Geezus. This game is horrible.
The tutorials have to be the single worst gaming's experience I've ever encountered. Before its release, we were assured that the tutorials wouldn't be as millimetre precise as 11 and X were - and they were right. It's far more precise. 99% of the combos don't actually come out and on the very very very very rare occasion they do, they don't hit the target because you were standing just a little too close or just a little too far from your opponent.
Secondly, playing that game on anything other than VERY EASY mode requires you to be an absolute expert of the game and genre, even though this game promised a reboot to draw in new fans. I've been an MK fan since the beginning, and the last great MK game was Armageddon, because that was challenging and difficult but not impossible. Every iteration of MK in the last decade has been designed for hardcore fighter players, and guess what? There are some of us that like a number of genres rather than just sticking to one style of gameplay. Another lie from MK producers.
Thirdly, the game essentially requires players to buy extra content to advance (unless you've got the skills to defeat the game over and over again on the hardest levels to get more koins). In-game purchases should be limited to things like extra skins or whatnot, but this one requires koins just to unlock new moves or characters, which are core features of a fighting game.
The framerate during some of the fatalities and even regular combos leaves a lot to be desired.
And I'm tired of the same old graphics engine used in EVERY MK game lately. The original MK games felt more solid, more brutal. These look far too 'shiny' and clean to be taken anything more seriously than a DC live action movie - everything looks fake. The fire/ice effects, all the glowing symbols when you attack/block/dash/air combo/combo, etc just look cheap and overdone. It's highly unimpressive and, for a game that was supposed to be a reboot, it's just another MK11 and X all over again. But worse.
This is what happens when you have Asian game players producing a game for Asian players - you have to be super fast with your reflexes, hit buttons at the exact precise moments and only when your opponent is at the exact precise location on screen AND at a time when you know they aren't blocking, moving, ducking, jumping or doing their own move (which is nigh on impossible)...and then, if you happen to land the beginning of a combo, you have to hope that your AI powered opponent doesn't have the world's greatest Asian MK players reflexes to block or counter your attacks.
I am now 100% done with all MK titles. Shaolin Monks needs to be remade, but other than that I cannot and will not trust another MK game for the rest of time. These Asian game developers need to go back to what made these kinds of combat games great, and it wasn't the button-bashing crap that they've pushed down our throats. MK used to be challenging for other reasons, namely the opponents were stronger and faster, but if you were fast enough you could still beat the game even on the hardest level. Now, anyone that is anything less than an expert combat game player cannot get any enjoyment out of this frustrating, button-bashing, expert precision timing MK games that are being produced lately - and it's clear that casual gamers who used to enjoy the series are now relegated to watching demos and read Reddit posts just to get through the most basic levels.
What a joke. I hope MK either dies completely after this game, or the game is actually rebooted properly for real fans and not the Asian world cup holding gamers.
