Originally published June 2019

When I was a kid, Mortal Kombat was at its peak in pop culture. Its first movie was hitting theaters. The games were doing great in arcades. It was helping shape the rating system for video games and violence—that rating system was always a little too slow to affect me and my purchasing power so I was able to play the first few MKs at home and in arcades without worrying too much. I liked MK a lot, even when I didn't understand fighting games. Then, the games after 3 started coming out and I neglected to try them. It wasn't until Mortal Kombat on the PS3 that I jumped back into the series again, and what a great time to do it because that game was a blast. I tried Mortal Kombat X much later and didn't quite like it as much, but that didn't stop me from wanting to see what Mortal Kombat 11 was all about.

Since the 9th MK and the Injustice games, Netherrealm Studios quickly jumped up my list of developers to watch when it came to fighting games. I think the studio has gotten progressively better over the years at figuring out unique mechanics and systems that work particularly well for their games, as well as creating diverse rosters with interesting characters to try out. This is somewhat in stark contrast to the original MK games that featured 20 nearly identical ninjas. On top of all that, Netherrealm has also managed to create some of the best single-player content for their fighting games with fun, replayable challenge modes and the most involved stories in fighting games. Needless to say, Mortal Kombat 11 has a lot to live up to.

The Short of It

What I've Played

• Version 1 to 1.05 of game

• All tutorials

• Completed the story mode

• Many hours in practice, the Krypt, and challenge towers

• <20 matches online

Pros

• Character designs, stages, and graphics all look amazingly good

• Most in-depth tutorial mode in a fighting game

• Cool systems that seem balanced and work well for the pace of the fights

• One of the best fighting-game stories

• Character roster is diverse and the multiple moves of each character make the roster a lot bigger than it looks

• Krypt mode has a lot more going on than previous games

• Fatalities and Brutalities are viscerally ridiculous

Cons

• UI organization is just as bad as Injustice 2

• While the "loot" of Injustice 2 has been simplified, it is still something that negatively affects the design of the game

• Annoying bugs I've personally experienced

• Ronda Rousey

• Some of the challenge modes just aren't fun to do with all the stupid conditions

• The purchasing options are less upfront than Injustice 2 and seem slightly more insidious or buggy

• Once the novelty of the Krypt has worn off, it's an inconvenient and bloated mode

The Rest of It

Story

Mortal Kombat 11 is essentially a conclusion to the plotline that was started in Mortal Kombat (9) on the PS3 and Xbox 360. Since that first game of this new MK trilogy, Netherrealm has proven not only that stories in fighting games can be fun, but they can be well-written and well-paced. In fact, I would say that this is probably one of the best stories I've ever played in a fighting game, right alongside Injustice and Injustice 2. Fighting game stories are notoriously threadbare, on average, but these latest MK and Injustice games have proven the opposite can be true. With Mortal Kombat 11, you can tell that the developers themselves were having some fun with it.

The story of Mortal Kombat 11 is that the elder god of time, Kronika, has gotten fed up with Raiden (god of thunder) and his manipulation of the timeline. In MK 9, he managed to send a message back to himself at an earlier time as a warning. Unfortunately, he misinterpreted a lot of his own warnings and it ended up with most of the cast dead and enslaved as undead revenants in an undead army waging war against the earth. In the sequel, some of the undead army were miraculously revived, while others remained permanent evil corpses as slaves to the will of an evil elder god. Raiden, the surviving MK cast, and the new kid fighters who were the offspring of several Kombat fighters, manage to defeat the evil Shinnock without losing the entire cast of heroes this time. However, in the process, Raiden is corrupted by Shinnock's power and becomes a ruthless tyrant of a god, determined to protect the earth at all costs. This is where Mortal Kombat 11's plot essentially starts.

Ruthless Raiden convinces the special forces group led by Sonya Blade, Cassie Cage, Johnny Cage, and Jacqui Briggs to assault the Neatherrealm fortress ruled by the revenants Liu Kang, Kung Lao, Kitana, and Jade. A big battle ensues and chaos unfolds in the process, catching Kronika's attention. In her rage against Raiden and his unbalancing of power in the universe, she comes up with a plan to completely remove Raiden from history. Rather than just rewriting time over, she merges the timelines of the current MK universe with that of the time just before Kung Lao is killed by Shao Kahn in MK 9—for those keeping track, it's basically around the MK II timeline. This results in the war-torn older heroes seeing the younger versions of themselves, adorned in the garb that would have been appropriate for their character in Mortal Kombat II, aka the ‘90s. From here, it's a race to figure out Kronika's plan and to stop her at all costs.

