Mortal Kombat 11 Review

Durring Mortal Kombat Armageddon on PS2 and Xbox, the series had 62 playable characters. Some where memorable, while others felt like jokes that went too far. It took the next major entry in the series to fix that and bring the series back to its roots with Mortal Kombat (MK9), which helped recon the story by giving us different events of the original Mortal Kombat trilogy.

While MKX continued the story – basically retelling MK4 with new younger characters after a 20 year time jump, it left the series at a point of “what do we do next?” The answer, apparently, was to do another time travel bit to help recon some of the bigger issues.

With that, Mortal Kombat 11 introduces the new big bad – the keeper of Time, Kronika. Upset with Raiden over the defeat of Shinnok, she devises a plan to rid her self of Earthrealm’s protector and do a reset of her life’s work. To do this, she enlists the help of the Revenant army in the Netherrealm and resurrects Shao Khan and various fighters by merging the timelines of the past (before the end of the MKII timeline) with the current one.

There are times I question Kronika’s plans, especially bringing in younger versions of still living fighters on the good guys side, it still continues the tradition of NetherRealm Studios delivering a great story for their fighting games. The story mode for MK11 rounds out some plots that have never been corrected and almost feels like a farewell to the series.

But of course, this is Mortal Kombat, what we’re all actually here for is the Fighting.

Mortal Kombat 11 is possible the smoothest we’ve seen the series and possibly one of the easiest to get into. The game provides a very in-depth tutorial which teaches a lot of the aspects needed to hold your own in the game, from basic combos and attacks to zoning and using the environments in fights.

A major change to the formula however is the replacement of the X-Ray attacks. No longer will you have to raise your meter from attacks or getting hit to pull off a major bone breaking attack which will inflict a ton of damage, now some attacks create these bone breaks automatically. I found this was a fun way to change how the fight was presented and delivered the shock/enjoyment value it was going for.

Although those big moves are still there with the Fatal Blow. This happens when you’re down to the last leg of your health bar and is used like the X-Ray moves in previous entries. These moves are vicious and over-the-top as you’d expect from Mortal Kombat, and does a reasonable amount of damage for its show. To attempt to balance it out though, the move can only be used once per match, if you miss your opening with the setup strike, you’ll have a second chance after some time to recharge.

One thing I do have a love/hate relationship with is the new Kustomization system, which is an evolved version of Injustice 2’s gear system. Unlike Injustice 2, the gear this time cannot be purchased via loot boxes and based on my findings, didn’t seem to have any actual effect on the character stats themselves. Everything seems to be purely cosmetic with the exception of the ability to equip special moves.

While every character has a dedicated special move list – the Kustomization menu has some moves that can be mixed up for different Variations of the character. It’s similar to the Variations that was found in MKX only with more control for the players. I’ve only played around with this feature briefly with mixing up a few characters move-sets, while the moves did help in fights; I wouldn’t say if they actually put me at a major advantage.

The hate part of the relationship comes from the grind that’s needed to unlock the Kustomization gear. The gear needs to be unlocked using the new Time Towers or by finding it in the Krypt – a 3rd person adventure mode which has you spending your fight currency to unlock items from gear, new fatalities, art and more.

This brings in the Microtransactions, which are designed to be used like Time Savers. I wasn’t tempted to use this feature though as I always found myself with enough Koins to purchase Krypt items, and running out just meant a trip to the towers or playing a few rounds of multiplayer to increase my funds. This is also a system that the team have mentioned that they will be fixing to be more fair for players at a later time.

As usual, NetherRealm’s sound design is disgustingly top-notch. With every bone crunch, slice, blood splatter leaving a disgusting yet satisfying sound that you’ve come to expect from Mortal Kombat. NetherRealm’s animation department has also taking a step up as some of the level designs and facial animation are some of the best I’ve seen in a fighting, or any other genre of games.

Mortal Kombat 11 is an amazing next step for the franchise, it’s story mode, sound design, and animation is some of the best we’ve seen from NetherRealm and keeps pushing the genre to be better. The issue with Microtransactions can be annoying, but in my experience it can be ignored and you can still get what you want and need from playing though the game’s various modes. I definitely recommend this for fans of the series.