I'm somewhat of a neophyte when it comes to LEGO builds; I only go for the stuff I really like, and it's only been the last few years that I've been doing it. Voltron, the Horizon Forbidden West Tallneck, the Ghostbusters ECTO-1, Optimus Prime, and small versions of the 1989 Batmobile and Lamborghini Countach--that's the whole list. Even with all of that said, I can say without a doubt that the LEGO: Batman: The Animated Series Gotham City set is one of the coolest sets LEGO has ever created.

What makes a good LEGO set?

This is a subjective question, but there are a few important pillars, and they come into sharp focus in these costly sets. If the build is based on an existing property, it has to show a meaningful understanding of the source material. These sets can take 20, 30, or more hours to build, and we're examining each brick as we assemble them. There has to be some novelty to it--the aforementioned Voltron splits into five lions and Optimus Prime can be a truck or a robot.

The build itself has to be interesting, too. We know what the end product looks like, but this isn't simply a puzzle where we're trying to find the right brick for the right spot. We have the right pieces, and they're laid out in small bags--43 in this set--and with detailed instructions on how to assemble them.

LEGO Gotham City is a top-tier set

With those in mind, this set is truly special, even when I think about how much I enjoyed those sets. The makers of this set had a very different challenge, though, because the end product is a static one. Aside from the Minifigs, there's not much in this set that moves.

To say that the LEGO Gotham City set is packed with Easter eggs is to do it a disservice. This thing is downright crawling with them. Once you're finished, there's a hidden Batmobile with a movable drawbridge. There's a Gotham City Police station where there's a tiny fan sitting above Commissioner Gordon--as required in every police or detective office in a noir story. As the builder of this set, you'll know about every one of these secrets, and you can easily pull little modules off of the set to show these secrets off.

The manual page for each bag is accompanied by an episode title from one of the episodes in English, French, and Spanish. The Riddler's debut episode is titled "If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich?" in English, but did you know that in French, it's called "L'énigme du Minotaure?" The manuals also include little blurbs about the history of the show, who designed the set, and what they were considering when they did. For example, the text reveals that the majority of the set uses just 15 colors to match the "Dark Deco" style that informed the original series, while making exceptions for specific parts associated with particular characters. Each module was taken from a specific scene or episode of the series, too, so even aside from the explicit Easter eggs that end up covered up, there are still tons more little things for Batman fans to spot.

Many colors, crushed palette

While this set is truly something special, there are a few things to keep in mind. You'll want to build this in a very well-lit room. Of the aforementioned colors, some include Dark Brown, Reddish Brown, Dark Tan, Red, and Dark Red. In a well-lit room, they're not too hard to tell apart, but in certain lighting, Black and Dark Brown, Dark Red and Dark Brown, and Dark Red and Reddish Brown can look similar enough that you'll need to be observant.

I'm also a little disappointed with the set of minifigs the set comes with; you get Batman, Joker, Harley, and Catwoman. Basically, the main protagonist and antagonist, and the women coded as their pseudo-love interests. At this price point, I'd love to have seen a more comprehensive set of minifigs. Poison Ivy, Commissioner Gordon, and Mr. Freeze could've all been extremely cool. The figures aren't to scale with the set--they're easily twice the height of the bricks used to make doors in the set, so it's not like they're integrated into the visuals or anything like that. And four minifigs is better than the zero that accompanied the ECTO-1 and Voltron sets.

Certain parts of the build become a bit tedious toward the final stretch, too. There are, for example, 88 Dark Stone Grey Door Rail pieces in the set, used to help make the vertical Art Deco look of the buildings. The end effect is stellar, but there's a lot of little, detailed work in these sections, so it's good to space this out as much as you reasonably can.

My final complaint: this set has a lot of stickers. If you're intense about placing the stickers perfectly, you're going to have lots of chances to mess that up with this set. The reality is that no one is going to notice, and it's best to find peace with the imperfection of it, but placing the stickers never feels any less fiddly.

While this set doesn't have any moving parts, it's still a great display of just how creative you can get with LEGO bricks. The Batman text at the top is made up of all of these small white bricks, and you can see the seams, but they look awesome by the time you're done. A few of the buildings use 1x3x1 Panel bricks stacked to create small stairs. The set of four panels isn't actually stuck to anything, though, they're just stacked loose, but the pieces around them hold them captive so that they don't move, and by the time they're surrounded they feel as secure as any other piece. The way the set's backdrop builds the red sky, crimson clouds, and bright yellow spotlights can be a little tedious to build during the process, but the end product is stunning. All of these diagonal pieces end up looking like clouds. The GCPD has a tiny little spotlight that lines up perfectly with the spotlight that leads up to the eye-catching bat symbol. There's a tiny little Batmobile built out of just a few pieces, and I don't think you could get any smaller while still using LEGO bricks and having it be identifiable as a Batmobile.

The really good LEGO sets feel like miracles of engineering--technical masterpieces that come together to create artistic, impressionistic versions of the things they're meant to represent. The people behind this set should be proud of themselves--they've created something that almost every Batman fan could take home, build, and be in love with. Batman: The Animated Series is one of the parts of the Batman mythos that almost every Batman fan can agree is almost flawless, and this set brings together all of the best parts.

At $299, the set is expensive, but it rewards you in a variety of ways. The long build time is just one element--I watched two entire seasons of X-Men while building it, and I'd estimate I spent somewhere between 20 and 30 hours on it, with each bag taking 20-45 minutes. And then there's those Easter eggs that bring joy with them as you build it piece by piece. Finally, this set is designed to be hung on a wall, with two hooks on the back to let you hang it directly on the wall without needing an aftermarket frame or anything like that. Rather than mount the whole project, for now I've put some Govee RGB LED lights behind the set and to backlight it--to dramatic effect, as seen above--with plans to possibly put it in a light box of some kind later. Regardless of how you display it, this set is a truly loving representation of one of the most iconic versions of Batman and Gotham City.

If you love LEGO and Batman, this is the ultimate expression of that relationship.