Long post incoming:
Yes and No. Lets start with the Yes.
The game was nicely drawn on paper, there are things that worked for the game and there are things that don't.
The training mode is a god send, some moves being extremely punishable when whiffing is great, presentation and animations were very aswesome, the variation system could work a little better, but when you look at it from a competitive stand point it just doesn't pan out, some of the concepts were mixed together and some characters ended up having overpowered tools with little no repercussions at all on their approach. , the initial idea was that this game would reward defensive players more for spacing correctly, which turned out to be the extreme opposite.
Jump attacks being as dumb as they are, huge hitboxes, being plus when blocked, hard to avoid and having priority over grounded normals.
As if this wasn't bad enough some characters have concealable hurboxes on those jumps, disjointed hitboxes, making it stupid hard to hit them out of the air, they don't even need to measure the distance, they come out from almost fullscreen jumps from afar on a range where his arm will reach you, but your grounded normal can't even touch the rest of his body.
Characters with fast OH and fast Low starters in one single tool set, and in addition to it, they have these type of jump attacks. This is the first aspect of this game that is totally wrong.
Some characters have full advancing strings, that hits mid stupid fast, covers too much range, auto anti-airs, can be special canceled, nearly no way to space out.
In addition to these above, some very same characters have insane walkspeeds to outspace someone with already bad walkspeeds and short limbs, insane run speeds, and disjointed normals either airbone, uppercut or advancing string, that are either safe, plus when canceled and hard to punish.
The exact same thing that happened to characters build around the same formula with jump attacks hapenned to characters with range.
The insane blockstun animations to moves that are minus:
This is for sure one of the things that imo, hurts the game alot, the idea of having an attack with risk that its doesn't allow for immediate punish after being blocked is just another reason to add randomness to the game, and many people end up getting away with murder, no one needs that.
Two different buffer inputs, one for when strings and hitting, and one for when strings are getting blocked:
Another idea that i would like to see totally gone, every single time i play with Kung Lao, who requires absurd speeds to perform his 11212 string, there are two different speeds to hit his most required string, and i'm forced to identify by frames if my opponent is getting hit or he is blocking, otherwise the string won't come out, there are many other examples that requires the exact same thing from its players, and sorry NRS, execution shouldn't never be accounted as random in any fighting game.
Knockdown game is awful
Don't even need to explain why.
Slow walkspeeds: This game has characters that shouldn't just walk as slow as they do, it doesn't help on a game with characters that can cover distance super fast while running + using advancing strings, IMO NRS should get rid of Superman F23 type of strings and very slow walkspeeds in general
Insane input storage windows:
Another thing that didn't went well with the game, some characters have command normals that share required movements in the neutral and it happens that the button he needs to press most of that time is also the button that uses a special he doesn't want to come out in that particular situation. This is for sure one of the things that killed the game mostly for me and started to make me worry less and way less about it.
Everyone has corner carry combos and the exact same type of knockdown offense into the exact same type of oki meaty game
There is almost no diversity of playstyle in MKX, every character that punishes you do exactly the same thing, it combos you into a corner carry into a knockdown, then it locks you in the ground with 50/50s, hard to blockables, oki games, almost everyone gameplan is exactly the same, there are almost no characters that beneficts from restand more, than a knockdown or having a midscreen neutral far more than corner lockdown. Sorry bad this took away all the fun of the game
Backdashes being what they are.
As some of you said, having the backdash tied to the stamina rule hurted a lot of characters with already pretty bad ones.
I wasn't that pleased with the roster and the story direction
Though this is more of a personal opinion, i gotta say, if Scorpion wasn't in this game with his 2 Hellfire and Ninjutsu variation i probably wouldn't be as hyped for MKXL, its not up to me for sure, but the way how NRS handed te roster wasn't satisfying at all, specially when they brought 4 guests in a MK game, i don't care what other people think, this guest BS needs to stop coming by MK games or at least needs to stop being shoved into Kombat Packs, if NRS is willing to continue to implement guests in their fighting games, we as community should stand together and ban guest characters from tournaments, to they get the Kratos treatment and no one gives a shit about them.
Low profiling D1 that is safe and mashable
Frame data definied by Startup over execution.
And last but not least, the ammount of fuckery on the balance decisions.
Undeniable, NRS did an amazing work with MKXL, props to the net code improvement, but across the board, some balancing decisions were very questionable, and from a company that keeps learning from their mistakes, i just hope they keep learning, and take more careful approach into how they handle things related the competitive scene.
Advice:
Again, this is nothing new to what has already being said, NRS needs to start establishing ground rules in their games if they don't want to have headaches balancing towards afterwards, its completely sad when a Dev that supposedly values everyone's opinion decides your post is full of shit, or someone just doesn't know what they're talking about, and the balanced decisions turns out to be knee jerk reactions, with laughable outcomes in some of them. Practice what you preach NRS, no character tool should ever break rules of what you've stablished, stop introducing individual and exclusive mechanics into DLC characters after realeasing the game with no character being designed with tools to stop those things.
I will forever be annoyed by how Triborg has delayable dial string like a tekken character while everyone else doesn't, and how Alien animation can avoid mids and overheads, fullscreen disjoined hitbox low or overheads that combos, these need to stop.
