It’s easy to look at a LEGO build and only see the finished product–it’s kind of the whole point, right? But a truly great LEGO set is much more than that. It’s not just a $300 amalgamation of plastic blocks, it’s a journey. It sounds silly, but in the process of building Gotham City from the ground up, it’s become clear just how true that can be in a particularly good set like this one.
This is truly a LEGO set built by Batman fans, and any Batman fan can appreciate it. Its space to tell stories is pretty limited thanks to its largely two-dimensional structure, but it finds lots of ways to make even just the process of building it feel like a story. When you build Arkham, for example, you first put the villains down, in the form of some stickers on gray square tiles. Then you put clear plastic windows in front of them–you’ve locked them up. Beneath the Hospital is a sewer with a rubber ducky–a nod to Batman Returns, we’re betting. Finish the whole thing off by putting up the facade in front of it all. As the builder you know those villains are locked up there. But just like a regular Gotham citizen, a casual observer just sees the front of the building.
Throughout the build, though, I’ve discovered the utility of the LEGO Builder app. This set is, as you might expect chock full of dark pieces. Black, dark brown, dark blue, and deep crimson pieces make up much of this set, and a simple reading lamp isn’t enough to tell the difference sometimes. LEGO does try to differentiate which colors are in which bags as much as possible, but sometimes it’s unavoidable, and it can be hard to tell the difference. The brightly-lit LEGO Builder makes these colors easier to discern and can be a real timesaver.
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