Kotal Kahn

The first Mortal Kombat X character I was interested in was Kotal Kahn. I was surprised that I chose him to learn first. My previous favorite had always been Reptile. Or, to be more technically accurate, I liked the old school Reptile, which was a palette swap of Scorpion and Subzero.

But the new Reptile has his own look. Sure, it’s more reptillian, and he has all kinds of bones hanging on him like armor. But that new Reptile just doens’t appeal to me like the old one did.

So why did Kotal Kahn appeal to me? Well, I’m a writer, in case you hadn’t noticed. Though I never published the book, I wrote a book where a South American god was resurrected. I called him Quetzalcoatl. But Kotal Kahn looks close enough to how I imagined him, that I simply had to play with him.

I like the War God variation. The one where he gets a giant sword with an obsidian blade. And I don’t like the other variations because they’re both totem based. I don’t think MKX is a good game for totems, because many other characters can hit you with a projectile in the time it takes you to drop one.

I actually chose the War God variation because I thought he was the only variation with a projectile. Turns out the Sun God has one, too. What’s more, my War God variation’s projectile is slow. I’m pretty sure it’s the slowest projectile in the game. If you do it at the same time as almost any other character, your cast is going to get interrupted. Pretty much the only time you can safely throw your sword as the War God, is after throwing your opponent, when you have a moment to cast while he’s still getting up. So it kinda sucks, but at least it’s something you can use to keep your opponent guessing.

What I like about Kotal Kahn is that he has an unblockable stomp. That’s very useful. I also like the way his Xray works. It’s easy to hit an opponent with, and it does a ton of damage. It’s clear to me that Kotal Kahn is the Zangief of MKX. He probably won’t get that many combos off, but when he does land, it’s going to hurt.

His biggest weakness is his speed. He’s so damn slow, that almost nothing works when you’re up against a fast character like Mileena. But his saving grace is his front punch and kicks, especially the low ones. You can block, jab in with that punch, and hopefully string it out into a big combo.

I’m also quite a fan of cutting out your opponent’s heart and drinking the blood out of it. I know, it’s more of a classic Kano fatality, but I think the game designers have re-purposed this combo perfectly.

That being said, the one thing that holds me back from being better with my Kotal Kahn play is the fact that I’m not particularly good at landing combos. Combos are new to me, as they didn’t really exist in their current form back in the original Mortal Kombat. With Kotal Kahn, you really have to do something in the order of 30% - 50% each time you land a hit, otherwise, you’ve lost. So I’m going to continue to practice on that.

One other note is Kotal Kahn’s uppercut. It’s a bit of an awkward punch. I’ve noticed that against some characters, like Scorpion and Subzero, it doesn’t counter they forward jump kick, which is kind of a bummer.

At first, I tried to counter it with the overhead sword strike. But that didn’t seem to work either, the sword animation looks like it should connect, but it doesn’t.

Then, just last night, I discovered that his Forward+2 (did I cite that correctly? Forward + Back Punch) makes him run forward and do an uppercut. That uppercut counters nearly anything in the air. Because he runs forward when he does it, the move is likely to catch many players off guard, thinking they’re safe to jump forward. And they would be against many characters. Just not Kotal Kahn.

@maulakai