I've checked out. Unless someone in my town needs some practice, I'm not playing. I LOVE D'vorah's design, but that's about it.
VISUAL STYLE
I was immediately disappointed in the reveal with the artstyle. I was hoping for something new, maybe a more cartoonish style. A departure. But it felt like they just took the MKX direction and upgraded it.
INJUSTICE SIMILIARITIES (more of them)
After MKX incorporated ineteractables, I'm sad to see this game incorporate even more elements from injustice. I'm specifically talking about the breakaway mechanic and the HUGE DISTANCE between characters. The game feels slow. I wasn't sure but after a night at my house with my team, playing MK11 for hours, we put on MK9 on my PC for some fun and I was just blown away by how much more fast-paced and fun it was. Sure, I'm nostalgic. But something has gotten lost over these past few installments, and I wish for it to come back.
FATAL BLOWS
The Fatal Blows have been stupid since the reveal event. They're long, they're boring, I've seen them so much I could act all of them out perfectly. Sure, part of the reason I hate them is because I get hit by them, because I'm no pro. But that's not the point. The point is that the entire meta is thrown out the window when someone is at 30% life and the game turns into a "will he or won't he" that makes the game both uninteresting to play and uninteresting to watch. They should not regenerate if you use it and miss. They should not have armor on them. They should cost 2 offensive bars of meter. Something. Just do something.
THROWS
Throws eat normals, and crouching normals at that. A Down+3 getting grabbed is absurb and leads to so many "come onnnn" moments in play, when grabs should really only be good against blocking opponents like they used to.
POKES
The poking game continues to be obnoxious.
ROSTER
The character variation is boring. Ever since MKX this serious has felt like the Cage/Briggs family party. This is the second game in a row without Cyrax and Sektor as launch characters. 2 games without Sheeva. No Havik. No Onaga. No Fujin. The "cartoonish" characters aren't present. On top of that, Ermac, Quan, are Reptile are also gone. And while there are still some good fun characters here like Dvorah, Frost, Baraka and Kollector, the game feels like it's packed with the more "realistic" characters. A bunch of humans really. Cassie, Jackie, Sonya, Liu, Lao, Johnny, Jax, Kabal, Kano, Erron, you know what I'm saying. I share similar complaints about the stages and music. It just feels blander this time around. Except that menu theme which is awesome.
VARIATIONS
I'm tired of this. It's so much more work to learn all these variations of all these characters on top of their base movesets and normals. And then they release a 3rd variation and I'm like "seriously? I have to learn about a third variation for 30+ characters? No way." That's when I was done. I was upset they'd brought back the variation system for MK11, and I hope for a return to a single character design in the future.
In conclusion,
this game has made me think a lot about why I loved MK9. Obviously a large part is what it meant to me in the time. But what really stands out to me is this...
In MK9, when I'm pissed off about something it either has to do with 1) Balance, or 2) Glitches. It's never about the design of the game.
In MK11, I'm pissed off by the mechanics of the game. And it leads to me feelings more frustrated than excited, even when I'm winning. And this difference is massive.