Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection Backlash & Problems, Explained

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The Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection generally received positive feedback, largely because it carefully preserved the series’ history with different game versions and behind-the-scenes documentaries. Fans were especially excited about this release, as Warner Bros. hasn’t often highlighted Mortal Kombat’s past. However, the collection hasn’t been perfect, and some reviews pointed out a number of problems.

This article explains the issues with Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection, the criticism it’s receiving, and the developers’ response.

3) Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection Has Input Lag

One of the biggest complaints about Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection is its input lag. This delay between your actions and what happens on screen can make the game feel slow and difficult to control, which is a major issue, especially in a fast-paced fighting game where precise timing is crucial.

Nigel Woodall, a well-known tester of input lag, recently shared results from tests he conducted on different versions of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. He posted his findings on social media, detailing the input lag for the arcade original and each port included in the Legacy Kollection.

  • PC: 22.05 milliseconds
  • SD OLED (presumably displaying the game in standard definition on an OLED screen): 28.30 milliseconds
  • Xbox Series X: 51.60 milliseconds
  • Xbox Series S: 50.80 milliseconds
  • Nintendo Switch 2: 73.65 milliseconds
  • Nintendo Switch (running through backwards compatibility on Switch 2): 81.45 milliseconds
  • PS5: 108.61 milliseconds
  • PS4 (running through backwards compatibility on PS5): 108.86 milliseconds

The data clearly shows PlayStation consoles have the most input lag, with the PC version performing about five times better. Because so many people own a PS5, a large number of players will likely experience the game with the highest lag. According to Woodall, the amount of lag should be consistent across all games within the collection on each platform, meaning both Mortal Kombat 4 and the original Mortal Kombat will have roughly the same lag on the PS5.

Stephen Frost, the production head at Digital Eclipse, shared an update on social media about addressing input lag on PlayStation. He announced a patch is expected to be released starting November 3rd, but it’s currently unclear exactly how much improvement players will see.

It’s still unclear how performance issues will be improved on other gaming systems. According to Frost, Digital Eclipse didn’t intentionally add lag to the PC or Xbox versions, suggesting there may be limited options for optimizing those platforms. Nintendo Switch performance wasn’t discussed.

2) Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection‘s Online Multiplayer Is Buggy and Missing Features

As a big Mortal Kombat fan, I’m pretty disappointed with the online features in the Legacy Kollection. It feels really barebones compared to other fighting games these days. You can’t create private lobbies to play with friends, and there’s no invite system, so you’re stuck fighting random people online. Plus, the lack of crossplay means fewer people to play with overall! It’s also annoying that you can’t just queue up for multiple matches in a row – it feels like it’s splitting the player base and making wait times longer. Honestly, it feels like a step back, especially considering Mortal Kombat 1 had similar issues at launch – they added crossplay later, but still haven’t given us lobbies or good filter options. I was hoping the Legacy Kollection would be better, but it really doesn’t meet the standards I expect from a modern fighting game.

Future updates will fix some of the current problems. The game will also get an Online Arcade where players can create their own private or public rooms and invite friends. Up to 16 people can join, play different games, use a “winner stays on” system, or simply watch others play. The developers expect this feature to be available a few weeks after the game launches, though they haven’t given a precise date. Digital Eclipse explained that these online features are more complex than anything they’ve done before, so they need thorough testing with both internal staff and external partners before releasing it to players.

Crossplay is uncertain. While the development team has expressed interest in adding it – and even stated it was their next priority during an interview at EVO 2025 – they acknowledge it’s more complicated than it seems. This interview happened before the game’s official FAQ was published, which only said they’d “love to add” crossplay but didn’t commit to it. This difference suggests their plans or priorities may have shifted between the interview and the FAQ release.

The FAQ also clarifies that online play for older games and ranked matches probably won’t be included. Connecting handheld games online is especially challenging because accurately recreating the old link cable connection is difficult and could cause the system to become unreliable.

Besides some missing features, online gameplay still has problems. The most common issue is with the audio, which often cuts out unexpectedly. A small update was released on Steam on November 1st to fix this, and the next major update for consoles will likely address it as well. The audio problems reported seem to be related to this specific bug.

Players have experienced problems connecting to matches, but Digital Eclipse believes the issue likely isn’t with the game itself. They suspect the problem lies with the service that handles online connections. According to Frost, fixing this is largely dependent on that service provider, and Digital Eclipse has already contacted them to resolve the issue.

1) Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection‘s AI Is Cheap

Beyond the issues with online play and slow response times, some players are also noticing problems with the computer-controlled opponents in this collection. It seems the AI, much like in the original arcade games, is designed to react to your moves and can be frustratingly difficult – some might even say unfair.

These games originated in arcades, so they were designed to encourage players to keep putting in quarters. A big part of this is how the game reads your inputs – the AI often responds perfectly to your moves. You can really see this when using the rewind feature in the Legacy Kollection to experiment with how the computer instantly counters you. As Modern Vintage Gamer showed in a 2022 video, Mortal Kombat 2, like many older games, is programmed to give itself an advantage – this isn’t a recent discovery.

It’s doubtful the game’s artificial intelligence will be improved unless Digital Eclipse adds a feature that learns from other players – something they haven’t mentioned. This is a collection of the original games, so it’s expected the AI will remain as it was in the originals.

As a fan, I’ve been checking out the difficulty options in these games, and while you can adjust them in the menus and during gameplay, it doesn’t seem to fully stop the CPU from reading your inputs. Basically, it just makes the game ramp up the difficulty a little slower, as shown in a recent video. It’s actually pretty easy to exploit the enemy AI, and there are tons of videos showing how to do it. I even saw a great one from Mortal Kombat commentators Ketchup and Mustard – they’re actually interviewed in the documentary sections of the Legacy Kollection! They demonstrate how easily you can take down bosses.

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2025-11-03 23:43