Overall: 8/10... and you're right. I only scored it this high because I love the series. The inclusion of chess and puzzle kombat are huge factors in this rating - besides me being a long-time MK fan. I'm an online player (xbox), so having different games to test your mettle against other people is massively important. Having online play alone is another contributing factor to why I enjoy the game so much. If I couldn't go online and get pounced, I'd have NOBODY to play with. (None of my friends are big fighter fans)
I keep hearing people complain about the 'fighting system'. This wouldn't be because you haven't been able to fully comprehend the mechanics, would it? I've heard people complain about mastering the combos - I found them fairly simple to execute. I figure either that, or these people are REALLY INTENSE fighter fans, and are comparing the system to other fighters - not other MK's. I feel that, ethically, you don't improve something by mocking another sources (P-Diddy and television programs excluded); you improve it by ramping up what you had before. I believe this step was sucessfully made from MK:DA to MK:D, comparatively speaking.
Konquest - eh. What can you do. Going through these realms once is enough, so grab your walkthough and get everything over and done with. I compare the konquest mode to Neo learning kung-fu; it's like having a giant metal rod shoved in the back of your head, but when it's over, you've opened up a whole new world to yourself. (Pardon me, my analogies are a bit off today) Having to sit and 'meditate' until certain times of certain days just to unlock stuff? I haven't heard of an idea that entertaining since the 'loading screen' was invented.
Characters, I love em! Sure, there are still people miffed that Kung Lao or Kitana or Reptile or (insert character here) aren't in the game, but so what. I still say the worst character in this version beats the pants off of some dead guy with flies buzzing around him, or some dude out of a manga comic with nifty "extend-o-claws" coming out of his sleeves... or whatever.
Game on, friends!

8/10. And more when i finally get my live working. I dont really care about the fighting engine, because i have fun. Its a fun game to play with mates, and hopefully online too.

im not going to forgive a crappy fighting engine just because it is mortal kombat. mortal kombat is a fighting game, so what do you compare it to? other fighting games.
why is it whenever someone says "Mortal kombat needs a deeper, more playable fighting engine" some mk "fan" respondes "why do you want mortal kombat to be like virtua fighter and tekken. go play those crappy games if you want that. mortal kombat needs to be unique and that is what it is."
1. just because i want a deeper game doesnt mean i want them to copy other fighting games. i want them to develope their own unique style, but at the same time make it deep, or at least fun.
2. the fighting engine is anything but unique. it is a shallow version of tekken, virtua fighter, soul calibur, ect. only with the 4 or 5 special moves from past mortal kombat's and a simon says combo system. yeah, real "unique".
the reason im so pissed at what mortal kombat has become is because i got so excited looking forward to mortal kombat 5 when ed boon annouced it would have a complex fighting engine that is comparable to virtua fighter and tekken (HA! i believe he said that in the psm where subzero is holding scorpions frozen head). i have been here long before mkda was even annouced giving ideas for a fighting engine and other aspects for mk5. come to think of it, i remember like 90% of members on this site giving great ideas for a fighting engine that would have made it successful, fun, and deep. now alot of people seem to be accepting the crap that ed boon has givin us. what happened to the old members that wanted mortal kombat to become something more than blood and fatalities.

"Why do you want mortal kombat to be like virtua fighter and tekken, go play those crappy games if you want that. mortal kombat is unique and that is what it is."

Freddie Kruger dude; I see your point, and I agree. The fighting system in MK:D is nothing special - basic, not too flashy, and not exceedingly time-based. You know what that allows me to do? Learn many more characters front to back, and be able to perform with a wide variety of fighters. We both know all of this is a matter of opinion, and my opinion is... I love Simon Says!
I love the psychological aspect of the online play. You have an excessively offensive character who doesn't block - start laying in the combos. They figure out where the block button is - get those throws going. Now, will they get up from the throw pissed and come at you, block low instead, or will they block high again? Watch, evaluate, then execute. Simple, yes. Deep, no, not really. To me, Mortal Kombat has always been about reading into what the other person is about to do. I think 90% of the game is based on this. I love guessing what people are going to do next in any situation - this is an opportunity for me to act on that.
BTW, sorry if any MK fans called Tekken or SC or VF or any other fighter 'crappy'... I happen to be a big fan of Tekken and SC, and know how different they are in their own ways. Also, I can't believe Ed Boon actually said this game would have a 'complex fighting system'. For anyone who believed him, I can completely understand why MK:D might be a letdown.

