Look, it’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s… wait, that’s the wrong superhero. Uh, I screwed this whole intro up. Sorry. Let’s just start over. Ahem. Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight is out today for everyone, not just those who paid extra for early access. It’s a fantastic open-world Batman game that just so happens to also be made entirely out of Lego bricks and bits. And while it isn’t a very challenging game, we still have 16 useful tips and tricks for players hopping into Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight.
Maybe don’t pick the hardest difficulty option…
As mentioned, Legacy of the Dark Knight isn’t a very challenging game. If you’ve played other open-world action games before, it’s unlikely you’ll be struggling to survive fights or beat bosses. So you might be tempted to set the difficulty to the highest of the three options, Dark Knight. And you can do that. But be warned that the game tosses a lot of enemies at you at that setting, and fights can become a bit of a slog. Personally, I had plenty of fun on the middle difficulty option, Caped Crusader, while still occasionally getting overwhelmed or nearly defeated.
Play the story missions
It’s very tempting to explore the vast world of Gotham City the moment you get a chance to in Legacy of the Dark Knight, but don’t spend too much time poking around the city. At least, not at first. You should play through a good chunk of the story missions, as completing these earns you new characters, tools (like the ability to glide around the city), and gold bricks, which are used to upgrade and unlock character skills.
And yes, once you’re done with the story, the whole city remains available to explore freely, so you can collect all those goodies and finish any remaining side activities.
Use Detective Mode often
Clicking in the right stick (on consoles) in this new Lego Batman game will activate Detective Mode, highlighting useful items and objectives. I recommend using this mode a lot. Any time you’re stuck on a puzzle or challenge, just tap that stick, and you’ll quickly be shown something to break or investigate.
Unlock Jim Gordon’s bouncing projectile
Of all the characters available to play as in Dark Knight, Jim Gordon might be the most boring. A dude with two weird guns. Ehhh. But Gordon’s bouncy projectile blaster is very useful against crowds of enemies. And once you upgrade it using some WayneTech chips and make the projectiles bounce multiple times between enemies, Gordon will become the best character for completing the surprisingly tricky Augmented Reality combat challenges.
Unlock Batman’s grapple slam
Shield enemies can be very annoying, so unlock Batman’s grapple slam attack ASAP. This lets you hop over an enemy and then tap the right trigger to hook them with Bat’s grapple gun and slam them to the ground. It works on many types of foes, but is very useful against those damn shield-carrying thugs.
Check the map to see if you can complete a side activity
Until you unlock access to all playable characters, which happens near the end of the game, you won’t be able to complete every puzzle or challenge you find in Gotham. But some of them you can halfway-complete before hitting a brick wall. This is annoying. To avoid wasting your time, check the map and see if the activity has a lock icon or not. If it does, that means you can’t finish it yet. Move on and come back later.
Use Batgirl to reveal all the icons on the map
In Chapter 4, Legacy of the Dark Knight adds Batgirl to your playable character roster. Once she’s available to use, you can then activate the radio towers located throughout Gotham City and reveal all the collectibles and side activities in that area of the map. Very useful if you’re trying to complete every last bit of the game.
Use the Batmobile to gain a ton of studs
Here’s an easy way to get a ton of studs: Smash stuff with the Batmobile. So much of Gotham is breakable when driving Batman’s famous vehicle. You can even shoot missiles at some breakable objects, which will explode into collectable studs. I was able to rack up thousands and thousands of studs in minutes just being the most dangerous (and richest) driver Gotham has ever seen.
Collect the studs for completing challenges
Want even more studs? Well, make sure to head back to the Batcave from time to time to check in on the in-game challenges you’ve completed and collect the studs for completing each one.
If you find a purple stud, wait!
And lastly, if you spot a purple stud, which is rare, don’t collect it right away. These are worth 10,000 studs, but you can juice that number by collecting a ton of studs and raising your multiplier to three. Then, run over and collect it to gain 30,000 studs. You can even upgrade your multiplier to max out at 4, letting you get 40,000 from a single purple stud.
Replay missions via the Batcomputer
If you finished a mission but didn’t collect every secret, don’t worry. You can replay every mission in the game as many times as you want, whenever you want, just by logging into the Batcomputer located in the Batcave.
Aiming at specific points will switch your gadget automatically
While fighting bosses or solving puzzles in Dark Knight, you’ll need to swap between different character gadgets to grapple stuff, whip points, hack computers, and so forth. But, fun fact, if the character you’re playing has one of the needed gadgets, simply aiming at the point you need to interact with or shoot will swap to that gadget automatically. This is a handy little feature that removes the need to fiddle about with gadget-swapping on the fly.
Swapping characters quickly
To swap to a character quickly, just hold down on the d-pad, which will bring up the full list of characters you can play as and will show you the gadgets they have access to as well.
Sometimes you’ll need your car to solve a puzzle
This is something the game does a poor job explaining, but at certain points, you’ll encounter open-world puzzles that require the Batmobile to solve. If you see a tire icon or just can’t figure out what to do next, try spawning the Batmobile and see if you can interact with anything using its grapple cannon or weight.
Visit Batmite shops to upgrade your gadgets
The only way to upgrade each character’s gadgets is by visiting a workbench and spending some WayneTech chips. But workbenches aren’t just lying around the city like chests and studs. If you ever need one and don’t want to return to the Batcave, just look for the nearest Batmite shop. These locations show up as shopping carts on the map, and once you enter a shop, just turn left and you’ll find the workbench waiting for you.
You can turn off stud loss on death
Finally, if you’re playing with kids who die a lot, you might want to hop into the game’s accessibility settings and turn off the setting that has characters drop studs when they die. Simple change, but one which might save some frustration down the road.
