Gotham Knights has been one of the most eagerly anticipated games of 2022. A spiritual successor to the Batman Arkham games by British studio Rocksteady, this was meant to offer the same great open world gameplay and adventure that the Arkham games offered, set in an atmospheric recreation of Gotham City.
Those wanting to play on PC, though, may have been surprised by the game’s system requirements, which are pretty demanding.
As seen on the game’s Steam page (via IGN), the minimum required processor is an Intel Core i5-9600K – definitely above average, as the likes of a Core i5-8400 or less have been sufficient to date for most games.
Also, a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti or AMD Radeon RX 590 are listed as a minimum requirement when it comes to graphics cards, and this coupled with the aforementioned processor will only let you play the game at 1080p resolution and low quality graphical settings, albeit at 60 frames per second.
The recommended system requirements will definitely raise some eyebrows, though, as developer WB Games Montreal has listed an Intel Core i7-10700K as the recommended CPU for Gotham Knights, which is a pretty steep requirement truth be told. So is the recommended graphics card, a GeForce RTX 2070 – it seems the days when an old favorite like the GTX 970 could run everything are truly behind us.
More damningly, this setup will only let you play at 1080p with high graphics settings, and at 60 fps. Presumably a higher end GPU, maybe one of the new RTX 40 cards from Nvidia, will be needed to play at the same frame rate at 4K resolution, then.
These system requirements smack of a poorly optimized game, and indeed the people at WB Games Montreal had to lower their frame rate target on new-gen consoles to 30 frames per second before launch, something which led to people to cancel their pre-orders. A high-profile game like Assassin’s Creed Unity was also lambasted back in the day for similar reasons, although at least Gotham Knights’ launch has not been a buggy mess like Unity’s was…
It’s hard not to notice, though, that most reviews have been mixed, a disappointment taking into account that this was supposed to be one of the biggest AAA games of the year and a high-quality release by Warner Bros. Games.
The game’s Metacritic score stands at 68 for the Xbox Series X version of the game, and the likes of GameSpot have said the game “acts as more of a cautionary tale than the logical next step for this storied universe”, highlighting how this is a disappointment compared to Rocksteady’s Batman games and how the game prioritizes quantity over quality.
Of course, developer Rocksteady themselves were not available to make Gotham Knights as they are busy working on Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, their new superhero game which is arriving next year.
So even if Gotham Knights might have been a disappointment for some, perhaps the people behind the Batman Arkham games can save the day and deliver another masterful open world superhero game next year. What’s clear, though, is that Gotham Knights has been one of the most controversial games of the year so far, no doubt.
Here follow Gotham Knights’ PC system requirements (as listed on the Steam website).
System requirements
Minimum System Requirements (for low settings at 1080p / 60 fps)
OS: Windows 10 64-bit
Processor: Intel Core i5-9600K or AMD Ryzen 5 3600
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti or AMD Radeon RX 590
DirectX: Version 12
Storage: 45 GB available space
Recommended System Requirements (for high settings at 1080p / 60 fps)
OS: Windows 10 64-bit
Processor: Intel Core i7-10700K or AMD Ryzen 5 5600X
Memory: 16 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 or AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT
DirectX: Version 12
Storage: 45 GB available space