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Capcom Rate every Mortal Kombat gaem

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I stole rating scheme from similar Final Fantasy thread.

Most of MK titles are being hated among fighting games fans and MK franchise itself never gained popularity in Japan so... begin.

TOP TIER

MK2
UMK3
MK9
Shaolin Monks

HIGH TIER
MK3
Deception / Unchained
MK vs DC
Mythologies: Sub-Zero

MID TIER
MK1
Trilogy
Deadly Alliance
Armageddon

LOW TIER

Special Forces
Deadly Alliance GBA / Tournament Edition

SHIT TIER
MK4
Gold
every portable version except for the ones mentioned above + MK9 Vita (which I haven't played yet but looks so similar to home ports that there is no need to think of it as separate game)

Still don't know MKX enough to have an opinion so...
 

DexRiwus

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As a fighting games, they all are trash.
9, X- top
SM, 3- mid
Everything else is bad or i have never played it.
 

Generic-Giant-Spider

Guest
MKX, MK9, UMK3/Trilogy are my favourites when it comes to playing for prolonged periods of time. MK1/MK2 are great in atmosphere and tone. Never liked the PS2 era ones very much, but I recall there being a metric fuckton of fan service put in them with the Krypt and Conquest modes which was cool.

MKX would have been my favourite if the roster didn't have some garbage characters in it. Jacqui, Kung Jin, Bo Rai Cho over Shang Tsung, Noob Saibot and Kabal is a crime against humanity. I also wasn't too big on the amount of guest characters though I confess playing Jason and Leatherface is fun. I loved that variation system and I pray they keep with it in MK11 since it really changes characters up in meaningful ways. Reminds me heavily of SF Alpha 3 with all those "Isms" which modified playstyles (though on a more universal scale) and that game was IMO the last truly great Street Fighter.

Also the story mode in MKX put too much focus on characters I don't give a shit about and NRS has to evolve their story modes that you can also play as the evil characters so it doesn't feel so predictable.

The new characters I did like were Erron Black, Kotal Kahn, D'vorah. There were some really good redesigns too with Ermac, Tanya and Reptile looking the best they ever will.
 
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the first for historical reasons. the second because it added to the formula even if it went a tad overboard here and there. all the others are just too over the top with too much crap, too many retarded characters or just terrible games.
 
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Mortal Kombat X is the only playable one by the MK team. Until that one Shaolin Monks, which was made by someone else, was the only good MK game; had a nice Power Stone-esque VS mode on top of being a fun 3D beat 'em up. Would have been more than happy if violent Power Stone was where the series stayed in its 3D era...although that would have never happened since it wasn't Boon's team.

Everything from MK4 to MK9 is fucking horrible shit. Until MKX the series was at best always pretty bad and only got by on the novelty of its violence. Funnily enough Armageddon fucks up that novelty so badly I might say that's the worst MK game; bad as a fighting game, bad as a MK as well.

X is also the first MK game where it seems like they're learning how to animate characters. They're still animated terribly, but it seems so much better than their previous stuff that it almost tricks you for a second into thinking it's good since its good for them. After Injustice 2 I'm almost hopefully that MK11 will be the first they made that isn't animated like crap.
 

PulsatingBrain

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I have very little experience with playing fighting games, and the only Mortal Kombat I played much of was Trilogy, many years ago. I'm just wondering why people seem to generally dislike Trilogy
 
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I'm just wondering why people seem to generally dislike Trilogy

Theoretically, MK3, UMK3 and Trilogy could be cassified as three versions of the same game, just like Doom / Doom2 / Final Doom / Ultimate Doom. The devil is in the detail though.

MK3? - revolutionary game, both gameplay- and story-wise.
Shit is now twice as fast, with run button, combo meter and and crazy dial-up combos. Easy to play, very hard to master.
Story, lore etc - very noncoformist roster - no masked ninja, no female assassins, no Raiden nor Cage (killed), no oriental themes. Instead there are bunch of cyborgs, techno-freak with hookswords, female shokan and fucking centaur as sub-boss. Gaem KILLZ with heavy, unpleasant atmosphere of dead city with its empty streets, abandoned buildings or graveyard - seriously, one of the most underrated post-apocalyptic games ever. Even if next incarnation bring series back to its roots, 'pure' MK3 still remains unique experience that everyone should try.

