an ultra-simplistic way, the story lacks any depth or relevance. For instance, the antagonist transitions for the Joker and Harvey Dent are completely rushed, the same goes for Robin's introduction as Batman's sidekick, or Talia at the end of the game, everything feels way too abrupt. Even the twists are clichés that we've seen a thousand times in mainstream action blockbusters, especially the ending.

And if anyone wants to excuse this by saying "it’s a kids game", great narrative games made for younger audiences do exist, Super Paper Mario comes to mind. Here, the plot of Lego Batman is literally just "good guys vs. bad guys," and the game's philosophy is litterally "evil is bad, good is good." There are no real political conflicts or narrative nuances; it’s just thugs wanting to steal money because... money is cool, I guess? And they’re bad guys, so muahaha, villains gonna be villains? I also think the game relies way too much on cutscenes to tell a very mid story. A 65% gameplay to 35% cutscene ratio is massive for a game with such risk-averse and shallow writing.

The humor is also tailored to be ultra-accessible. Once again, we're dealing with typical unoriginal blockbuster jokes, but even more mundane. Like, 80% of the humor boils down to "poop, farts, oops I fell down, crying noises wah wah wah, haha donuts are yummy, a fish fell on my head, ouch ouch..." it gets repetitive and honestly isn't that funny once you're past the age of 9. Again, I get that it’s a Lego game and not necessarily meant for a mature audience, but they could have made an effort. There are plenty of children's works out there with organic, original humor that I personally enjoy.

Moving on from the narrative and cinematic aspects, how is the gameplay? Well, the first thing to note is that the tutorial is unnecessarily LONG ?? Finishing the first part of the game takes about an hour just to learn ultra-basic stuff like using batarangs, fighting mobs, counter-attacking, or using the grappling hook. Things that we could have learned in 5 minutes. The actual Batman isn't even introduced as a playable character until about 1 hour and 15 minutes in, which is 10-15% of the main story (since a straight playthrough takes 10-12 hours). That’s a massive delay just to introduce your protagonist.

The combat system also lacks depth, tho it’s pretty much the same as any other superhero game, most of the time you just spam square to clear waves of enemies, with a few neat skills thrown in, but nothing that drastically changes the gameplay. It’s essentially a lite version of the Batman Arkham gameplay, and if you’ve played those games, you won't discover anything new here. The game features a skill tree, hinting at rich gameplay variety, but in the end, almost all unlockable skills are completely anecdotal and don't change how you play (minor HP buffs, focus bar boosts, small differences when you throw enemies...). Even with a maxed-out skill tree, the playstyle remains "spam square against mobs". And honestly every gameplay element (parkour, combat, mechanics, stealth) has been seen and done for the past 15 years. Speaking of stealth, the level design intelligence is closer to Ghost of Tsushima than Metal Gear (which did it better 30 years ago). So that’s a bit disappointing too, even if it stays decent... but it's far from mind-blowing, especially in 2026. Once again, the risks taken are close to zero.

As for the open world, it’s vast, but there’s barely anything to do besides picking up tedious collectibles like Catwoman's cats, clearing random thug encounters, or solving Clueman's puzzles, which are glaringly obvious and require a 40 IQ to complete. There are no interesting side quests, it’s just a massive playground where, in the end, you can take the word "play" out of the sentence because it gets so repetitive it just becomes boring.

But Chapter 3 is easily the worst part of the game, 70% of it feels like Batman is doing generic, Ubisoft-style open-world chores rather than memorable superhero activities, and this is supposed to be the main plot ! Fetching animals, gathering collectibles, stopping procedural petty crimes, solving ultra-simple puzzles, clearing zones... It feels like an Ubisoft checklist instead of a memorable Batman adventure where you expect high-stakes action. The main story is already heavily condensed, yet the game still pads it out with mind-numbing secondary content just to artificially extend its runtime !?

On top of that, the characters constantly backseat you during tasks, even when the solution is completely obvious, treating us like we're incapable of understanding how a controller works (even though we just spent an hour repeating the exact same mechanics in the tutorial lolol) I think the worst part was hearing Robin say : "Oh no! The door is locked! If only someone could open it... someone...!" You get backseated for tasks that simple. Plus, the dialogue often makes no sense, like Batman constantly repeating "leaving the car now would be a bad idea" when I’m literally forced to step out of the car to trigger a mission a few meters away...???

In short, this Lego Batman is the definition of: "We really don't want our game to flop, so we're going to do the most generic things seen in cinema and gaming over the last 30 years just to please the masses". I wanted to drop it after 2 hours, but I forced myself to play 15 more hours to finish the main story and do some side content to form a proper opinion. But I just can't keep going. Everything the game does, it does well, but it’s simultaneously so bland and unoriginal that it barely deserves a passing grade. I'm giving it an extra +0.5 just because it looks beautiful, but that's it. 5.5/10. Disappointed.

After 20 hours, I finished Nine Sols; it was a pretty good experience but the game definitely had it's flaws. First off, I have to admit that this game has, quite easily, the best combat system I’ve seen in a Metroidvania so far, the parry system is extremely satisfying. The visual identity is also really strong : it has beautiful art direction, amazing character designs, a great atmosphere, some "manga" parts (before/after the boss fights), which is so damn cool, and a great Chinese aesthetic that carries a lot of the atmosphere by itself. But at the same time, I feel like the game didn't succeed to fully exploit its own strengths, and that’s what keeps it from being something truly exceptional.