As you might imagine, the story from here gets pretty wild, interesting, and fun. The writers clearly had a great time coming up with the interactions between characters in this situation, with many of them facing each other in mirror matches against their younger, or in Liu Kang's and Kung Lao's cases, deader selves. Perhaps my favorite section of the story was with Johnny Cage, the former self-absorbed, narcissistic film star turned heroic, military father. It's funny and uniquely satisfying to see a character who has probably changed the most without turning evil in the process look back on his younger self in disgust and embarrassment. The older Johnny is a proud father who loves how strong his daughter Cassie has become, while the younger Johnny is still the egotistical dick that everyone kind of hates, including older Johnny. It's great.

When it comes to the overarching plot of Mortal Kombat 11, you kind of just have to roll with whatever the characters are saying. Much like other MK games, the characters often make up the rules of their universe as they go, so a large amount of disbelief must be suspended at all times. If you manage to do so, you should have a good time watching the story play out, especially if you know the lore of the MK games up to a certain point. Even if you aren't familiar with the lore of the MK games, I think that Mortal Kombat 11's story moves and builds in an appropriate fashion and comes to a satisfying conclusion in the new trilogy.

Mechanics & Gameplay

Meter Management

Over the past few MK and Injustice games, Netherrealm has proven that it can be a creative studio when it comes to fighting game mechanics and Mortal Kombat 11 is the latest example of them doing something new that I'm not sure I've seen done before. In some ways, it seems like when the developers came up with their mechanics for MK 11, they were considering all the criticisms that had been launched at them in previous games.

One major talking point, when it comes to how Netherrealm games play, is in the rhythm and speed of a match. The way the roster is typically balanced is around keep-away tactics, where a character controls space on the screen instead of being focused on damage output. There are the occasional outliers whose strategy is to circumvent the tactics of the projectile-heavy characters and to get in for high-damaging combos, but both MK and Injustice have favored more characters with many projectile options. To help alleviate frustrations for those who had trouble against projectiles, the developers experimented with different uses of the super meter to give characters more offensive and defensive options. In Injustice 2, you could use the meter to roll a long distance across the screen or to break out of a combo, in addition to spending meter on special moves to do more damage and combo extensions.

The use of meter seems like one of many lessons the developers took from their previous games and have really thought over in order to make the matches in Mortal Kombat 11 more balanced and exciting. Instead of using one meter to do all of your special moves and maneuvers, everything has been broken up into several different resources. Every character now has a defensive meter and an offensive meter available.

The offensive meter is used mostly for enhancing special moves to cause more damage or extend combos. The defensive meter is used for invincible attacks when getting up from a knockdown, air-escaping combos, quick rolls, and for using interactable objects in the background. Some characters also have special moves that use this defensive meter to move around the match.

Also, the meters themselves operate on a timer instead of filling based on a player's aggression or defense. So, once you use any part of the meter, it starts to refill over time. This allows players to play the game how they want rather than feeling forced into being aggressive or defensive in order to gain the advantage in a match. It also changes the pace of the match by making players more conscious of their resources. When you can't get your defensive meter back right away by connecting combos, you might have to wager if it's a better choice to use it for wake-up attacks or the breakaway option to drop out of a combo. Likewise, if your opponent has a breakaway available, it might be in your best interest to hold off on using any offensive meter to amplify your attacks rather than risking wasting it on an attempt to extend your combo.

Fatal and Crushing Blows

In addition to the meters governing special moves and evasion options, each character has a super move that operates completely independently of the meters. Because of the fact that your meter was so useful in achieving damage or getting around the opponent in previous MK and Injustice games, seeing a character's super in a match was a rare occasion; players would usually not have enough meter left to use it. In Mortal Kombat 11, however, the super is now more of a desperation move and you will likely see one in every match.

Whenever a character's health drops below 30%, they can use a Fatal Blow, which pauses the action for an intense few seconds in which a character does some incredibly gory and intense moves that would certainly kill any normal human being, several times over. A Fatal Blow can only be used once per match, but if your attempt to use it misses, you can try to use it again as many times as possible until it hits, after the cooldown expires. This makes every last few seconds of the match that much more intense and stressful because, at any moment, the tides of the fight can shift. I've seen some high-level games where the Fatal Blow completely turns the tables of a fight in the first round, but then does so again the other way in the final round if the opponent saved theirs as a last resort. The fact that Fatal Blows have been designed purely as a desperation move makes them far more likely to occur in a match and really changes the way a fight flows.

