Law212 wrote on 2026-05-12, 17:10:

I'm not a fan of the modern MK games. I really liked when Deadly alliance came out, Then Deception was even better. Then armageddon came out and they ruined the quest more because the story went nowhere and they took 1 style from each cahracter away to give to the new cahracters so some of my faves from deception felt nerfed.

I did like MK 9 a lot. and played it a ton online on xbox 360 and then on PC. MKX was OK but i felt it wasnt great. I also was disappointed that animations for MK still felt jerky and awkward. MK 11 just sucked and i dont know why. I just didnt like it and I really hate all the guest cahracters. When MK 1 was being shown and the first thing they showed were guest cahracters I said nah. not playing this one. I never understood why the attack animations looked jerky and awkward and then someone made a video comparing street fighter animations to MK and it was night and day.

The MK cahracters have certain moves that would be so awkward to do in real life. and nothing crazy but just like a front kick or a poke but they do them in odd stances. while in SF the cahracter balances themselves properly for each move. Anyway im ranting. I love MK but dont like the last 2 or 3 games.

It's interesting you mention the PS2/Xbox trilogy, because I've been thinking of those games lately, while playing MK1. I remember really liking Deadly Alliance. It had some great atmosphere, and I liked how they tried to make a fighting game that really felt unique to play (it doesn't even play like the previous MK games, really). Deception was indeed a nice improvement, but then Armageddon was such a letdown. Now, I see it as the "Mortal Kombat Trilogy" of those three games, just a goofy little bonus for the fans.

At first, I didn't like how jerky and awkward MK9 was after those games, but I grew to like it. The rest of the series has mostly played the same, with bizarre animations and completely ridiculous fatalities, but they really did try to make 11 and 1 into "serious" fighting games, and I can respect that. Personally, I prefer MK11's slower pace to MKX--the former feels more like MK1/2 while the latter feels more like MK3 to me. The guest characters are indeed mostly horrible (especially the action movie characters in MK11 and the weird superhero characters in MK1!), but I kind of like the horror guest characters in MKX!

I really loved MK9 - it basically gives you the golden age of MK (1+2+3) in a beautiful 3D environment with a fun combat system. Essentially it's MK Trilogy done right.

I own MKX, but haven't played it to date. To be honest, the multiple styles and sheer amount of content kinda overwhelms me. Eventually I do want to give it a try (at least story mode).

dr_st wrote on 2026-05-12, 18:04:

I really loved MK9 - Essentially it's MK Trilogy done right.

Great way of putting it!

dr_st wrote on 2026-05-12, 18:04:

I own MKX, but haven't played it to date. To be honest, the multiple styles and sheer amount of content kinda overwhelms me. Eventually I do want to give it a try (at least story mode).

You really should give it a try! You can ignore the variations and just use the default... the variations are just a way to keep things interesting if you ever get bored with your favorite character. There is a lot of content, but there's nothing wrong with ignoring most of it and just jumping into the basic tutorial and then playing the story mode.

leileilol wrote on 2026-05-12, 03:34:

twiz11 wrote on 2026-05-09, 17:37:

old games had more leeway since there wasnt i say real time communication on the net in as lavish as good video chat you had to think before you wrote stuff down

oh there were still lots of corporately-hosted accessable chatrooms in 1999. You think they weren't discussing The X-Files?

at dial up speeds? hmm i did email an x files forum as a kid wondering who fights the future. i did call my aunt the cigarette smoking woman because every time i saw her she was smoking and dabbled in philosophy like "tis better to make a man a fool than to kill him and remove all doubt as to he is a martyr" i think fox is winston from 1984 but they dont kill him they let him live because alive people leave no crubs

newtmonkey wrote on 2026-05-12, 18:15:

Great way of putting it! […]
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dr_st wrote on 2026-05-12, 18:04:

I really loved MK9 - Essentially it's MK Trilogy done right.

Great way of putting it!

dr_st wrote on 2026-05-12, 18:04:

I own MKX, but haven't played it to date. To be honest, the multiple styles and sheer amount of content kinda overwhelms me. Eventually I do want to give it a try (at least story mode).

You really should give it a try! You can ignore the variations and just use the default... the variations are just a way to keep things interesting if you ever get bored with your favorite character. There is a lot of content, but there's nothing wrong with ignoring most of it and just jumping into the basic tutorial and then playing the story mode.

The variations and gear and all that worked much better in the Injustice games. It felt like it suited that game a lot better than it did for MK

Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire

Finished! I enjoyed this, but not as much as I did the first game. It has some of the best EGA graphics I've ever seen, a great Roland MT-32 soundtrack, and a fascinating setting. It also introduces a sort of calendar system where the game world progresses with certain events happening only on certain days. This is cool in theory, but in practice means that the middle of the game becomes very routine and even tedious.

You wake up in the morning, do any shopping you need to do, run around checking up with the handful of NPCs that are actually involved in the story, and then spend any remaining time practicing your skills. There are some days where absolutely nothing happens, so it feels like you've just wasted your time visiting every location just to make sure; on those days, all you can do is train, train, train.

There's a giant desert outside of town to explore, but it's kind of a joke. It wraps around to the west and east but is only a dozen or so screens tall. However, there are only three screens with anything in them. A lesser game would have made you map this all out, but here you can get directions to those three screens from NPCs once you learn what to ask about.

The puzzles were mostly fine, but I ran into a couple that seemed somewhat arbitrary (mostly involving tracking down stuff to take out the four elementals). However, I was very disappointed with the final couple of areas, where the game drops all the RPG stuff and becomes an extremely linear point-and-click adventure game. You also have to do a lot of waiting around here, since much of what you need to do has to be done at night, and there is no way to sleep at that point.

Luckily, the game ends on a high note with a great ending. I played as a fighter and was able to get promoted to a paladin at the end, so I'll definitely be importing my character into the sequel. Quest for Glory III was the first PC game I ever bought back in the day (along with Ultima VII and The Legend of Kyrandia; what a great night that was!), so I'm looking forward to seeing how it holds up!