First, the way the game handles progression and new abilities is honestly kind of annoying after a while, every time you get a new skill, instead of just integrating it naturally into the world, the game throws you into these separate tutorial sequences in some kind of alternate space, with small scripted challenges and a "mini boss" at the end. It works the first time, maybe even the second, but after that it just becomes repetitive/boring. The devs don't seem to fully trust the player to learn organically through exploration and combat like in better Metroidvanias, so they isolate every mechanic in a controlled environment instead, and on top of that, the integration of some basic movement mechanics feel really questionable, for example, the air dash mechanic and other extended mobility options are locked way too late in the game, even though they feel like they should have been part of the core moveset from the beginning. Same thing with fast travel improvements : instead of giving you full freedom early, the game restricts movement for a long time and only opens it up much later, which makes the early and mid game feel unnecessarily constrained.

Exploration itself is also a bit mixed, most of the time it works, but sometimes I found the level design genuinely confusing in a way that didn’t feel logic, it’s not the "good kind" of being lost like in other Metroidvanias where everything still feels spatially logical and connected, it’s more like "I don’t really know where I’m supposed to go and nothing in the environment really helps me figure it out". And when I had to look things up on the internet, sometimes it felt like the solution wasn’t intuitive in the first place.

As for the lore and writing, they didn’t really help me stay engaged, I didn’t find the story or the characters particularly interesting (except Lady Etheral), and most of the time I just didn’t care when the game tried to make me read or pay attention to story segments.

But honestly, the biggest issue for me is the soundtrack, it’s probably the most disappointing part of the game. The visual direction is actually so good, the combat is strong, but the music is just... there. It never really stood out, never really stuck in my head, and never elevated any moment in the way you’d expect from a game that is otherwise so focused on atmosphere. Compared to something like Hollow Knight or Castlevania, where the music is basically part of the identity of the world itself, Nine Sols feels almost silent in that emotional sense ? And I think that’s a huge loss, because it means the game never fully reaches a deeper atmospheric impact, even when everything else is doing its job. The problem with Nine Sols soundtrack is not that it is specifically bad, it's more that it lacks memorable motifs, a strong melodic identity, and any lasting emotional presence; I finished the game without being able to hum, or even memorize, a single theme... And in a Metroidvania, that’s extremely damaging, because exploration relies heavily on the emotional memory of places. In Hollow Knight, Greenpath exists as much through its music as through its visuals, City of Tears is literally engraved into your memory thanks to its atmosphere, and even smaller areas still carry a clear and instantly recognizable musical identity. The same goes for Castlevania Symphony of the Night, where the soundtrack is deeply tied to the mythology of the castle itself. But in Nine Sols, the visual direction does almost all of the work on its own, the music only accompanies the experience, and it never manages to transcend it. For me, the soundtrack in a game is one of the most important criterias, definitely in a top 3, so this was a huge letdown.

Another mixed point : boss fights. Overall they are pretty good, sometimes even very good, but there’s a clear inconsistency. Some patterns or concepts don't have anything exceptionnal and most of them felt very generic, I feel like the devs could've done so much more with such a great combat system, what a waste of potential.. Anyways, a small portion of the bosses are genuinely frustrating, I ran into hitbox problems in several fights, especially against Eigong, Jiequan, and the worst, the Fengs (Fuxi & Nuwa), which made them feel just annoying sometimes (Fuxi & Nuwa it was annoying during the WHOLE fight). The combat system itself is amazing, but the boss design doesn’t always use it properly. Here is my ranking of the main bosses in the game :
1 - Eigong (8.5/10)
2 - Lady Etheral (8/10)
3 - Ji (8/10)
4 - Jiequan (7.5/10)
5 - Yanlao (5.5/10)
6 - Goumang (5/10)
7 - General Yingzhao (4/10)
8 - Xingtiang (3.5/10)
9 - Kanghui (1.5/10)
10 - Fuxy & Nuwa (-100/10) (I hate them so much)

There are also some sections of gameplay that feel genuinely bad to go through. The worst example for me is that corridor section before Eigong, where the camera moves slowly across a hallway while enemies spawn off-screen and rush you one by one, it was probably the worst part in the whole game, your HUD is hidden for some reason, enemies attack and spawn from off-screen, and you end up in situations where you’re constantly reacting without proper information.

Oh, and one thing I also wanted to talk about is a criticism I often see about this game in Backloggd and TikTok : its difficulty. A lot of people complain about how hard the game is, but I find that criticism pretty biased and not really valid, because you can simply switch to Story Mode and adjust the difficulty however you want, you can keep the same damage dealt and damage taken multipliers as in Normal Mode, or you can adjust them to make the game much easier and more accessible. There is literally an option that lets you multiply your damage by 10 and divide incoming damage by 10... So criticizing the game for its difficulty when it is so easily adjustable doesn’t really feel like a relevant point to me... I think the difficulty in the game is actually quite well balanced for the most part, the main problem is only the hitboxes in some bosses, and if anyone finds certain sections too hard, they can simply change the difficulty settings, it's not a real problem.

So overall, I think Nine Sols is a game with an absolutely incredible combat foundation and a very strong artistic identity, but it’s held back by a lot of structural, musical and design choices that doesn't allow it to reach it's full potential. Even though I really enjoyed a lot of it, I can’t see it as a perfect game, it feels like a game with a ceiling it never fully breaks through, something that could have been genuinely elite in its genre, but ends up being "very good with major flaws".