Much of what has been said so far is true of the previous release too, so it’s worth going over the other stuff in the Komplete Edition. The alternate costumes seem to mostly hail from older MK games, and are a nice touch but certainly don’t sell the package on their own. Perhaps more significant is that the online play seems to have improved at some point. When Mortal Kombat was originally released, I had varying results where some matches were decent, but others suffered from completely unacceptable lag even on seemingly good connections. Things seem to be more consistent this time around, and the vast majority of matches played during this review went well.
The real draws are the new characters: Kenshi, Rain, Skarlet, and Freddy Krueger (yes, I’m serious), each bringing something unusual to the experience. Skarlet is the most straightforward of the group, built to reward strong technical play with her mix of high and low attacks, projectiles she can use on both the ground (including one that damages her for using it, but is fairly strong) and in the air (complete with firing them at different angles), and special movement tools. These include a ’command run’ that you can have her end in various ways such as a slide kick, and a teleport. She is perhaps the most traditional fighter of the lot, but that’s not a bad thing given how many tools she has to work with.
Rain is really interesting, as most of his attacks revolve around positional control. He has a teleport that pops up behind the enemy, a water-bubble projectile that he can guide around the stage if it hits the opponent (they’ll fall out of it after a few seconds), plus some moves let him trade sides with the enemy if he hits. He can also disable his ability to block for a few seconds to gain a damage bonus during that time, resulting in a very ’mind-oriented’ character.
Kenshi has a fairly short move list, focusing on summoning shadow-copies of himself to strike at various parts of the screen. He wants to guess where his opponent will be at, then drop a shadow-clone there to hit them. Strangely enough, one of the other new characters has a similar gimmick... so Kenshi’s differences are more subtle.
Freddy Krueger, the glove-blade-wielding antagonist of Nightmare on Elm Street, completes the roster. He has the ability to make blades appear out of the ground at different parts of the screen, meaning he at least partially does some of the same things Kenshi does. In addition, he has projectiles (mostly consisting of throwing his bladed gloves) that hit at varying heights, another projectile that does little damage but briefly stuns the enemy, and a set of teleports that let him control which direction he moves in.
