What each Gotham Knights character is best at

Gotham Knights, an open-world action game set in Gotham City, allows you to play as four characters from DC Comics canon: Nightwing, Batgirl, Red Hood, and Robin. You can basically play as any character you want for the entirety of the game. But that doesn’t mean that each of the game’s four playable heroes is the same.

In fact, each member of the Bat-family has their own strengths, unique abilities, combat strategies, and more. Their combos are executed differently; for example, Red Hood’s timed attacks incorporate his guns in a way that other characters’ ranged attacks aren’t used. And although it’s not required, it’s a good idea to mix things up and swap characters often, because you’ll experience different story beats with each one. The degree to which the game world bends depending on who you’re playing as is one of the game’s impressive hat tricks.

On the other hand, hey, maybe you want to pick your favorite and stick with them through the credits. Either way, it can be handy to have a handle on each character’s individual traits.

Image: WB Games Montreal/Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment

Dick Grayson (Nightwing)

Primary strengths: acrobatics and teamwork

Movement: Given Dick’s background as a circus performer, his fighting style is largely centered around acrobatics, allowing him to move fluidly across the battlefield. His skill trees include abilities that let him use foes as springboards to leap high into the air and evade attacks with impressive back handsprings. These abilities can be augmented with the power to knock down enemies and gain momentum energy more quickly, letting him use special attacks more frequently.

Teamwork: Grayson also specializes in teamwork. He can gain darts that heal or even revive allies from a distance, and area-of-effect powers that buff and heal teammates.

Traversal: Each of the four heroes has unique traversal abilities that you can unlock by completing their “knighthood” challenges. Nightwing’s is a mini drone that allows him to glide around.

Image: WB Games Montréal/Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment

Barbara Gordon (Batgirl)

Primary strengths: hacking, tankiness, and stealth

Hacking the planet: Barbara’s prowess with all things technological allows her to hack the battlefield in interesting ways. For example, some of her abilities let her to tank through damage without her attacks being interrupted, or to interrupt strong enemy attacks with her normal combos. She can also revive herself after being downed, and heal herself by defeating enemies.

Stealth: Batgirl can do environmental hacking while trying to be stealthy, which makes her a good choice whenever you’d rather take enemies out quickly than deal with lengthy combat encounters. She has abilities that make her undetectable to electronic security devices like sensors and cameras, and she can make environmental objects like electrical panels explode from a distance.

Traversal: Through her knighthood challenges, Barbara unlocks the ability to glide around the city on her batwings. This traversal power is most similar to the ones found in the Arkham games.

Image: WB Games Montreal/Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment

Jason Todd (Red Hood)

Primary strengths: brute force/gunplay

Brute force: Red Hood is the most straightforward character to play. What he lacks in fancy stealth and hacking capabilities, he makes up for with raw damage. His melee and ranged pistol attacks are powerful, as are his grab moves. A favorite is his ability to attach concussive mines to grabbed enemies before hurling them back at their buddies and detonating them with a well-placed gunshot.

Ranged combat: Jason’s guns are more useful than his counterparts’ ranged weapons. If you keep your distance from foes, you can take advantage of the game’s manual aiming mechanics to rack up big damage multipliers. His momentum abilities let him unload clips rapid-fire and quickly reload for more.

Traversal: Red Hood’s unique traversal ability lets him teleport around using magic floating platforms.

Image: WB Games Montreal/Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment

Tim Drake (Robin)

Primary strengths: stealth/status effects

Stealth: Robin has even better stealth capabilities than Batgirl. Rather than focusing on hacking, his powers directly help him stay undetected. For example, he’s the only character who can gain the ability Batman had in the Arkham games to string enemies up from grapple points. He can also automatically deploy a smoke bomb and grapple back into cover after executing stealth attacks, and can take down larger enemies using stealth. Tim’s sneaky tendencies can help during all-out combat as well; for example, he can deploy a decoy that distracts enemies and then explodes.

Status effects: Robin’s other specialty is status effects. Several of his abilities, including his ranged attacks and the aforementioned decoys, deal elemental damage. The exact element can vary, including effects like poison, freezing, and more. Leveling him up further can increase the efficacy and uptime of those effects, as well as making Robin more resistant to them when inflicted by enemies.

Traversal: Robin’s traversal ability is maybe the weirdest of the bunch. Using mystical satellite technology, he can teleport long distances, which effectively means holding the right trigger and slowly maneuvering a cursor to where you want him to reappear.