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"Oh no, my greatest champion has been doomed to sink into an endless ocean of blood for all eternity... If only someone had the power to turn back time and prevent him from suffering this horrible fate!"

Your "kronika keeps resetting time to feast on life force endlessly" is literally Shang Tsung's character tower ending lol

One thing id like to add: Geras' tower ending confirms Kronika's goal was impossible. Geras tries taking over and making the timeline perfect, but he fails again and again. He even says "its no surprise Kronika went mad from so many failures" and he decides to give up and merge with the hourglass so the timeline can choose on their own free will what will happen, while geras gets his peace he wanted for so long. So it is pointed out that Kronikas motivation and goal would NEVER come to light

One thing I’ve found weird about her was this…. “I cannot erase Raiden from the timeline cuz reasons but I can trap his brother in a pocket dimension”……..huh??

I’ve always hated when time travel or the ability to control time was introduced because to me it feels like there are no stakes. I think Dark Raiden would’ve been a way better boss and had a better story

Even Geras and Cetrion would've been better bosses

This makes me realize, Onaga is by far the only MK boss who had a cool gimmick. He super strong but doesn't spam so much. Destroying Kamidogu's makes him weaker, and sadly he never appear again after Armageddon.

Story mode wise, she was a really stupid villain. She could've easily won with the powers she had. The only thing I liked about her was her fatality and her character design.

Only thing cool about her is the voice acting, I find it quite satisfying somehow

Honestly I think what went wrong with Kronika is that they tried WAYY too hard to make her some super important and badass villain that they very much implicated her own flaws and motive as this time-god.

"You need to forget about Kombos." Yeah, I did that in 9. My whole strategy in story mode after awhile was literally "jump in, punch, uppercut, jump in, punch, uppercut".

She literally caused her own defeat. She's self-destructive. Merging the timlines not only made the heroes aware of her existance / plan, she also brought back good Raiden and Liu Kang. Then told them that them combining would be her defeat. If she didn't bother to merge, and just got on with resetting the timeline in private, nobody would know, while Dark Raiden and revenant Liu Kang would've continued to be enemies. It's like she wanted someone to end her because she didn't have the willpower to do it herself. But not to worry... her entire existence is a contradiction. Therefore she does not exist. Problem solved.

Shao Khan was annoying with his long range and quick attacks. But Kronika just straight up spam high damage projectiles that can combo you dead, and is no joke the epitome of BS!

I think the best thing is when she sometimes does a fatality to you😂

"She just sucks at her job and keeps resetting things to try again" So she's a NetherRealm Studios writer, then?

10:17 Because she isn't the Mastermind villan of MK11 story, Shang Tsung was. After Aftermath hitted the scene she became even more irrelevant to the plot and it was about she and pretty much everyone else was just being manipulated by him. So even in her debut game she wasn't even the main antagonist.

I watch all the videos for this game, and still forgot she existed

Where's our boy SonicHaXD? He destroyed Kronika in his Sucks series

A major issue with her is she was just too powerful from a narrative stand point to realistically write her being beaten. If Elder Gods are a huge deal in MK and she is above them all.....realistically no one should remotely be a threat to her. So the only thing left to do is write a super convoluted story and have her do the most stupid things so she can be beaten. Sometimes going stronger isn't always better

The easiest way to fix Kronika would be to make her entity that feeds on violence and energy expended while fighting, so she keeps resetting timelines so fighters will fight each other over and over again, so she keeps getting more powerful. Also not make her do it "thousand times", but only like once or twice, and she would be reason why series got rebooted with MK9, because that's the first time she reset timeline. That would also give excuse why some plotholes would be fixed or certain things retcon, because she "reset" timeline and new choices were made by characters.

I think the only good thing about Kronika that she is voiced by Jennifer Hale (who also voices Tanya in Mortal Kombat X.).

Shinnok should’ve had more time. He’s my favorite villian

Shang Tsung and Quan Chi from Deadly Alliance are maybe my favorite bosses from the series. On the higher difficulties, they can be a real bitch. I remember Quan Chi being ridiculously fast. But also, they won. The only villains to win in the series.

