((All the following is based on my experience in Batman: Arkham Origins playing on I Am the Night, to clarify.))
You can't simply counter if you expect to win the fight on higher difficulties, you need to use gadgets and pummeling and redirection in order to keep from getting surrounded. If you don't stay on the edge of the crowd and manage your opponents by stunning and using your cape to incapacitate guys with batons or on venom, you can get overpowered
easily. If you keep them all in front of you, you can at most be attacked by two guys at once, as opposed to four, plus the guy in the back throwing his pipe/box/fire extinguisher.
Fakeedit: I Am The Night mode I think it was called. You had to win without dying once, enemies can kill you in one or two hits if they have weapons (pipes, bats, knives and such) and guns kill you instantly, even with max armor upgrades later on you simply can't afford to tank attacks ever.
Yeah, that sounds more tedious than interesting. Putting the game on bullshit-difficulty does not make a game with a bland combat system interesting, it just makes it a game with a bland combat system and bullshit-difficulty.
You still have the issue of enemies mobbing you, standing around, waiting to get smacked down, engaging you one at a time. Hugely telegraphed attacks (even without the "markers") and repetitive button mashing. It just makes it so you have to redo it all over again if you fall asleep in the middle of a combo and get hit.
Guy, you were just complaining about low difficulty and the game being too easy. Not being told outright when someone is going to hit you and actually having to pay attention and read your opponents' movements is far more exciting than pressing Y when the blue light flashes. And I don't know what you're on about the game being a 1 button fighter, there's different combinations you need to press if you want to win the fight without being brought down, like when enemies with guns or shields are present. You also
have to use your grapnel, explosive gel, batarangs in order to keep guys off you and keep your combo going, because it's nigh on impossible to take an enemy out just by punching him, you need to use your takedowns to incapacitate them, and between takedowns you use dodging and gadgets to manage enemies, keep them close together, knocked down, stunned, and guns out of their hands. Not to mention on higher difficulties up to 3 or 5 guys can be striking you at once. Good god man, by your description you never ventured above easy or normal. Come off it
E: You can't even expect to survive a mid to late game fight in Batman simply by pressing 'Y' (if on the Xbox) to counter, because many times the moves require more input (dodging a knife requires you to hold 'Y' and move the stick back and is easy, countering and disarming him is harder), not to mention there are more than a few enemies with uncounterable attacks, like shield attacks, attacks by thugs on venom or armed with stun batons, attacks by enemies with guns. The game simply cannot be boiled down that easily.
Admittedly, it really does get that simple at times on lower difficulties, but I don't consider that to be the vanilla experience, or rather, how the game was
meant to be played.
AC on the other hand
is a one-button action game, though they did make a half-hearted attempt to make things deeper later on.