Yeah. Fighting heaps of thugs at once is so satisfying. But you know the improvement I love the most in AC? Knife takedowns. I love the risk/reward of that move. Pulling one when you have a nice 100+ hits combo going is so satisfying.
One of the DLC maps in the GOTY version is in the weapons room in Bruce Wayne's mansion, and there are knives
all over the place for the goons to pick up. I ended up with an 80-something hit combo and pulled off five Blade Takedowns in a row
I just went back to AA after the GFWL-removal patch, and managed to adjust to Batman's limited moveset fairly quickly. It just feels so much less rewarding, because I typically hammer out all nine moves for the variation bonus and then just bounce around with critical strikes and instant takedowns because there's not really any room for stylin' on fools. It just makes me appreciate AC's brilliant combat all the more. They just did such incredibly clever stuff with it, like giving you the huge point bonus for the Blade Takedown to encourage you to keep them alive as long as possible, and requiring you to clear enough space to fit in an Ultra Stun before you can do anything to a Titan. Do you take out the armoured thug immediately, or do you risk a Beatdown to for the boost to your combo meter? There's more emphasis than ever on never dropping your combo, because every single one of the special moves is so incredibly useful. Gawd I love that game.
The biggest thing I worry about for Arkham Origins is that their new additions are going to mess up some part of the combat. It's just about perfect in AC, there's no situation that you can't deal with and turn to your advantage, so I really hope the new guys know what they're doing. I'm really disappointed that they've brought back Batman's Devil Trigger from the Wii U version of AC (you click in L3 and R3 once you've filled a meter and suddenly Batman can punch all the special enemies without dropping his combo), but I'm hoping it's just there for Easy mode (or at least that you won't be allowed to use it on NG+).