Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection Backlash & Problems, Explained

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Here’s an explainer for Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection‘s problems, what backlash it is facing, and what the developers have said.

3) Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection Has Input Lag

Image Courtesy of Atari

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection‘s input lag is arguably the biggest and most widely discussed problem with the game. This can make the controls feel sluggish and unresponsive, which is not ideal for any game and much less so for a fighting game where every frame counts.

Nigel Woodall, who is known for testing for input lag, reportedly ran some tests and posted their findings on social media. Here’s how much input lag they found testing the arcade version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 in every port of 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

As the numbers show, both PlayStation systems are far and away the worst culprits, with the PC version having around five times less input lag than the latest Sony console. And given how big the PS5’s user base is, it is likely a lion’s share of players will be playing the laggiest version. Woodall also noted how numbers should be similar across games for each port of the collection, meaning Mortal Kombat 4 on PS5 and the original Mortal Kombat on PS5 are going to have a similar amount of lag.

Head of production at Digital Eclipse, Stephen Frost, took to social media to give out updates and listen to player concerns. He said a patch regarding the input lag on both PlayStation systems should be out sometime later in the week starting on November 3rd. However, it remains to be seen how much the input lag will be reduced by.

It also remains to be seen how lag will be tightened up on other systems. Frost said Digital Eclipse wasn’t introducing extra lag on PC or Xbox systems, implying there might not be much the studio can do for those two platforms. Nintendo’s hardware wasn’t mentioned.

(Update: Legacy Kollection‘s November 4th patch contained some fixes for the PlayStation-specific input lag, but, according to Woodall’s tests, the PlayStation versions still both have the most input lag. They just have around 90 milliseconds of input lag as opposed to about 110 milliseconds.)

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

Image Courtesy of Atari

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection‘s online features have been catching heat from all sides. For one, the bundle does not include private lobbies, crossplay, an invite system, or any way to matchmake for multiple games at the same time. The lack of lobbies and an invite system means players can only fight against random people and not against their friends, while crossplay narrows the player pool by excluding those on other systems. Not being able to matchmake for multiple games at once can splinter the player base and cause longer wait times. And all of these issues, when taken as a whole, put Legacy Kollection far below the standard for a 2025 fighting game and echo some of the shortcomings Mortal Kombat 1 had and, in some cases, still has to this day. (That 2023 fighting game received crossplay months after launch and still doesn’t have lobbies and various filter settings.)

Some of these issues will be addressed in later updates. The game’s official FAQ says an Online Arcade feature is in development and will allow users to create private or public rooms and invite others in. Up to 16 players will be able to join and everyone can play different games at different times, implement “winner stays” rules, or just spectate. It is expected to come a “few weeks after launch,” but no more specific time frame was given. Digital Eclipse said these online features were “more ambitious” than what the studio has done in past games, so it “demands additional testing both internally and from external partners before it’s ready for players to enjoy.”

Crossplay is a little more up in the air. The game’s FAQ notes it is something the team would “love to add,” but it isn’t committing to the feature because it is a “little more complex than it might look.” However, when asked at EVO 2025, lead producer Steven Johnson said it was something Digital Eclipse “definitely” wanted to do and “literally the next thing on [the developer’s] list.” This interview was posted on August 1st, which predates the FAQ, so plans or priorities may have changed over the months, which might explain the hesitancy in the official FAQ that was posted at a later date.

The FAQ also explains how online play for handheld games and ranked matches are both likely not coming, the former of which is difficult because of how emulating link cables is tricky and might introduce more “instability and uncertainty.”

Aside from missing features, online play is still buggy. The most prevalent glitch has to do with the audio, as it sharply cuts in and out frequently. A hotfix rolled out on Steam on November 1st and is said to have fixed this glitch. It is likely the first big patch on consoles will address this, too (the post referring to audio issues is probably referencing this bug).

Various systems have also had matchmaking issues, but Digital Eclipse said it probably wasn’t necessarily the game’s fault and might stem from its “backend provider.” And as such, it seems to mostly be out of the team’s hands, according to Frost. Frost also stated Digital Eclipse had reached out to its backend provider in order to get things back in working order.

(Update: Legacy Kollection‘s November 4th patch also contained some online fixes, most notably the audio bug that made the sound choppy.)

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

Image Courtesy of Atari

While not as damning as the shaky online play or egregious input lag, some have also expressed concern over the collection’s CPU AI. Some are figuring out the hard way what many saw in the arcades decades ago: Mortal Kombat’s AI reads inputs and is designed to be, in some sense of the word, cheap.

Since most of these games were made in the coin-operated arcade era, it tracks that they were made to extract as many quarters out of players as possible. Input reading is a key part of this since the AI will often counter the player’s moves perfectly. This is more noticeable when using Legacy Kollection‘s rewind feature to test out all the different ways the CPU can instantly counter the player from a given point. Modern Vintage Gamer put out a video in 2022 demonstrating exactly how Mortal Kombat 2 bends the rules in its favor, showing how this isn’t a new revelation.

Unless Digital Eclipse implements a “ghost” feature that takes in data from other human players (it hasn’t announced or even hinted at this, though), it is unlikely the AI will ever be addressed. This is a collection, not a remake, so it makes sense these games will have the same AI they had in the originals.

Many of the titles have difficulty options that can be adjusted both in the actual towers and through the collection’s overlay menu, but this doesn’t stop the CPU from input reading and, as the MVG video shows, only appears to delay how quickly the difficulty ramps up. There are various videos players can watch that show how to exploit the enemy AI, like this video from Mortal Kombat commentators Ketchup and Mustard (who are also interviewed in Legacy Kollection‘s documentary portions) that illustrates how bosses can be easily killed.

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