On top of these massive Hail Mary moves, there are also Crushing Blows. Crushing Blows are specific instances in which the camera zooms into X-ray level detail to show a severe injury occurring in a character. Each character has some special moves or combo strings that, when the right conditions are met, can cause a crushing blow to occur. The reason to do this is more than just for style, however.

A simple combo string that would normally cause only 15% damage can double in damage when a Crushing Blow is achieved. Each Crushing Blow has certain conditions that must be met in order for them to occur, which vary in complexity and difficulty. Like Fatal Blows, they can only occur once per match, which makes them more of a resource than a simple game of chance that could tip the scales of a match in a player's favor. You may use a combo string or a special move a few times in a match but intentionally save the crushing blow for when your opponent's health is higher to maximize the damage potential, or just use it at the end to close out the round.

Special Moves & Finishers

Over the years, Neatherrealm has experimented with the way special moves are assigned to characters in their previous games. While most fighting game characters have their move set that is static and does not change in a single, it's been quite common for Mortal Kombat characters to have different stances and move sets that change based on a player's preference. In Mortal Kombat X, every character had 3 different "stances" that drastically changed how a character played. Each character had a core set of normal and special moves, but the stances swapped a few of those around. This could change a rushdown character into a scary grappler, or a combo fiend into a ranged fighter. Mortal Kombat 11 takes this sort of concept and goes a full step further.

In MK X, the stances and move sets were predetermined, as in, they could not be changed. Mortal Kombat 11 allows you to not only change around the move sets of characters that are provided, but you can create your own in the character customization. Injustice 2 allowed some level of customization like this with the gear you could unlock for characters by letting you put on particular special moves that could replace the standard moves of the character or add to their skills. However, Injustice 2 required that these moves be unlocked via the loot box system, and the moves themselves felt like more auxiliary tools than anything that felt like a core mechanic of the character. MK 11 gives you a library of special moves for a character from the start that you can rearrange and customize to suit your desires on how a character should play. There are limitations, of course, to keep the character from being too overpowered. There are also specific configurations that are designated for tournaments to make the game as balanced as possible in those sorts of "restricted" scenarios.

And, of course, it wouldn't be Mortal Kombat without the gruesome finishing moves. These moves cannot be changed out of a character, but learning how to do them is unlocked by playing the game's modes and discovering them in the Krypt. Brutalities are special finishing moves that are fast, gory, and usually have certain conditions that need to be met during a match in order to perform them. It's certainly a fun challenge to add to each fight to try to accomplish one and it's a good way to finish the match with some style that doesn't take as long as a Fatality.

Fatalities are the classic staple of the franchise and are as disgustingly over-the-top as ever. With how technology has allowed these games to look more and more realistic with each release, I think the developers managed to find a particular formula for the moves that allows them to be extremely gory without being as unsettling as they've been in the past. They're gross, but they're kind of silly with how everything is styled with slow motion and completely ridiculous anatomical choices. If you never liked that aspect in the past, you won't change your mind here, but I laugh more often when I see them than I ever did before.

Towers and Krypt

Again, taking the lessons of the previous projects, Netherrealm has taken modes from their other games and expanded them even further. Mortal Kombat was already known for its extensive list of challenge towers back in MK 9 and after experimenting with the towers in X and the Multiverse in Injustice 2, the developers have added the Towers of Time to the list of modes available to play.

Almost identical to the Multiverse mode, Towers of Time is a set of challenges that involve fighting an assortment of opponents with a few possible factors influencing how the fight operates. This can range from something as simple as a shorter time in a match, to having additional characters provide support, to facing boss-like opponents with loads of defense and power. Likewise, the rewards you can get from completing these towers can vary from small tower consumable items that can help you in completing them, to gear and cosmetic skins for your favorite characters. This mode is connected to the Mortal Kombat 11 servers, which update the towers every day, giving you an incentive to come back and try out new ones and earn new rewards. If you don't want to waste your time getting rewards for characters you don't like, you can also unlock character-specific towers to earn rewards for only your favorites.

