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Arkham City is a walled-off super-prison with 440 Riddler challenges in it, a story that quietly closes doors behind you, and two boss fights that are won before they start. Most of what makes it confusing is not difficulty, it is gating: things exist or do not exist depending on where you are in the campaign, and the game rarely says so.
So every part of our coverage is organised around the same question, asked four ways: what is standing between you and this. Collectibles are sorted by the gadget or story beat that unlocks them, riddles by what is blocking the scan, side missions by the campaign beat that spawns them, and the bosses by what you need to own before the fight begins.
Three things to know before you start collecting
You need 400 of the 440 challenges rather than every one. That is the threshold that frees the sixth hostage and closes out the Enigma Conundrum, and because the remaining 40 are DLC, anyone who simply wants the story resolved can stop well short of a full clear.
There are no missable Riddler trophies, but there is one missable upgrade. The Freeze Cluster Grenade sits behind a skippable side mission, and without it you cannot finish the Predator Challenges until New Game Plus.
And do the serious collecting after the credits. Roughly ninety trophy entries need the Batclaw, Explosive Gel or Freeze Blast, whole districts are story-locked, and sweeping too early just means revisiting everything later holding a gadget you did not have the first time.
The four parts of our coverage
Collectibles and Riddler trophies sorts the whole collection by what unlocks it. It has the arithmetic behind the 282 figure, a gadget ladder showing what each tool is worth to your completion percentage, the two upgrade traps that catch people out, a chest-by-district ledger, and the reverse question of which breakable needs which tool. Individual district lists live on the eight trophy pages.
Riddles, challenges and combat takes all 70 riddles and sorts them by why one will not solve: a free scan you are looking at wrong, a vantage point you have not found, a gadget you do not have, or a story beat that has not fired. It also puts the eight "unusual perspective" question marks side by side for the first time, since they are one puzzle repeated once per district, and covers freeflow combat and the challenge maps.
Side missions is ordered by the campaign beat that unlocks each stage, collapsing five separate mission pages into a single timeline. It covers Watcher in the Wings, Identity Theft, Shot in the Dark and Heart of Ice, the four ways into the Steel Mill and which two expire, and a table of every mission that refuses to trigger and what actually fixes it.
Bosses takes the two fights we document end to end and puts them in order of what each demands up front. Deadshot asks for patience and nothing else. Mr. Freeze asks for most of your gadget list, because each of the twelve takedowns works exactly once and Hard difficulty wants eight of them.
The pages that stand on their own
Upgrade points are limited early and spending them badly is the most common avoidable mistake in this game, which is what our best upgrades guide is for. It covers the Grapnel Boost, Critical Strikes, the Batclaw Disarm and the Cryptographic Sequencer Range Amplifier, which is also quietly required for one Riddler trophy.
Our best suits guide goes through the alternate Batsuits worth unlocking, from Batman Beyond and The Dark Knight Returns to the Animated and Batman Inc. skins. And on PC, our best mods guide covers the Community Patch, the Arkham City Redux texture work, Reshade presets and the button-icon and skin mods, which is how a game this old still holds up.
Where to start
First playthrough: read the upgrades guide, pick up the Freeze Cluster Grenade when Harley mentions the stolen tech in the Steel Mill, and treat the side missions as a checklist of things that unlock rather than things to hunt. Grab trophies you happen to walk past and do not detour for them.
After the credits: start with the collectibles guide's gadget ladder, because it tells you which single tool is holding back the most of your remaining list. Then the riddle tiers, which is where the 70 riddles turn from a scattered mess into four small jobs. And if a district is stuck one short, the story gate section is almost certainly the reason.