I'll be honest, I hate all of NRS bosses. I beat Shao Kahn in MK9 just spamming projectiles because his moves were so freaking frustrating.

Just intro perfectly shows what Kronika is in MK 11

Now, we gotta have a video on why Fujin is the best character. From design, personality, and… maybe combat. And who knows, maybe even Skarlet.

There is one other exploit when fighting her. Jade. She has a move that makes her immune to projectiles, and sense most of what kronya does is just projectiles it’s really easy to win with her. Arcade mode only though

Classic story. If you make an omnipotent super-intimidating villain standing above all the existence and reality itself, then the only way to defeat them is to make them ultimately dumb. "I can shred you apart with just my though - but I'll better grow some tentacles from the ground, or throw some giant rocks into you, and so on". This happens every time.

I just don’t understand how she can f up her fights that bad that she loses. She can literally reset time to before she loses and try again. Not that she should lose with her powers anyway.

Finally someone said it! I constantly hear how amazing the story was, but with Kronika who’s whole thing was controlling time, the story just has a major plot hole that she created herself just so she can lose. How can she have certain powers one moment and then not have it when the hero arrives?!

6:38 Quick correction; while not a boss character, Blaze did appear prior to Armageddon, in both Deadly Alliance as a secret character, and in Deception as part of a quest in Outworld. In Deception he was wandering around, confused without any memories of how he got there. This allows for interaction with Shujinko, and establishes him as a fully realized character, and he was even added as a playable Kombatant in the PSP remake / update, Mortal Kombat Unchainted, the technically definitive version of the game that fixes continuity errors and inconsistencies due to the story of Armagedding having not been written when the side quests for Deception were made. Prior to the development of Armageddon, Blaze's appearance in Deception was little more than an easter egg for fans of Mortal Kombat II and Deadly Alliance. His first appearance was in the background of MK2's The Pit II stage, fighting a palette swap of Liu Kang, dubbed Hornbuckle. This background battle was later recreated in the background of the Pit area in Mortal Kolmbat: Shaolin Monks. His first PLAYABLE appearance was as an unlockable character in Deadly Alliance. After unlocking everything else, and beating all Konquest missions for all other characters, highlighting Raiden during character selection, and hitting Down + Start would let you play as Blaze. Completing Arcade has his story end with the hatching of a single dragon egg wherein he was its enslaved guardian. Once the egg had hatched, he was simply free to leave, returning to some nebulous mission that had never been alluded to before. This was repeated in Deception, though slightly modified for Unchained so that it would better line up with Armageddon. In MKX and MK 11, he returns to his roots as a cameo background character in The Pit, though this time, he's fighting Rain rather than Hornbuckle. The point is that he had a story prior to Armageddon; it just wasn't really known by that many people. In Deadly Alliance, you had to effectively 100% the game to completion just to have the option of playing as him, and THEN you had to know how to select him without any indication that you had the option to do so. In Deception, I'm pretty sure he's a completely optional sidequest character that you can miss if you don't actively explore Outworld, though I admit, it's been almost 20 years since I last played the game. Point is, he's interacted with Shujinko, the main character of Deception, and his bio has been available to players ever since Deadly Alliance, so he WAS more than 'just a big guy you have to beat'.

I definitely think that if Kronika was written better, as in what you said about her being a feeder of people so she keeps rewinding time to live forever, she could've been a cooler kharacter, especially because she's a Titan a being unknown before MK11, so she could've allowed for the exploration of more of her kind, but instead she makes you want to forget about Titans.

Did this chick just hit me with a dinosaur??!