Outside of earning rewards for completing the towers and the story mode, there is the Krypt. In the past, the Krypt has been something of a glorified menu screen that allowed you to feel a sense of accomplishment as you unlocked bonus material like artwork and music, or Fatality instructions with the in-game currency you earned for playing the game. It was a simple mode that just involved going around a haunted house area and opening chests that held the rewards. It was a quirky thing that was simple and fun, but once you were done opening every chest, there was no reason to return to it. Taking the lessons learned with Injustice 2's loot crates and the ever-dangling carrot of cosmetic gear and skins for your characters, the developers have tweaked the Krypt into something entirely different.

In theory, I like the Krypt. Instead of the simple mode of navigating from one menu option to the next to unlock the next thing, the developers have made the Krypt into Shang Tsung's island: a sandbox to explore with various sections to unlock and puzzles to solve. It's much more involved than it's ever been and it's a creative way to provide some fan service with many references to earlier games and even the MK movies. There's just a lot more to see and do and it is far more than a simple menu system that you will never return to.

Unfortunately, some of that insidiousness from the Injustice 2 cosmetic carrot-dangling also makes the Krypt a bit of a bummer. There are still chests to open in the Krypt that give you a seemingly endless amount of bonus material to unlock. However, there are also tons of cosmetic gear and skins to get out of these chests for each character, along with augmentations for those items to use in the various single-player modes. Since the list of rewards is so endless and the Krypt isn't that big, you can pay in-game currency to reseal the chests. The rewards of the chests appear to be mostly random, as is the process of resealing them.

This is a way of making sure that this portion of the game is never obsolete, and it also allows artists in Netherrealm to keep producing material that could be patched in as rewards, and hopefully providing some job security for them. However, by making it such an endless process of randomization, it also becomes extremely inconvenient. The area is so big and requires you to run around so much, you almost wish it was just a menu to unlock everything. The fact that you have to reseal chests and the fact that you don't know which ones are sealed again requires you to run around the same area over and over again looking for your rewards instead of just getting them outright, thus adding a lot of unnecessary time spent in the Krypt.

On a somewhat related side note, I also encountered an annoying inconvenience related to the Towers of Time and Krypt modes with the 1.05 patch. Somehow, a file on the game's installation in my PS4 was corrupted and prevented me from being able to sign into the Mortal Kombat 11 servers. Despite the fact that the Krypt and the Towers of Time modes are single-player (the two modes you would likely be spending most of your time in if you're not playing other people online in multiplayer), they still require you sign into those servers. Thus, I was unable to do anything other than jump into practice mode until I uninstalled and reinstalled the game and patched it again.

Online + DLC

Admittedly, I have not played many matches online at the time of this review. I'm not sure I'll play much more after this review either. That's not really a dig at the game's connection quality. In fact, if you listen to popular streamers and YouTubers discuss the netcode of Mortal Kombat 11, they're all pretty pleased with it. I also can tell that the connection is pretty good based on the few interactions I've had online. So why not continue playing it online like Dragon Ball FighterZ, which has a notably worse netcode?

The reason for me is that I'm just not good enough at fighting games for the connection quality and Mortal Kombat 11's mechanics to make me satisfied. The reason for this has to do with the rhythm of Netherrealm's combo systems and how button inputs work. DBFZ is a game that has very broad windows for button inputs, allowing players to mash their controllers and still get a move out in a delayed environment. MK's timing is more specific and occasionally requires that you dial in your combo strings quickly, so the slightest hiccup can throw off a combo. I didn't necessarily notice hitches in the performance while I played online, but I did notice that my combos dropped at a much higher rate and that I just couldn't seem to hit-confirm many of my moves with my slower reaction time. Injustice 2 had similar issues for me, but there were slightly fewer mechanics at work in that game that prevented me from enjoying myself online.

I only had one match that was severely laggy, but it wasn't an inconsistent experience like it tends to be with DBFZ, where the match is fine until a sudden spike occurs and everything slows to a crawl. I'm just not good enough at this game to enjoy it in an online environment and I don't really have the desire to get that good, so I'll stick with the single-player material, of which there is plenty to do.

If you are interested in what MK 11 has to offer in terms of multiplayer, there are several modes available. There's a ranked mode that uses the tournament-approved move lists for characters, as well as a casual mode that lets you use your custom character builds instead. There's a King of the Hill mode where you earn respect from your matches to give you more rewards in addition to your regular match rewards.

