I just beat it this morning. God awful grind the entire way through. Its baffling how somebody at NRS can sit down and think that every enemy in the entire mode should have hyper armor, invincible hyper armor. I can't see how anyone found that fun.
I just wanna rant about random shit I guess:
They lead you on early, having you think there's gonna be fun little commentary around each map. There isn't. Liu Kang only shows up on the map's final boss to say some shit like "Scorpion brought in Johnny Cage to stop you!"
The inventory space. By like the 2nd map, you're gonna be maxed out on Talismans, and the game just keeps on giving them to you every other fight. I'm constantly having to go into my inventory and toss them out because no, Reiko, I would not like another level 1 Ice Armor talisman.
They tricked us early on with the footage of Invasions and the Survival missions (where you dodge the fireballs). It looked like it was going to be a callback to MK9 where they had the weird minigames sprinkled throughout the Challenge Tower. No. That is the one, and the only one minigame throughout Invasions. And it does not change. You jump over low projectiles, you crouch under high ones. The patterns never change, the timing never changes.
There is no map. This honestly might be one of the most annoying parts of it. There are little lights on each space that show you if there are uncleared missions in that direction, but beyond that nothing at all. If you missed a chest because you didn't have a key and you're trying to find it again. Good luck, because these areas are mazes. You move slow, and can also be ambushed just adding more to the time sink.
The enemy reuse. Every map in Invasions has a set cast of characters you're going to fight, for the entire time. They aren't random, its always the same. So like in say Sun Do you're gonna be fighting Havik, Reiko, Sub Zero and a handful of others. Over and over, pay attention to how many times you see "Chaosmaker" Havik, because I swear to god I feel like I fought him 20 times in one of the maps.
Talismans are nearly useless, and need to be "recharged".
There are about a 10th of the amount of modifiers MK11 had on launch. The vast majority of them are "Orb comes out of portal" or "toxic cloud"
The XP, oh my god the XP. I used Shang Tsung and Sektor for almost the entire run. 243 fights, about 100 brutalities, around 70 fatalities. And somehow my Sektor is at level 10. They also flat out stop giving you anything at all for Profile Levelups after a while. No currency, nothing. Saving them instead for the larger milestones.
Idk what else, this mode sucks and I hope they drastically reduce the grind for the next season.