I'm going to go ahead and bottom line it.
I've posted on many boards in response to this, and the honest truth is, no MKII fan can specificy why they like MKII without using emotion. People who say they like MKII's gameplay say they like a less complex game in general, which is uncommon. If they say they only like MKII more for it's gameplay, that's either a lie, or they have never played any other MK game after it. A normal gamer cannot make that kind of decision because MKII is just boring. It is a boring, repetitive, limited game, with extremely little depth and replay value. Most people replay MKII for it's Fatalities.
MKII has nothing to do with being a fighting game, and more about being a presentation. It is an amazing presentation at that if you disinclude a strict analysis of the gameplay. It cannot stand toe to toe with even MK3, let alone UMK3. The average MK fan cannot differentiate between quailty games, and what they like about what's around the game itself.
A lot of people say "Gameplay isn't the only thing that makes a game good." There is a phrase "...withstand the test of time" and the reason I bring this up is because gameplay has kept UMK3 far and beyond the most popular to play Klassic MK game there is. Without gameplay, you don't have a game. You can only see the fatalities so many times before they have no meaning. You can listen to the music without playing the game. You can download screen shots and look at the backgrounds, you can download videos and enjoy the fatalities just as much. You can play a game that has no spoken words, or sounds, or no pictures. In the case of video games, yes there is a wrap up of overall presenation, however MKII fans subconciously disinclude the gameplay in general on any review of it. If you compare it to MK1, yes you can say the gameplay is great, but as a whole, compared to the rest of the series, it is just a stepping stone, or a beta test towards UMK3 which was the final product of that concept in the series.
This is a review I wrote for MKII Gamespot.com:
Shock Wrote:If there was ever a game that should have been a movie...
Mortal Kombat II is without fear of contradiction, the most talked about Mortal Kombat game in the genre's history. It was a very important step in the long line of games that were to be made after it. MK fans were not disappointed in the slightest because from every possible point of view, this game was an improvement upon the original. Everything from graphics, sound quality, music quality, roster, completeness, atmosphere etc, and even gameplay was a step in the right direction.
MKII is a very fun game, until you have performed every single fatality on the computer 100 times, and seen the Pit II fatality 100 times on every character. The overall gameplay can be taken as fun, but you have to like the pace of the game, as there is no choice in how you play it. Because of the limitations of the game system, you are forced to play the game in a "turtle fest" which means, both character must stay on opposite sides of the screen, making the other one move in, getting countered in return. It is almost a turn based game in which the person who performs the highest damage juggles wins.
This not withstanding, even though Mortal Kombat II was a complete success over a decade ago, today it remains a stale, slow, underdeveloped, overstated, overrated, limited, repetitive, monotony with pseudo competitive gameplay that has not evolved in many years, and it will remain that way forever. The genre's aesthetic potential in the 2D realm had been completely uncovered and the next logical step in the process was to improve the gameplay and depart from the gore, partially due to being developed in a time where video games were coming under fire for being too blatantly violent. This step took on mixed reactions from the fans, and ultimately (no pun intended) winded up being a series of gameplay tweaks adding up to UMK3.
Playing against the AI, like any other MK game, requires a little bit of patience and pattern recognition ability. You should be able to defeat all the normal characters rather easily after a few days of playing, once you discover the universal methods. Playing against another person would be something you should try doing if possible, however it is not likely to happen much anymore. The game's competitive top tier list is very limited, to Mileena and Jax being the best usable characters in the game, based upon years of tournament outcomes, and some chance of winning with Kitana, Liu Kang, and Kung Lao.
I would never tell anyone not to try MKII because it is something everyone should experience, in fact, if you haven't gotten into the series, you can jump in MKII over MK1 and probably learn it just as fast as if you had been playing MK1 for years, and then move on to MK3, and UMK3 after that. If you enjoy performing fatalities, a lot, I would suggest sticking to MKII. I *was* an MKII fan boy, and then I grew up and fell in love with UMK3.
And UMK3:
Shock Wrote:Competitive Mortal Kombat at its best.
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 is the most complete, balanced, developed, deep and competitive game in the entire MK genre. Because of its 2D system, which was still the norm in the mid 90s, you have to take the game at face value. It is built upon the core system set up by Mortal Kombat, which was improved in MKII, improved again in MK3, and then nearly perfected in UMK3. I say nearly because by the time the game had run its course and was no longer eligible for gameplay updates, more pieces of the system were broken down and a few character specific elements were left unfixed. This however, does not affect the gameplay nearly as much as almost all other fighting games.
My difficulty rating of "Very Hard" is because the game is designed to be played against another person, and not the AI. The AI is poorly programmed in the sense, you cannot actually fight them, you have to trick them and figure out the AI patterns which are extremely simple, and many are universal. There are methods for defeating every character in the game which are fool proof, so that would make the game "very easy," however, playing another person and becoming good at this game is not. It takes years to master the mechanics of this game, which is why there are still people who play it.
If you are nostalgic, like MK in general but never tried it, or are just looking for a game to pick up, I would suggest UMK3, and finding others who play it. There are still arcade units for this all over the country, and tournaments run on a regular basis.
Also, to complain about palette swaps is a waste of breath. I understand people have opinions, but look at the facts. They have a limited amount of memory, and time frames to work with. I don't understand how people can play and enjoy a genre and then complain about things the developers have very little control over even when they are creating it. It would be more reasonable to say "I don't like the fact that they weren't able to expand upon their hardware more, or given more time to release the games..." MK1 itself had 8 regular characters and 3 of them were palette swaps. MKT was released because people wanted every character to be playable. They didn't have time, or probably resources to dress up John Turk in a bunch of slightly different outfits to add variety to the male ninjas. That's again, ridiculous. They are different colors, they have different moves, that is enough to make them different characters.
It boggles my mind when I see people complain about things that they don't understand leading to accusations, assumptions, or other literally false deductions, and this is always done without asking questions first or researching. This is the very definition of ignorance, I see it everywhere, on every board, about every possible topic known to mankind, and it's obviously not directed towards any one person.
Back to the bottom line. MKII is overrated because of so many golden circumstances that simply allow it to be that way. There's no other way to explain it because if you presented MK1 MKII and UMK3 to people who actually play fighting games, 99% of them will say that UMK3 is outright the best, with the remaining 1% being people who like to turtle.