Finally, there's also the AI Battle mode that lets you set up teams of 3 with your custom characters. Like Injustice 2, when you customize your character, you can set the AI behavior patterns for the character build. With these AI fighters, you can pit them online against other player's teams and earn rewards. These AI characters can also be used in a majority of the Towers of Time challenges if you are getting tired of playing the game, but still want to earn the rewards before they go away. They also can be useful demonstrations for combo strings if you decide to watch the matches play out in progress.

Presentation

Character Designs, Gear, and Skins

Ever since Injustice 2, Netherrealm has been using new rendering techniques and motion capture technology to get their characters and their games looking as good as they can on the current hardware. Their games certainly didn't look bad before, but with Injustice 2, there was a real jump in the quality. Mortal Kombat 11 continues the graphical strides with some of the best and most realistic-looking faces in modern fighting games.

All the characters emote exceptionally well during the story mode and even during the matches themselves. At the beginning of each match, the characters taunt one another, providing more time for them to show off how good everyone looks. Perhaps more impressive and disturbing is how much each face emotes during the Fatal Blow combos and fatalities. It's visually impressive watching someone's jaw get smashed by the butt of a pistol in slow motion and seeing their face contort in such a realistic fashion. However, one visual thing of note is that, even though a lot of characters have all sorts of cosmetic gear on during a match, the Fatal Blows and Fatalities often remove gear around a character's head so that you can see their grimaces, as well as the various blades and hooks going through their mouths and faces. It's a compromise that I understand why they made it, but it is still a little jarring and disappointing every time I notice it.

All that being said, the gear and the skins on the characters all look great. Injustice 2 had its fair share of different gear and skins that a character could wear, completely changing the way the character appeared. However, the loot economy and the benefits of different quality of gear somewhat impacted how you might equip everything and would get in the way of making characters the way you wanted. Mortal Kombat 11 reduces the total gear types to only three per character and changes all the stats to a somewhat static value. Instead, the gear have augments that change the properties, making it a lot easier to just choose the gear you want for your character's design. The number of skins per character, however, has skyrocketed. These skins change the overall look of your character from their hairstyle, to their outfit's color, to their outfit's texture and design. The gear and the skins are what you will spend the majority of your time unlocking in the Krypt and Towers, but it at least doesn't feel like such a bloated economy of trash like it did in Injustice 2.

The downside to how they organized this is that for those who just wanted to spend a few extra dollars to get the thing they want, don't have that option anymore. Injustice 2 pretty much lets you buy the skins you wanted outright. However, at this point in time, Mortal Kombat 11 only allows you to buy in-game currency and specific daily skins or gear that are random from day to day. They want you to grind in the towers and to grind away in the Krypt and you don't have a choice if you want to unlock everything else. Fortunately, if you don't care about all that stuff, they did something very smart for the tournament players and have gear and skins randomized for characters in tournament mode so you can see the cool ways everyone can look when playing in a tournament or on Ranked online.

Overall Style

Beyond the designs of the characters, a fair amount of work has been put into the backgrounds and style of the game. The backgrounds have a great deal of variety to their look, ranging from a somewhat surreal platform with numerous moving gears in the background, to a soft serene dojo in the mountains, to a gladiatorial coliseum that is phasing in and out of an alternate timeline, to a bizarre beach on the edge of an ocean of blood. These stages are all presented appropriately in the story mode, but they also make for colorful and dynamic backgrounds to every fight. The details are all clear and provide a great deal of personality.

If there is one, significant problem when it comes to a particular part of the sound design of the game, I have a name to drop: Ronda Rousey. I don't really have any reverence or animosity towards her as an MMA fighter, a wrestler, or as a person who says things that piss off the politically-correct crowd. What I do have a problem with is how utterly terrible she is at voice-acting and the decision to make her the voice of Sonya Blade, a very prominent character in the game. Every other actor does a great job with their character and it becomes that much more apparent how good they are at their jobs when Sonya Blade opens her dull, bored, big mouth. Every line she utters is flat and sounds like it was recorded in a closet somewhere, likely behind the stage at a WWE event while she was on the road and too busy to go to a studio to record lines she clearly had no interest in reading. I don't know why she was included in the game's production because her name's not all over the advertising for the game, and it shouldn't be. Hopefully, she will get the same treatment Peter Dinklage did for Destiny and get patched out at some point for a person who actually cares about doing a good job when they record lines.

