Mortal Kombat 1
Mortal Kombat 1 screenshot 1Mortal Kombat 1 screenshot 2
ActionGoreFightingMultiplayer2D FighterViolent

523 playing

Peak in the last 24 hours: 1,373

Peak in the last 7 days: 1,704

Mortal Kombat 1 Steam store

Game description

Discover a reborn Mortal Kombat™ Universe created by the Fire God Liu Kang. Mortal Kombat™ 1 ushers in a new era of the iconic franchise with a new fighting system, game modes, and fatalities!

Basic info

DeveloperNetherRealm Studios, QLOC
PublisherWarner Bros. Games
PlatformsWindows
Release dateSep 19, 2023
Price

Prices by IsThereAnyDeal

Minimum specs

OSWindows 10 64-bit
ProcessorIntel® Core™ i5-6600 | AMD Ryzen™ 3 3100 or Ryzen™ 5 2600
Memory8 GB
GraphicsNvidia GeForce® GTX 1660 or AMD Radeon™ RX 590 or Intel® Arc™ A750
Storage140 GB
steamyze

Review Analysis Score

Based on 414 reviews from the past 1 year

70.8/ 100
Bottom 30%

Steam rating: Mostly Positive (73%)

Metacritic: 82 /100

Review analysis summary (Reviewed Oct 22, 2026)

Gorgeous but costly to complete, this reboot of the gory fighting series lands at 70.8 across 414 analyzed reviews.

👍 Strengths

100 reviews praise the visuals, calling the graphics, animation and cinematics stunning, with detailed character designs, and Visuals & Sound ranks 442nd of 1249. 71 say they love it and find it fun, and some describe a rewarding climb as practice slowly turns into mastery. 39 enjoy the story mode, with cinematic chapters, some humor and a strong final stretch, and a few say they often forgot they were playing a fighting game. Multiplayer ranks 390th of 642, and Gameplay ranks 783rd of 1396.

👎 Where it falls short

Pricing & Fairness ranks 1259th of 1399. 62 reviews object to paying again for much of the content, including characters sold separately, paid fatalities and premium cosmetics. 52 find the story boring, childish or clichéd, and some feel it mainly sets up the expansion. 39 report poor performance, with long shader updates at launch, stuttering in cutscenes and fights and a huge install size that struggles on hard drives. Story & World ranks 993rd of 1096, and Content Volume ranks 948th of 1351.

Representative reviews Original reviews ↗

“graphics and animation are stunning with incredible detail” · 100 reviews
“the game itself is rated 10/10” · 71 reviews
“pleasant story with character switching, good difficulty options” · 39 reviews

How it holds up

−50+5

Controls, difficulty, progression and depth
Mentioned in 51% of reviews · Bottom 50% of the games we've analyzed

Controls & feel +1.92 · Responsiveness, precision, and how the menus handle
Positive “gameplay felt mostly fine” · 37 reviews

Progression 13% · Difficulty 10% · Onboarding 10% · Freedom 1% · Strategy 19%

Plot, characters and the world
Mentioned in 58% of reviews · Bottom 10% of the games we've analyzed

Story +0.53 · Plot, quests, writing, and the ending
Positive “pleasant story with character switching, good difficulty options” · 39 reviews
Negative “story is boring, worst Mortal Kombat game in the series” · 52 reviews

Characters 19% · World 9%

How much there is to do, variety and replay value
Mentioned in 29% of reviews · Bottom 30% of the games we've analyzed

Variety -1.74 · Fresh content and situations versus repetition
Negative “gets boring after a while, repetitive gameplay” · 15 reviews
Positive “varied combos and gameplay” · 1 review

Volume 20% · Replayability 2%

Graphics, art style, music and sound
Mentioned in 39% of reviews · Top 40% of the games we've analyzed

Visuals +3.49 · Graphics, art style, and animation
Positive “graphics and animation are stunning with incredible detail” · 100 reviews

Audio 7%

Playing with others, the community and servers
Mentioned in 19% of reviews · Bottom 40% of the games we've analyzed

Playing together +2.28 · Fun of playing with friends, teammates, or rivals
Positive “had a great time playing with cousin” · 12 reviews
Negative “online players only want to win, spam combos, unfun experience” · 1 review

Community 5% · Servers & Connection 7%

Pricing, cheaters, balance and matchmaking
Mentioned in 43% of reviews · Bottom 20% of the games we've analyzed

Pricing -0.72 · Whether the price, DLC and microtransactions are reasonable, and how much paying gives you an edge
Negative “most characters locked behind separate purchases” · 62 reviews
Positive “paid $20 for game and all DLC, worth the price” · 4 reviews

Anti-cheat 0% · Balance 20% · Matchmaking 6%

Bugs, performance and developer support
Mentioned in 23% of reviews · Bottom 30% of the games we've analyzed

Performance -0.35 · Frame rate, optimization, and loading times
Negative “shader updates take minutes to load even on SSD, 130 GB file size” · 39 reviews
Positive “excellent performance at 60 fps on RTX 3050 laptop” · 2 reviews

Stability 2% · Developer support 9%

Grey means too few reviews mention it to trust. — means almost no reviews mention it.

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