3/11/25
Suicide Squad KTJL is a Arkham spinoff that was Rocksteady's attempt into the Live service market.
It flopped horribly due to poor reception and arkham fans were pissed at the writing, causing the game to drop service within a year. Its also the last game to feature Kevin Conroy as Batman, right before his passing.
This was a game that was mandated by WB to be live service, and Rocksteady didn't know how to do this at all.
They had a skeleton crew working on the game around Season 2 and it really shows, the games ending is rushed, cutscenes in later seasons are either stillframes or low budget and they had so much ideas for more content, storylines and seasonal content that never made it in due to WB ordering all the Rocksteady staff to focus on Hogwarts Legacy and a small team to finish up content.
The game is still up and running, but don't expect too much from it as it was dropped in 1 year and they finished up with Season 4.

Story : Set 5 years after Arkham Knight, Amanda Waller reaches out to Arkham Asylum to retreve 4 villians to take on a threat in Metropolis.
Deadshot, Harley Quinn, Captain Boomerang and King Shark.
They get bombs implanted in their head and are sent straight into the frontlines, where we learn Braniac has taken over the city, trying to terraform it into New Kolu and the Justice League is corrupted by Braniac's technology. Now the new mission : Kill The Justice League, and KILL BRANIAC.
Each season, players will goto Elseworlds to either kill Braniac or save other Villians to recruit, or save The Flash / Green Lantern.

The game is weird in it's story, it's NOT serious at all like Arkham games were. It's more-so like James Gunn style writting mixed with Suicide Squad 2016. It's got comedic moments and the story is more-so trying to follow the comics and be like the movies.
How Batman is alive, it's explained he faked his death and saw the Justice League forming, and decided to come out to join them. Within a few months of forming, they encounter Braniac and try to establish contact, only to be ambushed with only Wonder Woman and Barry Allen getting out.

The characters though are really good honestly, they followed the comics pretty well and made them unique.
Harley is goodhearted but insane and somewhat goofy, Deadshot is somewhat serious and a leader, Boomerang is an idiot and Kingshark is serious but trying to fit in. And the JL are great also design and character wise. It's a shame though that this is the first game we get introduced to Rocksteady's Justice League.
The seasonal characters, aren't really that good though.
You got a Elseworld Joker who is more like a Silver-age Joker, younger and makes puns every minute, but isn't that bad.
Mrs.Freeze who is just a Genderbent Mr.Freeze, pretty much what you expect.
Deadshots Daughter named Lawless who is a Streamer and is kinda annoying, and plays like Deadshot.
And Deathstroke who is honestly the best of the bunch, Post-Arkham who killed 10 Braniacs on Op missions (because they couldn't do more seasons).

Story, gets a 6/10.
It's passable and fun, but don't expect a nailgripping story like the Arkham games, this is more like the movies.

Gameplay : whooo boy.
The gameplay is pretty fun actually. It's not a beat'em up, it's a shooter.
You aren't heroes, your villians with LOTS of guns.
Open world of Metropolis, the size of one of the islands from Arkham Knight, with lots of comic / past references and your squad have ways of traversing the world and select weaponry.
Also missions to choose from, events and the main goal is raising your infamy level to take on higher missions post-story.
However, it gets repetitive after a while. Post-story is fun if you have time to waste or friends to play with but solo is really boring.

Boomerang uses his, well, boomerangs to zip to locations using a speedforce gauntlet, Shark force jumps, Deadshot has a Backpack and Harley uses a Grapplegun + Drone combo.
As for the season characters, they are kinda reskins of heroes traversals except for Joker.
Joker has a Rocket Umbrella, Mrs.Freeze uses her ice boots to fly (Deadshot Movement), Lawless has a Gravity Pack made from Kolu tech (Deadshot Movement again), and Deathstroke uses a Kunai to swingshot around the city (Boomerang movement)
Each character has weapon slots that they can use.
Like deadshot can use Pistols/ARs/shotguns/snipers/SMGs, Harley can use Miniguns/SMGs/Pistols/ARs/Shotguns, etc.
You can mix-match weapon types and with Infamy or weapon elements like Fire or Ice, combine them for elemental things.

You got ultimates which are like bullet time and unique finishers for each squad.
Also, slight looter mechanics. This game was originally ment to be a Live Service looter-shooter but they kinda changed the systems at the last minute due to backlash and made it more like a RPG Looter, with Skill trees, levels and rewards depending on your infamy level.
Lots of ways to build characters and mix and match different systems.
Riddler also makes a return, this time tormenting the squad on racing challenges where they have to head through checkpoints within a time limit, with rewards such as cosmetics or lore as rewards.
Character customization is pretty nice too.
You got character sets, the default being Arkham uniforms and Task Force X for the 4 main cast, and a store to buy microtransactions and cosmetic sets, some being comic or Arkham throwbacks or unique to the game.
Battlepasses are also an option, 4 to choose from and grind. Only $10 and are permanant, meaning no time limit to grind them and can buy them at anytime after completing them.

If you want to pair with friends, you also have guilds in the game, or Squads, I forgot what their called. Basically make your own teams and get rewards and nametags.

Gameplay, I actually really enjoyed. It gets into a slog after completing the main campaign and the later seasons start getting lower on budget.
But it gets a 7/10.

Visuals : It's alright.
Character designs are okay and the cast they scanned into KTJL fits the characters pretty good. The graphics and visuals are nice too and Metropolis looks beautiful honestly. I really enjoyed taking in the world and exploring. The Elseworld incursions also look great, showing alternate universes destroyed by Braniac.
Character outfits also look pretty neat, and I enjoyed making my squad standout a bit.
Optimization on launch sucked balls but it runs way smoother now, I just had to delete my shader cache and game runs 100% better.
8/10, not much to say. Game looks great and runs great too.

Verdict : It's a shame honestly.
This game had tons of potential but it was squandered by it's poor sales and Rocksteady not knowing how to make a proper live service game. They had lots of stuff planned for this game, like Heroes going into Elseworlds, more Kevin Conroy content and some other stuff such as PVP, more Squad members like Killer Croc and others, and a entire ending where you'd team with The Flash and Green Lantern to fight Braniac which was scrapped and turned into a comic narration by Harley.
This whole game was a big loss, resulting in $400M in losses from this game tanking in sales and them JUST being able to finish their content roadmap.

I say try it out if it goes on sale or get a key.
I'm holding onto hop that the next Arkham game tries something new and we get mabye a proper Suicide Squad game someday. This game is a lot of fun, but is squandered by grindy systems and some questionable decisions.
If you want an coop Batman game, play Gotham Knights. If you want a coop Arkham universe game, play this.

The game gets a 5/10. It's sad that not much went through that could've saved it but atleast we got something in the end, and I enjoyed playing it.