Sun God

Yesterday I decided to take the road less traveled. I decided to play as the Sun God variation of Kotal Kahn. The main draw to this variation had always been the command grab. But the first time I tried it, I’m pretty sure I was doing it wrong. Now that I’m a little more experienced with playing Mortal Kombat X, I decided to give it another try.

But what really encouraged me to try a new variation was a post on reddit, asking for tips on how to play as Blood God. The response was about what I thought it should be. That Blood God kinda sucks. The only thing it really has is the totem, and doing extra damage really doesn’t make up for losing out on the attacks with the obsidian sword, or the ability to command grab. That, and you have to remember that Kotal Kahn has a move where he cuts himself to do extra damage. So the totem is really like a +damage buff on top of a +damage buff. Plus Kotal Kahn is slow. I mean, what are the chances that you’d be able to get both buffs up *and* do damage to your opponent. Most of the time, you have to be really good on your defencive blocking in order to do Kotal Kahn right.

One of the things I like the most about Sun God is how you can use it in your mixups. With War God, it was all about stringing combos and adding a sword hit at the end of them. And while I can do this in practice just fine, I really have trouble landing them in actual play.

Sun God doesn’t get that extra hit at the end. What he gets is the ability to command grab, which really let’s him have corner control. But I say that with a grain of salt, because the command grab gets confusing. The first two times you use it, it puts your opponent on the other side of you. But each time you use it, he adds another hit to the move. So the third time you use it, you pick the guy up again and slam him down on the other side. So command grabs three and four actually *don’t* switch him to the other side. That can be confusing when you’re trying to put your opponent into the corner and keep him there.

Which is where I find Kotal Kahn is best. I’ve beaten some high level players by getting them in the corner and keeping them there. And I think that’s one thing that will always remain the same throughout all variations of Kotal Kahn. He can knock an opponent back, or up in the air. He can do a string with an overhead, or a string with a low.

The other thing that really changes with Sun God is the fact that he can throw a projectile reasonably quickly. With War God, throwing the sword is so slow that even immediately after a full screen throw, a quick opponent can stop your projectile. Sun God’s projectile is still slow, but it’s fast enough to be safe from full screen.

I’m pretty sure it also works if used in a brutality, and it’s an easy brutality, or at least it looks to be identical to Reptile’s brutality. Which I did by accident, many times, simply by killing an opponent with his acid spit projectile.

Now let me tell you the worst thing about the Sun God’s variation. It’s his mace block. You know, those two golden things he’s wearing on his back? Well he can use them like a shield. The move seemed so similar to Jacqui Brigg’s shield in the high tech variation, I thought they were the same move.

Until I used them in a match against Sub Zero. He shot his ice ball, and I used the mace to block it, and I still got frozen. Which kinda pissed me off, because I was very proud of myself for getting the timing right.

So after the match I went into training mode and tried it again. Again it didn’t work. Turns out, his mace block only blocks regular attacks? What’s up with that? How is that even useful? Its only advantage is that it blocks through the chip damage that simply using the block button would take. That’s it. Big whoopty doo.

One aesthetic thing I’ve noticed about Sun God is that he normally has a very cool looking, goldish/yellow kind of color on his lines. Compared to the green glow of War God’s accents. But a funny thing happens whenever you do a fatality with Sun God. His gold flecks fall off. They literally fall off just a moment before the fatality cutscene plays. What’s left behind is a slightly less flashy orange/yellow stripe color.

I’m assuming this was a kind of cheap fix for some kind of frame rate issue they were experiencing.