This game seems a lot more difficult than the first two. I find the free-flow combat messing up a bit more. I think I just need to adjust to the changes, a lot of the mistakes are my fault. I was really good at mixing it up in the first two, and not getting hit once. In this game it seems a hell of a lot more unforgiving. Any tips?
- Don't waste time on a beatdown on the armored guys. Take them out as soon as you can with an Instant Takedown: doesn't matter if they are amidst a group of people, the game AI will prioritize the Instant Takedown to hit them.
- This one is tricky: when you are doing a beatdown, turn the camera around in order to have all the other enemies behind you and Batman at the bottom of the screen. Keep the beatdown going (if you learn the timing you can pause a bit between each punch) and let everyone try to hit you in the back. You can get a lot of counters because the AI in AO (@_@) is very aggressive and becomes even more aggressive when you are performing beatdowns. Learn to do this on enemies who stray from the group and things will become a lot easier.
- Don't throw batarangs to armored thugs or in the direction of armored thugs: batarangs in AC gave priority to rifle wielding thugs and armored thugs, but the thing in AO is when batarangs hit armored thugs the combo count stops. It's a major fault in AO combo system and basically forces you to dispose immediately of armored thugs, because you won't be able to spam batarangs if they are around.
- Don't try to use strikes in close quarter: stick to counters and use strikes only with enemies who are somewhat distant or very distant.
- When there is more then one enemy with a rifle in a combat encounter, throw a smoke pellet in the group so you will get 30-40 seconds of free hits. This is extremely useful when you get the electric gauntlets because you can start the combo with a beatdown, since all the other enemies will be gasping through the smoke, activate the gauntlets and raise hell.
- Spam batarangs when you don't have armored thugs to take care of. The batarangs prioritize enemies like this: first anyone with a rifle, then armored thugs, then anyone who is wielding environmental objects (boxes, gas tanks, chairs and so on) then and only then, the batarang will prioritize enemies who are closer to you. Of the ones closer to you, the batarangs will prioritize enemies about to hit you, meaning that if you are surrounded by 2 thugs and one is about to hit you the batarang will direct on that enemy first even if you aim at the other thug.
- Batarangs in freeflow focus do A TON of damage, which is enhanced if you hit an enemy trapped in a glue bomb.
- Spam bat-swarm and batarang takedown. Unless you are dealing with armored thugs, it's better to use batarang takedown even with only one enemy down. The camera tends to close up on instant takedowns and widen up on batarang takedowns: since enemy can slide half-way through the screen, the FOV granted by the batarang takedown gives a bit of a tactical edge.
- martial artists won't counter your moves if you jump over them and kick them in back like you do with stun-baton thugs in AC.
- Giants can be stunned by three cape stuns in sequence but they can also be stunned by esplosive gel detonations.
- Instead of using beatdowns (which are very dangerous to perform in AO) use cape stuns to incapacitate an enemy and concentrate on the others.
- Batclaw pulls are moderately safe moves to spam, in order to incapacitate armored thugs (if you vault over an enemy while they are pulled by the claw they will fall to the ground) and to disarm rifle wielding thugs
until you get the disarm and destroy upgrade (why, Holmes! WHY!). Batclaw strikes on the other hand are possibly the most unsafe attack to use.
- a jump attack over an enemy without the shield is as unsafe as a batclaw strike, but against a shielded enemy the other thugs will actually stop their attack and let you smash the sob for the entire length of the animation.