I bought Mortal Kombat XL two weeks ago. I haven't played a fighting game in such a long time. Mortal Kombat 2011 was the last time I played a fighting game, and I was just in somebody's house at that time. I wasn't sure if buying a fighting game is worth the price, as I felt like I would stop playing it in a week. And I kinda did but I hope to play it again sometime this week.
Playing this reminded me of the days when fighting games really consumed my time (Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter and Marvel vs Capcom), when I was a kid. Fighting games stop being interesting to me since the mid 2000s. I still catch up to the fighting game franchises I just mentioned but I'm not in the rush to play the latest game. It was kinda nice to experience a fighting game in a current gen game console, and I might pick up Injustice 1/2 next due to this game's developer. I don't think there's much difference compare from the fighting games in the past. Well there are a lot of advancement especially in graphics and cutscenes, but the outline of a fighting game is still pretty much the same. The graphics of mkx look really good, all of the characters look fierce, the costume design is impeccable, I like the alternate costumes especially the classic costumes and I liked most of the fighting backgrounds. I love activating the X ray move.
However, even though the game already has 33 playable characters, I wish there were more characters to use, preferably the iconic MK characters that weren't playable in this. Like in the screen, it didnt look/feel that many once I tried all playable characters. I kinda ignored the 4 non-Mk characters, like I don't need to see them in a Mk game, and there are couple of characters that I didn't really use. I also don't get why they had both Rain and Sindel to be an opponent in the story mode but didn't bother to add them in the playable roster. I would have played those two a lot. My go to characters are Kitana and Kenshi, with Kenshi as my favorite character. There's just something about him that I really like and he was utilized well in the story mode which is a big plus. Sucks that he is nowhere to be seen in mk11. I like some of the newer characters. I like the look of Kotal Kahn and D'Vorra though I didn't really use them that much. Kung Jin and Takeda were my most played new characters, though I wish Kung Jin wasn't that tall. I also like Erron Black, he looks very cool. However I didn't really like Cassie and Jacqui simply because they really came across as a younger/new gen version of Sonya/Jax. I find Sonya/Jax generic and I also don't really like Johnny Cage. Like out of the klassic Mk characters, I usually don't play those three so to have their legacy characters come into this especially as the last two playable characters in the story mode is just, I wish they had fresher looking characters. Mk2011 has a better roster but I think MkX's playable roster would have been as interesting as Mk2011's had they included Rain/Sindel then have more unique looking characters instead of Jacqui/Cassie.
As I expected there were modes/sections that I didn't really use again like "Test Your Luck". There is this section with chopping boards. I didn't really finish those. I have mixed thoughts about the Kyrpt. I didn't mind the first person perspective but those damn dog ghosts/spiders always made me scream and I always need to play loud music so I would not be surprised when they jump out. Even though unlocking things made me play the game more to earn points, there are just a bit too much to unlock (a lot of those cost too much points) and that fighting again and again just to get bigger amount of points can easily be a bit tiring and repetitive. I'm gonna play this again to unlock more costumes and see the individual endings, I've only seen two out of the 33 solo endings. But it already sounds repetitive to me.
Over-all, I enjoyed the game and I'm glad I picked this up. The characters are interesting to me even though fighting games aren't my type anymore. I watched the cutscenes of MK2009 to refresh my memory right after I started playing the first chapter of MKX. I really liked the quality of the cutscenes. I wish the story mode was longer. I thought it was quite short and I could easily finish it in 3 days if I want to unless I changed the difficulty setting. I kinda want an action adventure slasher Mk game, I feel like that would be really cool. I plan to get MK11 sometime, when a complete edition is released.