UMK3? 'Ok, now we step back, bring back popular character like Reptile, Scorpion, Kitana, masked Subby etc, create new stages faithfull to first two games (hell, desert, cave, abyss), rebalancing stuff and gives you perfect, competitive title. Almost perfect we mean - we are too lazy to create unique ending artworks so they're now just plain text... plus oh, do you remember rumored Error Macro red ninja from MK1? Now he's real and playable!'

MKT? 'We are running out of money/ideas, let's release some shovelware: just put some sprites straight from MK1/MK2, steal few old arenas, remove Pit Fatality (too much effort for death animation, sorry bro), add few a new palette-swap ninjas and here we go - easy $$$$$$! Oh, but guyz on arcades may not fall into our trap so let's release it only as graphically inferior home port for 2D lowest common denominator - PSX and then make cheap ports for superior machines like Saturn or PC.'

... and they did the same with Armageddon ten years later.
 
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MK 2 introduced some new things and had much better graphics and fluid animation. I remember memorizing most of the special moves via Secret Service. MK 3 toned down the violence and continued including silly friendships/babalities, but the combo system was really great and helped to keep my interest. Also, new characters such as Kabal, Stryker and Cyrax were cool addition. I replay the arcade versions from time to time. I recently also found out about the MK Project based on Mugen. The newest version are way too liberal when it comes to changes and new moves, but the 4.1 version is worth a try.




mk4 10/10, the only one i put a lot of time into


 
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Aemar

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MK franchise itself never gained popularity in Japan so... begin.
Living life like any other regular human being from planet Earth (including having a sexual life) never gained popularity in Japan either, so what they think in Japan about MK, for example, is rather irrelevant.

UMK3 and MK9 are probably the best in the series. MKX introduced a lot of lame characters that are straight up shit, such an unispired move to come up with so many offshoot fighters. Guest characters are shit and don't belong in this franchise.

MK4 takes the medal for being the worst of the worse.
 

Generic-Giant-Spider

Guest
I have very little experience with playing fighting games, and the only Mortal Kombat I played much of was Trilogy, many years ago. I'm just wondering why people seem to generally dislike Trilogy

It depends on which version you played, there are a lot of versions of Trilogy roaming around. Generally though, most people played it on PS1 (there was an N64 version too but that was dogshit) and some characters like Shang Tsung had to load in every character they transformed as which caused a ten second delay. You could combat this if you selected "pre-loaded morphs" in the gameplay options which would give you the chance to select either two or three unique models or if you chose, say, a male ninja, they'd select them all to preload since they were palette swaps anyways. In the greatest hits version you actually never fight Shang Tsung on the towers because of how his AI would constantly transform which would cause the game to constantly slow to a crawl.

For competitivefags, the big difference in versions comes down to the original black label and the greatest hits. The original black label was notorious for being fucking busted with numerous characters having combos that were either easily looped infinites or could do well over 80% of your life. There were tons of bugs in it as well. The GH version fixed many of these and essentially made Trilogy play like a 30% faster UMK3. Some people dedicated to UMK3 disliked that since it made some combos for characters not work anymore (Reptile for example has strict timing which is nearly impossible to replicate on Trilogy due to it speeding things up).

Then there are the 'remade' and new characters. The remade characters are basically MK1/MK2 versions of guys like Kung Lao and Kano who had some really fucked up moves added in and their animation was pretty janky since there were no dial-a-combos or run buttons in the first two games. Then for new characters, for most people this is the game that introduced them to Noob Saibot and this isn't your friendly neighbourhood "throws clones full screen at you, oh shit you closed the gap I'm dead" Noob Saibot from MK9. MKT Noob Saibot may be the most broken fighting game character. Insanely quick start-up on his attacks, his teleport slam was a free juggle combo that only needed to hit twice to kill someone (and in the black label version could be looped indefinitely), he had a fireball that made it so your opponent couldn't block or attack for ten or so seconds and all they could do was jump around and pray to Raiden you missed your teleports.

