Let me start by saying I am not a professional critic, twitch streamer, or youtuber that makes a living off gaming. I am the average game enthusiast and consumer who plays for the experiences. This has been my perspective of the game and franchise I've loved since I was a kid when Mortal Kombat hit the arcade.

Mortal Kombat 11, it is a good and fun game, but sadly was filled with a lot of hype. I'll start with the elephant in the room, the krypt. I understand why they made the krypt the way they did, to keep people invested in playing. However, the slow pace of currency mixed with rng diminished my excitement and awe for the krypt, epecially when I seen the store and its microtransactions. There are plenty of ways to make currency, but not everyone wants to be sucked into playing things they do not find fun and enjoyable while removing things that were fun and enjoyable in previous installments.

In the aspect of continued play, NRS did not listen to their fans all that much. I've read many people wishing the return of some of the mini games such as chess kombat. I personally did enjoy some of them and would have felt it to be a nice piece of nostalgia. Also unless I've missed it I do not see a Test Your Luck option. That gave the eventually semi stale traditional gameplay a way to stay fresh, with its unpredictable nature. Instead it looks like it has been incorporated into the towers of time. This is one of my issues although I have not tried them all, the ones I have have some difficult modifiers and the use of consumables is just a inconvenience in my opinion. Just another button to use and remember to use. Not saying all the new changes are bad, some are good and improved on.

I'm glad to see a more expansive and in depth tutorial of the gameplay and character mechanics. For a player who cannot string a combo to save his life and does more button mashing outside of the special moves it was relieving to see more than just the basics of the what the game is and flesh out the extent of the concepts with the character play styles.

To my surprise I'm actually enjoying AI battle, but it seems it might need a bit more polish and balance. During the character training section, each character has a basic description of how they play. I may be wrong but it seems to me basing the AI settings on that play style is how their use is optimized. During my time in AI battle I feel regardless of how they are set up there is no sense of strategy and it's all rng. Prime example being 2 separate matches of Jade vs Scorpion both characters have different settings but stayed the same for both matches along with the styles used. Match 1 Jade barely won round 1 and destroyed in round 2. Match 2 Scorpion destroyed Jade in both rounds. For playing with other AI settings, their playstyle didnt seem to change all that much compared to the 1vcpu AI. Again unless I'm missing it or how to do it, it doesnt seem like there is a way to test out builds and match who is better against who. My biggest complaint is you cannot adjust for the AI usage of fatal blow. More than a few times they used it and lost the round anyway or wasted it when the opponent has one hit of life left and then didnt have it for the next round.

As far as the story line and the direction it went. The continuing story line was very well done and picked up nicely where the previous left off. I will always give a thumbs up to NRS for the way they handled the story and its development going back to MK9. The combination of all the original games, the personalities of the characters, the continuation through MKX and 11 with the new faces and some forgotten despite the characters and their gameplay having always felt somewhat stale and lacking. Also the time travel element is feeling really old, but was handled well.

The roster of the game is pretty decent, but I feel it does lack some fan favorites. I loved that Armageddon had every character up to that point and I would much rather have more single variation characters, than less with different play variations. I also felt this way in MKX.

The characters are by necessity of the story line which makes their selections understandable, but at its core, the concept, design, and gameplay of the characters married with the 1v1 gameplay is what makes MK so great. In MKX they showed a hint of how it could and should be with Triborg. 4 different characters (for those that didnt know about Cyber Sub Zero) each still unique while only having a few shared moves. How that is makes me believe others could have been done the same way to allow for non story purpose characters. I would imagine it is just a repainting of the characters with a few minor design changes and programmed with the specific move set. That would have left the door open to include Kintaro and Sheeva with Goro. As well as free up space to introduce more new or non story significant characters by combining characters such as Jacqui, Cassie, and Sonya.

Customization is done in a semi good way, with the exception of everything being unlocked in the krypt and other sections of the game. How I initially thought and wish its was like should have been the idea of choosing between multiple special moves for each character like it is and then giving them a hand full of combos from expansive style based pools and it would truly make a character feel like yours along with choosing your skins. Also the ability to change entrance and victory scenes is a very good addition.

In the realm of the actual game play, things are different yet the same. I find myself still trying to use the breaker even though I know it's no longer there and the new meters are a plus in my book. The fatalities on the other hand as well as the fatal blows have become stale and unimpressive very fast. The fatalities themselves lack due to only being 2 for each character which has always been a complaint for me and for some, their better one is the one that is locked in the krypt. But it is nice when the AI does them during the AI battle.

If you can look past the grind and what is clearly the microtransactions that werent going to be part of the game, I still find it enjoyable despite having a hard time with even skill matches during online play.

I will end it here and save my thoughts about the "woke" stuff for another time. All in all I hope there are others that feel the same about some of the things I do and for the next one NRS hears us and listens to what we want. If they are listening maybe they will hear and understand that even though investors pay for you to make us a game. We are the ones that make them money. So when greed dominates over your fans and your health is at zero it will be you in danger of a fatality. One day enough will be enough. Just look at Fallout76. I'm sure I'm not the only one that lost a lot of hope for the next Elder Scrolls.