Mortal Kombat 1—which was enjoyed upon its release despite the diminished offering of content compared to its predecessor, Mortal Kombat 11—has received its obligatory story expansion, Khaos Reigns, alongside six new fighters with Kombat Pack 2. This is almost certainly the last major addition to the experience before NetherRealm releases its next title, so how far does it go in convincing players to stick with it?
Khaos Reigns offers a brand-new story expansion that picks up where the original campaign left off, and reintroduces longtime villain Havik as he looks to overthrow Liu Kang’s new world order. The story here is messy and weak, serving as little more than a brief string of uninspired cutscenes with a fight interspersed here and there. It’s difficult to recommend when players could get the exact same experience by watching someone else’s playthrough online.
What Khaos Reigns does do, though, is introduce three of Kombat Pack 2’s new characters to the MK1 corpus: Noob Saibot, Sektor and Cyrax. All three are decent additions to the lineup; Noob in particular is a fan-favourite and one of MK11’s best fighters, so it’s great to have him back in this latest entry. It helps, too, that all returning fighters are pretty fun to play, even if Noob Saibot is the runaway winner of the three at the top of the meta.
The latter half of Kombat Pack 2 is occupied by three guest characters, which the Mortal Kombat series typically does well by virtue of its ties to Warner Bros. Namely, they are Ghostface (from the Scream films), T-1000 (Terminator 2), and Conan the Barbarian (no prizes for guessing which franchise he’s from). While all three are brilliantly realised as guest characters, they vary somewhat in their combat acumen. Ghostface is the pick of the lot and a brilliant example of a guest character in a fighting game, with a faithful recreation of his iconic mannerisms, some on-point fatalities and a believable moveset. He’s also very fun to play, and to this day remains a very strong pick from a meta perspective.
T-1000 is also decent with a handful of unpredictable combo variations and another faithful adaptation, while Conan the Barbarian is definitely the weakest character meta-wise: he hits hard but is pretty slow and occasionally too predictable, harkening back to Kotal Kahn from MK11. To get the most out of him, players will need to rely pretty heavily on optimal Kameo pairings.
Beyond the lineup of characters, Khaos Reigns does very little to justify a purchase as a bundle—especially in light of its steep asking price of £39.99/$49.99 (although it’s recently been available for much less on sale). PixelReel made a similar comment about Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath, and even that had a slightly lower price tag at launch. The Khaos Reigns campaign, in addition to being bland on the storytelling front, can be completed in around two hours. By nature, there is no value in replaying it, either.
Fans who want to experience Kombat Pack 2 would be much better off purchasing the characters individually that they’re interested in and ignoring the rest, as Khaos Reigns as a package is a weak prospect. On the whole, this is a by-the-numbers expansion to the Mortal Kombat 1 experience that has value only in its roster additions, and mileage will vary based on the player.