But all in all, MKT is a lot of fun and it's better to think of it as a "Hyper Fighting" or "Super Turbo" add-on for UMK3. Anyone that cites it as the worst hasn't played MK4 or Gold. Even when those games were new they looked like shit.
 

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oddech_wymarlych_swiatow Generic-Giant-Spider Very informative, thank you.

Out of Tekken 7, MKX and Street Fighter 5, which would be the easier game to start now? I've been wanting to get into fighting games for a long time. I've watched the SF at Evo for the last few years and loved it, but it seems like Tekken or Mortal Kombat might be a little more accessible, but I don't really know.

Also, is Kabal any good in MKX? He's my favourite character
 
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. I recently also found out about the MK Project based on Mugen. The newest version are way too liberal when it comes to changes and new moves, but the 4.1 version is worth a try.

All of these Mugen based MKs are broken mess that gets old very fast but I must admit creativity of new fatalities and stages. Plus some efforts for bring 2D versions of 3D era are awesome (especially Hsu Hao, Havik, Hotaru, Kenshi).

This one was promising though, a shame it has been cancelled 10 years ago.


Also, is Kabal any good in MKX? He's my favourite character

He's not playable in MKX. He's only in cutscenes, serving as Shinnok's revenant.

But all in all, MKT is a lot of fun and it's better to think of it as a "Hyper Fighting" or "Super Turbo" add-on for UMK3.

Excellent comparison sir.

BTW there's seriusly no love for PS2 era games? At least for Deception - most polished, creative one with its awesome Konquest mode?
 
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MK3/UMK3 is top-tier.

"Alright, Motaro. A Centaur! Looks powerful! Centaur or not, this guy has no chance against my haxxor missile-based Sektor strategy! LAUNCH MISSILES!!"

Missile flies towards Motaro. Bounces back to hit me
"Excuse me but what the fuck was that"

It was then that I knew this was going to be one hell of a fight

Without any hesitation, Motaro is my fav boss of any fighting game ever. He can sweep with range of half screen, teleport, bounce pack projectiles and shoot bunch of his own ones killing you instantly. To survive, you really need to learn his paterns, rely only on combos and fight never gets cheap like MK2 Kintaro, in which you choose between expoilting AI bug or die. What a shame Motaro is too difficult to animate so he couldn't return in any 3D games (had cameo in MKD's Konquest, turned into satyr in MKA and died in cutscenes in MK9).
 

Generic-Giant-Spider

Guest
Out of Tekken 7, MKX and Street Fighter 5, which would be the easier game to start now? I've been wanting to get into fighting games for a long time. I've watched the SF at Evo for the last few years and loved it, but it seems like Tekken or Mortal Kombat might be a little more accessible, but I don't really know.

I've not liked a "Street Fighter" game since around Capcom vs. SNK 2 and the last one I really loved was Alpha 3. SF4 was merely okay in my eyes, but a combination of things like the gameplay just feeling boring and the art style being hideous along with some really shitty newcomers soured it heavily. I'm also horribly biased because I was a Vega main in SF games and SF4 turned him into pure garbage for years. However, SFV is in my eyes a mega shitty fighting game. The features are skeletal, the gameplay is overly simplistic and crush counters can go fuck itself. What I dislike is how there is a lack of creativity you can do with characters, it feels like so many end up being played the same way. It winds down to feeling like an elaborate game of Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots.

Even if SFV was a fundamentally stellar game though I'd still recommend MKX solely because of the amount of single player content you're provided. I mean, in a multiplayer world, you're likely to get the shit kicked out of you by most of the online serial killers wandering around that have practiced for years now so you may as well go for the game that at least provides you the least amount of soul crushing entertainment.

BTW there's seriusly no love for PS2 era games? At least for Deception - most polished, creative one with its awesome Konquest mode?

Of the three PS2-era games, Deception was easily the best one but something about the 3D gameplay never hit it for me. It didn't feel like how a Mortal Kombat game should and the whole three martial arts stances thing always felt silly. I also remember loathing almost every newcomer in those games. I will say that Puzzle Kombat was funner to me than the actual one on one fighting game. That was addictive.