People complain about the fighting system not because they don't grasp it but mainly because a chimp could grasp it. The system breaks down to 50/50 you do a mid move or a throw thats it nothing more. You have infinites that were so blatant it was sad you have some characters with no safe moves and most only have a couple safe moves. You only have one good stance for anything other than your juggles. You have no wakeup game and you have some moves that allow guaranteed throws when the opponent is getting up. You have some throws that allow combo's that were obviously not meant to allow combos off of darrius and bo rai cho as an example. The complaints are because like sonof100maniacs said it's a cheap imitation of existing fighters.
The stance system is the same as tekken's whole fighting engine. Each character has set moves in various situations. Some characters have a specific stance such as marduk or lei and others have motions that open up another stance crouch dash and rolling dash. You moves from back turned moves from each posistion on the ground moves in your normal fighting stance. MK took the tekken idea of moves in the various stances and simplified it to 3 stances with a VERY limited move set in each stance. The average tekken or vf character has more moves from a standing posistion than mk has in 3 stances. The problem is they didn'ttake anything that makes VF or tekken's systems work they just took the stance idea. No counterhits sidesteps are useless though they took the idea from tekken/sc there is no reason to use a move with bad recovery because no moves have special properties with the exception of bo rai cho f3 which is the closes thing in the game to a stun.
Now if you toss the engine aside and look at the rest. The story is poor compared to previous mk's. Konquest mode has plot holes such as jax with metal arms in the beginning of the game when shujinko was young... The idea of konquest was taken from the tobal 1 and 2 games and just like the regular engine it was instituted poorly. Tobal 1 and 2 adventure modes are well thught out and good. Tobal 2's adventure mode is large enough to be a game by itself and you add in 200 playable characters. 185 are not really full characters but you still have a solid cast of 15 in one of the deepest fighters ever made and on top of that it was home only. Puzzle kombat was stolen or a tribute to puzzle fighter depending on who you ask. It really isn't as good as puzzle figher either. Chess kombat was stolen from archon which is 20 years old and given the choice between playing chess kombat or archon I would pick archon because the fighting in archon is more balanced. So where is the originality? They took their fighting engine from tekken/vf/sc but butchered it to the point of near unplayability at a competitive level they stole the idea for puzzle kombat, konquest and chess kombat. The plot of konquest was an episode of teen titans not even that is original. At least teen titans managed to wrap it up in 22 minutes unlike midway that drew it out for hours. So where is the so called originality and uniqueness?

he actually said mk5 would have a deeper fighting engine, but ive learned not to believe anything he says anymore. dont get me wrong, i am a mk fan because i enjoyed mk 1-3 (4 not so much, which is another reason i was excited about 5 because i thought it would bring the series back on top). i just see great potential for an awsome fighting engine for the mk series. mk has (or use to have) unique characters, they would be even more unique if they had a move lists that is distiguished. im not talking about the 4 or 5 special moves, im talking about throwing, reversal, and just the way the character fights. for example look at soul calibur (once again this is an example. i dont want mortal kombat to become soul calibur), look at the way voldo and ivy fight and you will see what i mean by a distiguished fighting style. also, i love the idea of combining weapon and hand-to-hand combat, but i wish weapons were more than just another fighting style. it would be cool if weapons and hand-to-hand had there advantages and disadvantages. i know, though, this will never happen. i just dont want to give up on this series for some reason.

