Some fighting game characters, such as Street Fighter’s Akuma, are expected to be good in just about every entry they appear in, but the Mortal Kombat franchise really does not follow that formula. Regardless of how much fans have expressed love for any particular combatant, Ed Boon and his development teams tend to keep tier levels inconsistent across games.
In their latest video essay, Ketchup and Mustard look back over the series history to point out five of the most popular characters that, despite their charisma with audiences, wound up being amongst the worst on their respective rosters.
You might think if developers are well aware of a certain fighter’s popularity, they may be inclined to not only feature them more often, but also to ensure they’re amid the higher tiers to ensure those using them will be saved from some frustration.
It’s fairly true that NetherRealm Studios tends to ensure fan-favorites make it into entries more often than not, but their effectiveness from game to game is almost always a toss up.
We won’t spoil the whole list, but there’s one example that likely comes to mind first as it happened very recently and made a large social media splash for quite some time: Mileena’s infamous Mortal Kombat 11 appearance.
The character’s absence from Mortal Kombat 11’s base roster was enough to send fans into a frenzy on social media, regularly badgering developers to demand they bring her in as DLC. Ed Boon would eventually admit he and his team intentionally delayed Mileena’s release to stir up anticipation, but doing so wound up making entirely too much of her debut.
With all the hullabaloo and intense build up surrounding her release, fans were almost immediately underwhelmed when the character came out and wound up struggling to get consistent wins.
While MK11 Mileena stands as the most prominent example of a popular character being competitively bad, her example is just one of five highlighted in the full Ketchup and Mustard video below: