Added moves were great, it just controlled sloppily. Was not a good idea to simply superimpose the new functions on top of a control system that was built from the ground up to be inherently simpler. For the first several hours I had to mentally stop a do a double take remembering which button combo did what, which isn't common and just a sign of a bad control scheme in my experience.
Well, I won't try and convince you otherwise, but I just totally disagree. To me, more options in combat only makes things better, and I don't think they controlled sloppily at all. I love being able to pull off every move in Batman's arsenal with single commands, even if they do involve two buttons.
I don't really think Batman's combat was designed to be simple, or at least not in terms of having a small move list. The thing that attracted me to Batman's combat in the first place was that it took the Devil May Cry idea of single commands for moves (meaning no combo strings), and abstracted it to a form where razor-sharp reflexes and perfect timing were less important. I've always utterly adored DMC, but never had the skill to pull off the really advanced, frame-perfect techniques, or hold my own in DMD mode, so I was delighted to see that Batman encouraged the same kind of on-the-fly strategising, critical thinking, situational-awareness, etc, but with much more lenient timing windows. I love the way the games encourage you to use every move in your repertoire while simultaneously
discouraging you from ever button-mashing by locking your best moves away behind higher combo multipliers. They teach you to prioritise that multiplier over all else, so taking a random hit or missing an attack because you weren't concentrating hard enough carries so much more weight than in other games.
People get bizarrely uppity when you try and talk about Batman having a complex combat system. I don't know how these games ever got lumped in with the legions of light/heavy attacks, GOW-clone rubbish out there, but I feel like I constantly see people talking about just button-mashing their way through the Batman games and I don't know how they managed it. Obviously Batman isn't on the same level as the God-tier action games, but I think it's a brilliant combat system and so refreshingly unique.
FAKE EDIT - OK, so I kind of talked myself off-track there, but all I really wanted to say was that I thought the additions to the combat in AC were really well done. I think they're extremely well-implemented from a basic control layout, too - they're there if you want to use them, and totally inconspicuous if you don't. They don't change the inputs of any of your regular moves, they just build on top of them.
