MK9 was, in my opinion, the best Mortal Kombat game. It took everything great about the previous entries, modernized it and packed together as a sort of remake and reimagining of the entire series up to that point in one coherent game. So where do you go from there?

MKX kinda fails to find a good answer. The gameplay is largely the same and still good, though not great, as the series was never particularly strong in that aspect when compared to its competition. They threw in the environmental interactions from Injustice (AFAICR), and styles from the horrendous PS2-era MK games, which you can't even switch between mid-fight here. Other than that, I didn't really see any changes, which normally would've been okay, as you shouldn't fix what's not broken. Unfortunately, I don't really see any appeal in other aspects of this game, which kinda makes the gameplay quality not enough to hold me.

The story here continues to have a major focus, like in the previous game, but it's definitely a downgrade. Not that MK9's story was great, but it was a fun and well-structured nostalgia trip that was seemingly self-aware. It was kinda silly, but charming at the same time. MKX instead tries to take itself very seriously, with characters constantly making references to the lore that I couldn't give less of a fuck about. Plus, I may be misremembering MK9, but I feel like this time around there's much more fighting in the cutscenes than in the actual gameplay. I feel like some cutscene fights are longer than the actual fights that follow them. And to make things worse, they added these unskippable QTE scenes, which, as far as I can tell, don't affect anything and are simply there for annoyance.

The overall aesthetic of the game has also shifted towards a darker and more "realistic" one. Everyone's wearing military uniforms, the general color variety has been toned down significantly, locations look samey and kinda boring. I feel like this might be the least MK-looking MK game in the series.

The combination of these factors kinda made this game look to me like a pale shadow of its predecessor. Not a bad game overall, but the entire time playing it I felt like I could've been playing the much more enjoyable MK9 instead. In fact, as flawed as the old MK games were, they seem much more attractive to me than this.

P.S. In this and the following games I've noticed they've been adding iconic characters from the 80s and 90s. My question is: how come they never added Wu-Tang Clan members as playable characters? They're a much a better fit than the deformed (look at its head) Xenomorph and Leatherface they added here. And if the answer is that Wu-Tang Clan are real people and not video game or movie characters, well, there was actually a Wu-Tang game for PS1, so they really have no valid excuse.