One thing though is Deception was the last MK game to feel like it still had that air of mystery around it regarding in-game secrets. Remember goofy shit like "super unlockable" characters? How you could unlock certain characters via Konquest mode? I loved reading all the bullshit theories people had and poor photoshops to support their claims.
 

Nathir

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I mean, MK is low tier as hell as far as fg's are concerned. The two best ones are probably MK9 and UMK3. The rest are varying degrees of bad. My favourite is MK4 though, it was the first fighting game I've ever played and we spent a lot of time playing it with friends. Good times.
 

Sjukob

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Mortal Kombat Shaolin Monks is pretty underplayed and underrated, it's a great beat'em'up with only real downside - it's too easy and there are only 3-4 instances where the game is challenging and one of them is a well hidden secret that you are very unlikely to find without watching a video or reading a guide. I really wish there was another game like this - a dark, violent 3D beat'em'up, but harder, unfortunately after 13 years MK:SM remains a unique game with no successors.
 
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BrotherFrank

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Disclaimer: I tend to be attracted to fighting games for the spectacle and fun more then anything else, don't consider myself a hardcore fighting game fan.

God tier: Mortal Kombat 9

The shark bite injury system was awesome and sadly along with skimpy costumes due to sjws will likely never reappear in a mortal kombat game again. But I really loved how grisly people looked after a few rounds.
Story mode was cheesy fun as well and I loved the tag team mode, played that a lot with friends.
Finally the fatals were the best in the series in my humble opinion.

This is also the fighting game I played the most online! Jade was my main and my keep away game with her got me lots of friendly pms wishing the defilement of my female relatives and encouragement for my own suicide attempt <3
My preferred tag team was jade+johnny cage for extra groin destruction.

Top tier: Mortal kombat trilogy, Mortal kombat Armageddon, mk2

Whilst some purist will probably inform me of some downgrades, on paper mortal kombat trilogy had the characters from all previous games in 1 package. What's not to like?

Is similar with mortal kombat armageddon and I love the smorgasbord approach even if yes, there is a lot of copy pasting between characters. The fatal system was interesting too, lots of people hated it (and rightly so) because no one had their own fatals anymore and they were all samey but being able to do custom fatalaties is a neat idea, I'd like to see this return as a system for brutalities in a future game.
In my humble opinion it also has the 2nd best stage fatalities after mk9.

Putting mk2 here because that was when mk really kicked off imo.

High tier: Mk deception, Mk X
Mk deception was solid and the extra modes were interesting with buddies (chess kombat, puzzle kombat and motor racing kombat xD).

MK X was a big disappointment for me for a number of reasons and a downgrade from mk9 in pretty much everything except how shiny guts look. Allright slight exageration, it's still got enough upsides to stay in high tier and some fatals like mileena's are really good (truly showcasing the texture work and lighting of those glistening guts and insides).
The brutalaties were awesome too.

Mid tier: Mk1, Mk deadly alliance, mk4
Mk1 started the whole she bang and deserves respect for that, but given the choice I'd much prefer to play one of its sequels. Mk deadly alliance is in a similar spot, it revived the franchise for the 3d era so deserves props for that but its sequels utterly blew it out of the water. Limited character rosters for both these games hurts them too, imo MK is at its best with a huge roster.

Mk4 I remember most noticeably for introducing tanya (who became a total butterface in every other game, i don't quite understand why) and quan chi , the funny sounds kombattants made and the game over screen. Otherwise my memories of this game was that it was "ok" and nothing more.

Low tier: Mk3
Pretty much made obsolete by umk3.

Shit tier: Any mortal kombat game for the game boy, mk game for a nintendo system without the blood code
To me MK is a spectacle fighter, so not being able to see blood and guts kills a lot of the appeal.

Never played sub zero mythology or shaolin monks alas so they ain't on the list.
 
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Venser

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I'm still stuck on MK II and refuse to move to the next one until I beat it. It's been 4 years since I installed it. The game is just too fucking hard. Normal difficulty? HA! More like fucking impossible. AI reads your keystrokes and blocks/counters all your moves perfectly but I haven't given up yet, gotta git gud.

:shredder:
 

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