The enemy types in Batman: Arkham Knight should be familiar to most players who have played one of the Batman: Arkham games previously. For the most part the enemy types remain essentially unchanged with a few new additions. These enemies include:

Thugs/Soldiers¶

These fellows are by far the most numerous of the enemy types that you encounter during Arkham Knight. They are the weakest enemy type in the game and will more often than not roam around the streets or be guarding specific rooms in decent sized groups. Thugs/Soldiers are pretty much Batman fodder and as such do not have too much in the way of defence.

The vanilla variants will be affected by all quick-fire gadgets, combo takedowns, counters and melee attacks without issue, making them fairly easy to deal with. They can however get a little trickier when additional variations come into play as the game progresses. These variants include:

Melee weapons – The Thugs/Soldiers are able to pick up baseball bats, planks of wood and other objects in the environment and use them as a melee weapon. This will slightly increase the damage that they are able to do. It is also possible for them to pick up crates, and other smaller objects to use as projectiles.

Guns – In some fights, the Thugs/Soldiers will be armed with guns from the get go, other times there may be weapon crates in the area that they can access during combat to pick up guns. Enemies with guns are very dangerous in combat and as such need to be prioritised as they can cause significant damage in a hurry. Attacking them will cause them to drop their weapons, but it is always a good idea to keep an eye on the gun for the duration of the fight as any enemy will be able to pick it up.

Stun Sticks – Stun Sticks are as much of a pain in the behind in Arkham Knight as they have been since their first appearance in the series. An enemy brandishing a stun stick must be attacked from behind. If the enemy is hit front on, you’ll receive an electric shock, take damage and lose your combo. It is a good idea to vault over these enemies and attack them from behind. Hitting them with a blast from the Remote Electrical Charge gadget will render the stun stick temporarily useless.

Shields – Shields are introduced towards the end of the game and enemies holding them cannot be attacked at all without Batman first performing an aerial attack to dislodge the shield. This requires that you hit the B/Circle button and then hit the jump button twice whilst holding in direction of the enemy which will knock them down. As with the melee weapons, shields dropped by enemies can be picked up by any other enemies in the area, so keep an eye on them and try to prevent additional enemies from using them.

Combat Experts¶

Combat Experts resemble the ninja-like enemies that we encountered in Batman: Arkham City. These guys are tougher than regular Thugs/Soldiers as they can dodge using short range teleports, will occasionally counter your attacks and pull off joint attacks by jumping off each other or nearby walls which can be performed from long range as well. Finally they are equipped with swords which will do much more damage than a melee attack, fortunately you can perform blade dodge takedowns if you are brave enough. If not, stay vigilant and be ready to roll, dodge and counter!

Medics¶

Medics are about as strong as your regular Thug/Soldier but they have a few special abilities than make them annoying. As a mainly support class enemy, they can be hard to target as they’ll run around the area whilst other enemies attack you. They have the ability to revive up to three enemies that you have previously knocked out back to full health, forcing you to fight them all over again.

Towards the pointy end of the game, the Medics will also be granted the ability to give enemies an electrical charge which will persist over their armour and will damage you if you attack said enemy. We’ll need to use the quick-fire Batclaw to remove the charge before attacking them again.

During most fights, it is in your best interests to attempt to single out and knock out the Medics first before moving on.

Brutes¶

The Brutes in Arkham Knight are pretty much the same as those previously encountered in Arkham City, Arkham Origins and Arkham Asylum. They are large, heavily armoured versions of Thugs that and can deal some serious damage with their attacks. Unfortunately our usual attacks will have no effect on them (although melee weapons that you can pick up will). Instead, you’ll need to hit your stun button (B or Circle) until you see stars above their head – at this point you can attack and damage them as per usual.

The most effective way to take down a Brute is via use of environmental takedowns – look for glowing blue objects in the environment, lure them in close, stun them and then perform the takedown to eliminate them in a hurry.

As with the Thugs/Soldiers, there are a number of Brute variations that add to the difficulty of taking them down somewhat. Those variants include:

Knives – Similar to the Combat Experts, when equipped with knives, Brutes can do much more damage than a melee attack, fortunately you can perform blade dodge takedowns if you are brave enough.

Stun Sticks – As with the Thugs/Soldiers, any Brute holding a stun stick must be attacked from behind. If the enemy is hit front on, you’ll receive an electric shock, take damage and lose your combo. It is a good idea to vault over shock brutes, hit them with a stun immediately and then attack at will. Hitting them with a blast from the Remote Electrical Charge gadget will render the stun stick temporarily useless.

Shields – Shields are introduced towards the end of the game and enemies holding them cannot be attacked at all without Batman first performing an aerial attack to dislodge the shield. This requires that you hit the B/Circle button and then hit the jump button twice whilst holding in direction of the enemy which will knock them down. You can then stun and pummel the Brutes in the standard way.

Miniguns – Brute Minigunners will only occur during predator sequences and can do a ridiculous amount of damage. To deal with them, you need to sneak up and attack them to trigger a QTE sequence during which you’ll need to hit the counter button to avoid several attacks whilst you land as many melee strikes as you can.

Drone Tanks¶

There are quite a few different varieties of Drone Tanks that you will face throughout the game and you’ll need to fight them whilst you are piloting the Batmobile - approaching them on foot is a death sentence! As you proceed through the game the number of variants will progressively increase and their abilities will change. Below you’ll find a list of the various types of Drone tanks and what they can do.

Drone Tanks is a blanket term that encompasses the following vehicle types:

Rattler – The standard Drone Tank. It is the weakest and most common type of Drone Tank you’ll encounter. A single shot to its turret should be sufficient to destroy it.

Twin Rattler – This Drone Tank is the same as a standard rattler in terms of armour, but its weapon is slightly different – it has the ability to fire off two shells at once as opposed to the single shell that a standard Rattler is able to.

Diamondback – The Diamondbacks are slightly more armoured than the Rattlers. They also have a weapon that will shoot a wave of three shells in a spread in front of it. It will take two shots to the turret to destroy it (without upgrades).

Dragon – These are small, flying Drone Attack helicopters that will fire grenades at your general direction. Use your machine gun to take them down very quickly and avoid the red circles on the ground that indicate the splash damage zone of the grenades.

Mamba – The Mamba Drone Tanks are slightly stronger than the standard Rattler, but will attack you from much further away. They have no tank shells, but they will lock on the Batmobile and launch homing missiles at it. You can (and really must if you want to live) shoot the missiles down with the machine guns. A single shot to the turret should be enough to kill it with a fully upgraded Batmobile.

Cobra - The Cobra Drone Tanks only appear at specific points during the main storyline and are pretty much inpenetrable except for a small weak spot on their backs. They will hunt you down with noticable blue laser sensors that project out in front and if they do sense you, their attacks can be extremely damaging. To defeat the Cobras, you need to outmanouver them, sneak up on them from behind and shoot their weak spots.