UI Nightmare

Once again, I have a bit of a bone to pick when it comes to how the game and its modes are organized. On the one hand, Netherrealm does a great deal more for its players than any other fighting game developer. On the other hand, their UI tends to become too big and disorganized for it to make it much fun to navigate through the different modes of the game.

First, the good. Like the incredible tutorial mode, the developers added to Injustice 2, Mortal Kombat 11 sports one of the most in-depth and extensive tutorials out there. It is a great deal better than the pathetic attempt at a tutorial in Dragon Ball FighterZ. The tutorial goes from the core fundamentals of movement and attack types to the more advanced defensive and offensive options, to fighting-game-community lingo and frame data. If you've never played a fighting game before because you felt too intimidated by all the terms used by professionals, this may be the way to get in. The tutorials extend to character-specific lessons that point out certain moves for each character and their properties. It can all be a bit overwhelming with how much information is thrown at you in text bubbles over the course of a couple of hours (yes it will take that long), so you may need to take a few courses over again, but it is still better than any other game's tutorial out their right now.

In keeping with the spirit of overloading you with information, Netherrealm also provides the extra details of frame data with each move for a character, as they did in Injustice 2. While you're looking over a character's move list, you can see each move's frame data and hit type so you know which moves and combo strings are worth doing in certain situations. Sometimes, when it comes to the special moves that cause buffs or status effects, the information around the move is a bit lacking, but there is still a great deal more detail to each move than you'll get in any other fighting game. My hope is that this type of UI display becomes the standard for other fighting games.

Now for my biggest issue with the UI: the lack of shortcuts. Like Injustice 2's poor layout of gear and character customization, Mortal Kombat 11 is lacking when it comes to being able to navigate from one thing to another, in particular: the character-move customization and practice mode. It irritates me that when you are customizing a character and choosing their moves, you only get a small description of the move and its input. In order to find out how useful it is, you have to equip it to a character profile, exit the customization mode, go into practice mode, and choose that profile. If you try out that move and decide you want a different one, you're going to have to go back into the customization mode and swap it out. You can, thankfully, swap profiles in training mode through a simple menu option, but even if you do what I do and have all the profiles all set up to use different moves and try them out in training, it can still take a while to set that all up. And, it was only with the latest patch that they added the ability to swap to the tournament-allowed profiles in training mode. Before, you had to create your own tournament profiles to try them because there weren't any by default, for some reason. This process of customizing characters to find out what moves work or are any fun just eats up so much tedious time, when it should be as simple as changing the moves in practice mode.

Finally, a few minor issues and one big gripe. First, the small stuff: the practice mode menus could be simplified. Some controller inputs for things like recording your practice AI's inputs and just better options for reversal moves would go a long way. I thought this was all a fighting game standard, but apparently not. And why are Krypt forging recipes that you find in the Krypt not available in the Krypt mode to view, where you would forge the items? Why do I have to use the screenshot function on my console to capture them in a completely different mode or use an online walkthrough when they should be in the mode I would use them? Where is the logic in this?!

Most importantly, however, don't buy DLC or anything with real money through the in-game interface. Injustice 2 had this issue as well and, apparently, if there's something the developers haven't learned, it's how to integrate that stuff with the game's interface without being rife with bugs. I bought the character DLC so that I could play Shao Kahn since I did not preorder the game and, as of this moment, I still cannot play as him, despite all the notices on my PS4 of him being installed. I've tried all sorts of troubleshooting methods, including uninstalling and reinstalling the game multiple times. Do yourself a favor and buy things only through the console store, never through a game's interface.

TL;DR (Conclusion)

If you skipped ahead to the verdict (I don't blame you, this is a 6000-word review), I'll sum it up as quickly as I can. Mortal Kombat 11 is the best Mortal Kombat you can buy right now. It plays really well, the roster is diverse, and there is a ton for you to do in both single-player and multiplayer modes. The game does a great job of educating you on how to play, through its detailed tutorials and its well-written story mode, which brings the latest saga to a satisfying conclusion. The UI and game modes can be a bit frustrating to navigate. The cosmetic economy is still irritating like Injustice 2 was. And the Krypt's novelty is wasted once the true nature of that mode becomes apparent. However, all these negatives do not do enough to prevent a fighting game fan from having a great time in one of Netherrealm's best video games to date.

Do you agree or disagree? Tell me what you think in the comments!

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