Gotham Knight’s Character Guide: Batgirl, Red Hood, Robin or Nightwing?

by Arthur · October 21, 2022

Gotham Knights, an open-world action game set in Gotham City, lets you play as four characters from the DC Comics canon: Nightwing, Batgirl, Red Hood and Robin. You can basically play as any character you want for the entire game. But that doesn’t mean each of the game’s four playable heroes are the same.

In fact, each member of the bat family has its own strengths, unique abilities, battle strategies, and more. Their combinations are performed differently; For example, Red Hood’s timed attacks incorporate his weapons in a way that other characters’ ranged attacks do not. And while it’s not necessary, it’s a good idea to mix things up and switch characters often because you’ll experience different story beats with each one. The degree to which the game world bends depending on who you play is one of the game’s impressive hat tricks.

On the other hand, hey, maybe you want to pick your favorite and stick with them through the credits. Regardless, it can be useful to have control over each character’s individual traits.

Dick Grayson, aka Nightwing, meets two old men in Gotham Knights.

Table of Contents

Dick Grayson (Nightwing)

Primary strengths: acrobatics and teamwork

Motion: Given Dick’s background as a circus performer, his fighting style is largely centered around acrobatics, allowing him to move fluidly across the battlefield. His skill trees include abilities that allow him to use enemies as springboards to jump high into the air and dodge attacks with impressive rear handsprings. These abilities can be augmented with the power to knock down enemies and gain energy faster, allowing him to use special attacks more often.

Team work: Grayson also specializes in teamwork. He can get arrows that heal or even revive allies from a distance, and area-of-effect powers that breathe and heal teammates.

Traversing: Each of the four heroes has unique traversal abilities that you can unlock by completing their “knighthood” challenges. Nightwing’s is a mini drone that allows him to glide around.

Barbara Gordon, aka Batgirl, faces the camera, with the Belfry home base in the background in Gotham Knights

Barbara Gordon (Batgirl)

Primary Strengths: Hacking, Tankiness and Stealth

Hacker the planet: Barbara’s prowess with all things technological allows her to hack the battlefield in interesting ways. For example, some of her abilities allow her to pass through damage without her attacks being interrupted, or to interrupt strong enemy attacks with her regular combos. She can also revive herself after being knocked down, and heal herself by defeating enemies.

Hidden: Batgirl can hack the environment while trying to be stealthy, making her a good choice when you’d rather take out enemies quickly than deal with lengthy combat encounters. She has abilities that make her undetectable to electronic security devices such as sensors and cameras, and she can cause environmental objects such as electrical panels to explode from a distance.

Traversing: Through her knightly challenges, Barbara unlocks the ability to glide around town on her bat wings. This traversal power is most similar to those found in the Arkham games.

Red Hood stands in front of a shop gate in Gotham Knights.

Jason Todd (Red Hood)

Primary strengths: brute force/gunplay

Pure strength: Red Hood is the easiest character to play. What he lacks in fancy stealth and hacking abilities, he makes up for in raw damage. His melee and ranged pistol attacks are powerful, as are his grappling moves. A favorite is his ability to attach concussive mines to grabbed enemies before throwing them back at their friends and detonating them with a well-placed shot.

Distance match: Jason’s weapons are more useful than his opponents’ ranged weapons. If you keep your distance from enemies, you can take advantage of the game’s manual aiming mechanics to rack up big damage multipliers. His momentum abilities allow him to unload clips quickly and quickly load up for more.

Traversing: Red Hood’s unique traversal ability allows him to teleport around using magical floating platforms.

Robin uses a staff while facing enemies in a courtyard in Gotham Knights.

Tim Drake (Robin)

Primary Strengths: stealth/status effects

Hidden: Robin has even better stealth abilities than Batgirl. Instead of focusing on hacking, his powers directly help him stay undetected. For example, he is the only character who can gain the ability Batman had in the Arkham games to bring enemies up from grapple points. He can also automatically deploy a smoke bomb and retreat to cover after performing stealth attacks, and can take down larger enemies using stealth. Tim’s sneaky tendencies can also help during all-out combat; for example, he can deploy a decoy that distracts enemies and then explodes.

Status Effects: Robin’s other specialty is status effects. Several of his abilities, including his ranged attacks and the aforementioned decoys, deal elemental damage. The exact element may vary, including effects such as poison, freeze, and more. Leveling him up further can increase the effectiveness and uptime of these effects, as well as making Robin more resistant to them when inflicted by enemies.

Traversing: Robin’s traversal ability is perhaps the weirdest of the bunch. Using arcane satellite technology, he can teleport long distances, which effectively means holding the right trigger and slowly maneuvering a cursor to where you want him to respawn.