The secret to defeating Kronika should have been Gerrus. Make him more than just a boring servant she created. Imagine if Gerrus was once a hero who gained great power in an effort to defeat Kronika and save his realm. He came close, but she won and broke his timeline, destroying his ability to die and remaking him to the point that he forgot himself and began to serve his enemy. The fighters find a way to free Gerrus and restore his memories. Gerrus then uses his lesser mastery of time to hinder Kronika and allow the mortals a fighting chance to defeat her in mortal kombat. That's the boss fight. This makes Gerrus more interesting as a fallen hero who forgot himself, and further paints Kronika as a monster who likes to turn her enemies against their convictions after defeating them. Keep the soul sucking, then rewind time thing as her motivation. It can also be used to show how she keeps gerrus weak. You can even add a bit of rivalry romance between her and gerrus, where the reason she keep him a servant is due to some quiet infatuation for him. Cetrion could also be expanded upon, harboring a jealousy towards Gerrus, as she is envious of the attention he received from Kronika

"Blaze doesn't have any connection to the story or it's heroes and villains" Me: taven, daigon, their parents, all the elder gods. Was a literal background character in the older games... Yeah... No connection at all.. literally everything and everyone was pursuing him in Armageddon... Got captured by Onaga in one of the previous games.. dude is super connected

Kronika : Bring the kombatant from the past so she could erase Raiden from history Also Kronika : Bring Raiden

Cant deny that her stage music is fire tho

There's one thing you forgot to mention. The devs claim she's above the one being which is not only impossible but the feats she shows makes her just seem at (and I'm very generous here) about lesser god tier not on the tier of the thing that created the universe

You mentioned Blaze, and I just wanted to say that one thing I think is interesting about him is that, despite being an end boss, he isn't evil. While beating him could help hold back Armageddon, he himself is just a figure, something powerful to prove yourself against. Now, I play Armageddon on Easy (I may be a fighting game fan, but that doesn't make me good at them), so this may be different on higher difficulties, but it really feels like Blaze is not all that powerful. He just feels like another incremental step up in difficulty that happens every time you move up the ladder. And aesthetic-wise, he doesn't really look as threatening as you'd think he would. I don't know what it is, but he could have used some more fine tuning.

Please do more MK game reviews/retrospectives and/or character reviews. I really like your structure and your thought process. It’d be very interesting to see your thoughts and opinions overall on the games and characters

If I remember, originally geras was supposed to be the final boss but somewhere near the end someone was like "what if we made a female boss" and the scrapped their plans in favor of kronika. I don't mind that we have a female boss but if this was true then they scrapped a good idea just for a checkmark.

Shao Kahn in MK2 was a nightmare until you figured out how he responds to all your attacks. After that you could pattern cheese him and win 99% of the time. The other 1% was when you didn't time something correctly as one mess up meant that you were probably going to lose 50% of your health.

Technically she was the ONLY villain netherrealm made, as the others were made by midway

The "perfect timeline" motivation is a tried and true classic (or "klassic" per se), and it's certainly one with a lot of potential, but the rub is, normally it's a motivation for the heroes, not the villain. The greatest weakness of a motivation like this is the concept of certainty, the notion that no matter how hard you try, some things are either unchangeable or almost impossible to change. This struggle is why it's given to heroes, as beings of certainty make much better villains. A perfect example is Rika and Takano from Higurashi, or Homura and Kyubey/Walpurgisnacht from Madoka Magica. In both cases, you have a heroine traveling through time again and again, trying through countless realities to defy a seemingly unstoppable fate brought on by a figure who swats them down no matter how many tries they make. So the catharsis of it is in finally defeating that seemingly unstoppable "fate", a scenario that just doesn't work in reverse.

She was so bad, nrs made it so either fire god Liu kang or Shang tsung were the true final bosses of the game 😂

"Kronika was one of the easiest bosses." I think we both bought different games, because when I played the story on easy she absolutely wrecked me.

I honestly think it would be better if her goal was to essentially give information to the Past characters so they change time for her instead of having her just reset the timeline.

