At first I really thought Invasions would have better value to me than MK11 Krypt, but it quickly became a disapointment, and I should have noticed it considering the silence treatment Invasions mode had throughout marketing period, compared to the MK11 Krypt which was far more talked about. Somehow I feel like the developers were aware of its shortcomings.
Artistically speaking, MK11 Krypt is a lot more engaging to me because it offers a completely different mechanic and the maps have different structures altogether. It was fun because there was a sense of realism in approaching the island, specially considering it was such an iconic location that makes me curious about how it would be represented in a realist manner. Meanwhile Invasions mode kinda looks like a generic board that always features the same dimensions, but only THEMED around iconic locations. Add to that the restricted movement and the exploration part of it gets really stale, it's a shame because I really enjoy the assets they developed for it, and I'm sure a lot of effort was put into them, but they're being wasted in a mode that was not well put together mechanically.
Back when Ed Boon was saying we would see the results of a 4-year development cycle very clearly, I expected the new single player mode would be a huge part of that, but unfortunately it's not the case. In many ways Invasions mode seems cheaper, looks sloppier, and some things are actually ugly and take away from the main game experience. For example, when you look at a basic fight in MK1, it will often look excelent visually save for some VFX exceptions here and there, but in Invasions mode all the unique animations and modifiers look very cheap, which takes alway from the artistic value the game wants to convey.
I wasn't a huge fan of any unlocking mechanics in the past games, but in MK11 it was far easier to unlock the stuff you wanted to, you just had to play the character. Now there are many "fear of missing out" elements at play that we didn't have previously, like the Shrine for example, which works very similarly to gacha pull mechanics, you have a short window to put coins into it, and you're never gonna have enough coins to be sure you'll pull your favorite new skin by simply playing through Invasions mode, so there's a lot of grind involved. And when you fail to get the palette you wanted for that story mode costume you wanted, NRS will obviously include the skins available for purchase very conveniently in the premium shop.
I won't be such a bitch about how NRS is handling cosmetics in MK1 because I know other fighting games can get MUCH worse, at the end of the day we still get 3 free uniquely designed costumes for every character + a few lucky story mode costume pulls from the Shrine. I will say though... it used to be better, in MK11 every character had at least 4 unique designs that were not exclusive to FOMO mechanics.
Other than that, my only other complaints with Invasions mode would be how UX is terrible, everything is slow, there is very little visibility about exploration statistics beyond map percentage, little visibility about the rewards of nodes or towers, and little integration of the weaknesses system they put in place. It's so inconvenient to open the elemental chart and then choose a character that is better for a certain node that it's barely worth the time considering the amount of switching that needs to happen, even changing characters can be so slow lol
