Nowhere near as good or groundbreaking as Mortal Kombat 2
+ New characters added to the mix
Veteran MK players at the time would easily recognise the likes of Liu Kang, Sonya Blade, Shang Tsung, Jax and Kung Lao. In this game it leads to the debut of the cyborgs Cyrax, Sektor and Smoke (hidden), Sub-Zero (not the original one from the 1st game, his kid brother), Kabal, Sheeva and etc. In total 15 fighters await you in this game. However, fans would probably be disappointed with the obvious removal of Johnny Cage, Raiden, Kitana, Mileena and Baraka.
+ No Mercy
This new feature is only available after beating an opponent in the 3rd round (so yes you have to lose a round to perform this). Perform the correct button command and the loser will have a tiny piece of their health bar replenished, just so the victor can rub their recent loss into their face even more.
- Combo system is poorly programmed
MK3 also brought in the combo system currently used in many fighting games today. Quite honestly, Killer Instinct's combo system is so much better than the one in MK3. It felt broken.
- Fatalities?
One of MK's major selling points (more like their ONLY selling point) were the bloody, gory satisfaction of killing your opponents in humane ways. A small amount of the fatalities are pretty damn great (Sheeva's skin rip, Shang Tsung's soul stealer, Sektor's flamethrower and Cyrax's self-destruction sequence stand out as perfect examples). All of the rest were just plain horrible. They felt and looked more like bad cartoon-style violence with blood and gore. I mean Sonya being able to kiss and blow a purple orb of energy to crush her opponent? Jax growing to giant size and stomping on his opponent? Kano reaching into someone's mouth and pulling their entire skeleton out? That's plain ridiculous.
- Animalities were a waste of time.
If the badly done fatalities were not bad enough, leave it to them to add another unnecessary aspect to the game: Animalities. Each fighter can transform into a certain animal and kill their opponents. In my view, WHAT'S THE POINT? Did Ed Boon and John Tobias go, "hey we know the fatalities and gameplay mechanisms aren't all that good so let's add animals that have almost no reason behind the game just because......." No wonder this franchise started going downhill from here.
- Friendships are back again
In a game where it is either kill or be killed, the last thing many gamers would want to do is give their opponents some cake or something like that. This was one of the features in Mortal Kombat 2 that I did not like, so no doubt in Mortal Kombat 3 I would not like it either. I know that Ed Boon and John Tobias added this in the games to poke fun at the critics, though you can only go so far with it.
Needless to say, they were also some bugs in this game that made it felt like it was rushed out the door with little effort added to it. Now don't get me wrong, from a fighting game point of view, Mortal Kombat 3 was a decent game. Even that, however, is not enough to save the game that spelled the demise of a once good series.