"Batman: The Enemy Within" is one of Telltale Games' best projects and one of the best stories about Batman in general, which certainly deserves attention. TTG not only remained true to themselves, but even reached a new level of quality in terms of plot and work with characters. I have always been very loyal to Telltale's projects, but I have hardly received such strong impressions from their previous works a couple of times.
So, in Gotham, after years of oblivion, the Riddler reappears, having been operating in the city even before Batman appeared. However, now the Dark Knight stands guard over the innocent, ready to fight back against a mentally ill criminal, but he has no idea what his confrontation with the famous villain will lead to.
The plot of "Batman: The Enemy Within" is filled with many characters, one way or another interested in the main conflict, with whom you will have to interact during the course of the story and, through your decisions, build certain relationships with them. Both Bruce Wayne and his alter ego will have a really hard time this time - the hero will have to work undercover in a gang of supervillains, reporting to the head of ARGUS Amanda Waller, while trying not to destroy the trusting relationship with Commissioner Gordon, and sort out his feelings for Selina Kyle, decide who John Doe is, and at the same time remain true to your principles. "Batman: The Enemy Within" is simply intense and even oversaturated with events, but this is only beneficial and actually makes you feel the whole burden of responsibility and constant tension that has fallen on Bruce Wayne within the framework of this story.
And in fact, it is precisely this variety of characters in contact with Bruce and Batman (for some of them these are two different personalities), the game of double, or even triple and even quadruple agent, loyalty tests from different, so to speak, factions and make "Batman: The Enemy Within" such an original project compared to other Telltale products. Constantly arising doubts about the “correctness” of this or that choice are simply raised to the absolute level here; personally, with each new decision, I realized that the situation was going downhill more and more, and all my actions to prevent this only further aggravated the problem.
"Batman: The Enemy Within" at the same time raises quite important questions both for the character himself and for the entire Batman universe - is the Dark Knight as crazy as his opponents? Is his own moral code really that good? What is Batman's breaking point before the vigilante goes beyond his moral principles? What if Batman himself is the direct cause of the hordes of supervillains? These and some other topics raised help to better understand the character and, as they say, get into his head. Of course, similar questions have been raised before, but it’s still very nice to see that Telltale tried to work on character depth as well.
TTG, back in the first season, pretty much shook up many of the established canons of the Batman universe, thereby creating their own unique story, and of course in “Batman: The Enemy Within” they went even further. Telltale mercilessly wastes individual characters, rewrites the origins of others, makes them conflict with others, thereby developing a completely viable alternative universe, which is really interesting to watch, given that the player is, to one degree or another, given the opportunity to change it himself.
In terms of gameplay, "Batman: The Enemy Within" is the same interactive movie. To be fair, I note that QTEs have been updated, making the action scenes more dynamic, and the character relationship system has also undergone some changes for the better.
As a result, "Batman: The Enemy Within" is one of the most serious and adult (in every sense) stories about Batman, which simply looks great within the genre. In my opinion, this is a new level for Telltale Games, which approached the project very responsibly. Updated QTEs, very nice graphics, very high-quality work with the plot and characters, and the approach to variability itself has become, in my opinion, more seriously developed. I'm looking forward to the third season, fortunately a rich foundation has been left for it.
10 out of 10.