I’m going to say this, this is the best Mortal Kombat game ever made, I know due to the direction of the story after this game isn’t good at all and maybe some arguments pertaining to the klassic arcade games or even Trilogy, Deception, Shaolin Monks & MKX may come to other people’s minds when thinking on what’s the best MK game and you wouldn’t be wrong, all of those games have their strengths that make them great games on their own but I still think MK9 still holds up on its own, from a well structured story to an entire Challenge Tower with 300 Towers plus more with the Vita version, solid gameplay being the first of its kind to be built as a Tournament Fighter, the best character roster in any MK game and finally a modded balanced patch called Trilogy Edition which tones down many Top Tier characters like Kabal & Kung Lao and buff the Low Tiers like Jade. This game has it all, I promise you that if this game was released in a Next Gen System with a really good online (similar to the newer NRS games outside of Injustice 1) this game would breathe new life again. The only issues I can think of aside from the balancing of this game certain issues with the story mostly with the Lin Kuei and how they handled Cyrax, how Sonya never competed in the first Tournament at all while Liu Kang was the sole kombantant, Sindel massacring all of the good guys rather than space their deaths within the story (finding better and more tragic deaths for characters like Jade), and just how Shao Kahn is a big dumbass in this game while Quan Chi is taking charge, there are some great moments in the story, the tension between Liu Kang & Raiden was handled great and very Civil War esque you understand the conflict of both characters and how Raiden’s actions leave a burden on him, the chemistry with the characters like Smoke & Sub-Zero, Stryker & Kabal, Kitana & Jade, Liu Kang & Kung Lao, and many more are all fantastic. My other issue is the fact that this game has (or had cause the servers may be down at least on PC) one of the worst online connection of any fighting game, that’s why I say if they rereleased on a newer hardware with a better netcode like GGPO it could be one of the best fighting games ever made. Seriously, give this game a try if you haven’t already.