Just to add my 2 cents:
Characters: I agree with most people here the new characters don't do much for me. There are a ton of characters in the MK universe that can be re-used and I'm sure just about everyone would be fine with it. There's no need to make characters that are nearly carbon copies of others(Kira-Kano). That being said I do enjoy the some of them such as Ashrah and Kobra. But The reason for it is I can get attached to them like I did to Scorpion and Sub-Zero in MK 1 (or the others for that matter). I feel like if they wrote a novel about certain characters it'd be worth reading and for that reason I get attached to one fighter over another.
That leads to plot which I agree there were tons of hiccups in Konquest as far as storyline goes. I consider myself fairly versed in MK history, and I was getting confused by things such as various people showing up and being in places they shouldn't be at certain times. Or as someone pointed out Jax having his arm replacements when he shouldn't. However, I chalk this up to programming errors that in beta testing were not seen (which as everyone knows they beta tested this in incredible depth.... /sarcasm) as well as the fact that some of them were side-quests so if the side-quest involved a specific point in the timeline then theres not much you can do. That is, there's not much you can do other than have triggers set up based on time...
Anyway, for me Arcade mode in any fighting game is really just practice mode that responds. To me the "arcade feel" is from playing against other people, rather than the machine. Not to knock anyone who enjoys playing against the comp. but I'll take a human opponent. Although I'd like to see the return of choose your destiny so you can decide what length the arcade mode takes. Other than that, the arcade mode if fine.
Puzzle Kombat: My girlfriend loves playing this. Besides I truly don't care if it's ripped off of the old puzzle fighter...imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. It entertaining to play which a mini-game should be. It accomplishes what it set out to do.
Chess Kombat: See above.
Konquest: Overall I enjoyed this, exploring the MK universe was cool. I did not expect much from it and that's probably why. There were lots of stupid glitches and hiccups, but like I said overall it was entertaining.
Arenas: Definately well done from what I can see here. Ring-outs were a welcome addition, but I'm glad the option to turn them off is there as well. It was a bit too easy to achieve wins this way sometimes. Other than that, a good job IMHO.
Engine: I agree this thing is shot to hell. I felt this way with MK:DA. Breakers were a good idea, but there are a lot more issues with MK than the combos. I am not gonna go through everything as plenty of other people have, but I do want to comment on one thing. 50/50 mix-ups are not a terrible evil. However I agree there shouldn't be such an emphasis on them. Fixing the bugs goes without saying. I don't know enough about what goes on over there when they are making MK games, but maybe 3 stances per character and trying to balance them is too much. Theres a reason why RTS games don't have 24 factions, and FPS's don't make characters with differing heights (oh oddjob nonsense). So maybe MK shouldn't try to do too much. Soul Caliber 2 using the unlockable weapons gets pretty dumb really quickly if you don't pick a weapon of comparable power level. But the extra weapons were for fun and obviously some as a joke. As sad as it sounds they apparently can't handle that many different styles as trying to do all of this stuff obviously hasbeen taking away from the overall fighting part of a FIGHTING GAME.
I have to admit I do love MK, and I also love MK:D despite its many shortcomnigs, but I want a ton of work done for MK 7. There were a lot of awards that it won, but most don't mean anything. Then there's a lot of large magazines etc pointing out the holes, but, I think they focus on things that aren't nessecarily a problem.
When winter break is over, I'm going to go back to my dorm and play MK 1-3 (at least the "kollector's edition" had MK 1 and 2-3 are on the Midway Arcade Treasures), with my friends since those are the ones that they still enjoy as much as I do. But there needs to be some serious work done to make MK legitemate again.

Overall: 9/10
Arcade: 8/10
-Fast and furious. I love the fighting system.
Puzzle: 7/10
-Tis nice. The little MK chibis are humerous to watch.
Chess: 8/10
-As a fan of traditional chess, I must say that I adore what Midway did here.
Konquest: 10/10
-FUN! With the exception of the fact that some objectives are bloody hard, it still a fun platform-like experience.
Story: 9/10
-Even though Konquest screws it up somewhat, I've always been enchated by MK's storyline.
Characters: 8/10
-Even though I miss Rain and traditional Reptile, I do like the overall selection of character. Of course, how can I object to the inclusion of Sub-Zero, Scorpion, and Noob-Saibot?
Arenas: 10/10
-No complaints here. Every place look fabulous, expecially The Pit.
Music: 10/10
-Two words: Falling Cliffs.
Notes:
1. I have never played MK: Deadly Allince or MK4, so Deception was my first MK 3D experience.
2. I have played Soul Calibur II and I do rate MK:D above SCII on many reasons.

tekken isn't crappy...i kinda enjoyed tekken 4 more than MK:D it just got really boring really fast i'd give it like a 6/10

You guys have really good points about these games.But the main reason why I think MKD isn't the best fighting is because it doesn't have any indepth(spelling???). I actually like those "more realistic" fighting games(even though none of them are realistic, but still), since they sometimes have real moves from real fighting styles(I'm mainly talking about all the Karate styles in this game. PEOPLE IN KARATE WE DON'T DO "JUDOCHOPS" . Yes I know that MK was ment to be like this, but please do something about the fighting engine, T4 had a good fighting engine and T5 has an even better one. I mean that the fighting engine in MKD hasn't changed from MKDA. I still like MK but it isn't the best.

Actually the fighting engine has changed quite a bit from DA. On the surfact it appears the same but go back to da and mess around you will see a lot of things were removed that balanced it like the flip over on juggles to lessen the damage potential.