There's also another reason why Kronika is terrible; She literally erased the idea of having Dark Raiden as a potential main antagonist.

honestly when i first saw Kronika in trailers i thought she's gonna be the neutral force that guards the timeline, resetting it manually and punishing all those who tried to break it. so kinda like an unstoppable force of nature simply stating that no one can turn back time. it felt good in a game post-mkx especially, since a good part of mkx roster would give a fight to that time-rewinding monster just because in the old timeline they might never be even born. but nah, they made her want her own empire (of course!) and even powerless without mcguffins such as hourglass AND crown huh

You want to experience true fear... fight Idol in the original Killer Instinct Arcade Cabinet on the hardest setting! It's not just hard, it's the only boss experience that will make you nervous! It's the way he walks you down, the damage his combos do, and how fast his instant overhead opens you up!

“We have done this so many times that I lost count” THEN YOU SHOULD KNOW WHY YOU SHOULDN’T LET SOME CHARACTERS LIVE!!

Correction: MK2 Kahn was hard but Kintaro before him was literally the most OP boss in MK history. Try playing the arcade mode. He can throw you 1/4 screen away

That's the problem with giving someone a power to control time: you can't just let this character lose because no matter what you do to this char- he/she can just reverse time. Sure NR needed the way for her to lose but this still leaves us with thousand illogical plot holes

Weird as it sounds, I think Guilty Gear Strive did this plot line a little better than mortal Kombat did. (Strive spoilers ahead) We had Happy Chaos, this brand new character who was revealed to be behind all the bad events of the Guilty Gear timeline, and he was fairly intimidating on his own. But when he combined with Ino, a character who already had control over time and had also proven to be a powerful force many times, he basically ended up creating a god. A God who, just like Kronika, wanted to create the perfect timeline.. complicated Guilty Gear lore aside, they managed to make this plot line work because it had been built up for years. So when it finally paid off, it was very impactful. It also felt a whole lot more personal because Ino herself had tampered with the lives of many of the cast while trying to achieve her goals, and took sadistic glee in doing so. So when they could finally take her down it felt good. It felt conclusive. This villain who had been a thorn in the side of most everyone in the Guilty Gear universe for 20 years had finally been killed. Mortal Kombat didn't feel that way. It wanted to, but because Kronika came so far out of left field it just didn't work.

“Good lord lady how many do overs do you need?” The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome

Cetrion could have easily been a boss. If they had altered her appearance a bit to make her look more menacing and less Poison Ivy.

Kronika should mop the floor with EVERY character ever created and yet Liu Kang can still beat her with ease, Shao Kahn should kissing her feet and yet even he can beat her, it's embarrassing.

Shinnok vs Cassie at the end of MK10 never felt like a true culmination of that story. Cassie wasn't given enough of the main character treatment in that story to deserve the final boss fight (even tho it was obviously coming from the beginning).

It would be so cool if you could choose to either fight as the hero or the villains , NRS villains have a ton of potential but all they can do is to be evil and defeated,

I like her I think she is very unique with an awesome design and performance - but the writing REALLY lets her down! As you said the decisions she makes in the story are stupid and the mistakes she makes literally leads to her downfall! (I remember when we first saw her in the teaser trailer, people thought it was the woman from Jade's MK9 ending - why did the writers not capitalize on that?!) Maybe it's just a curse of the Neatherealm era villains? MK9 Shao Kahn came across as a big dumb muscle guy - he literally spills his guts to Kitana about her not being his real daughter rather than being smart and using the situation to his advantage. Even in MK11 he still seems to lack the intelligence that he was supposed to have akin to the older games. Then there's Shinnok, who they hype up at the end of MK9 but then he takes 2 years to attack Earthrealm when they were basically on their last legs at the end of MK9! Then he gets his butt kicked at the very beginning by Johnny, so why would we be worried when he returns at the end of the game if he was already defeated once? Even the supporting villains are underwhelming as they for the most part in this era get defeated! Really the solution would be to have a more dynamic storymode like Soul Calibur 6 with character chapters, so everyone can be the lead in their own story and get to show of their strength and goals! :O

Something funny is when I was playing story mody on very hard difficulty the normal liu kang fight was more difficult

Her design is great nonetheless. But as Kuai Liang said:"Such wasted potential. "

According to Ed Boon: Kronika was created just so MK has the "first female final boss." Was Kronika the best he can do? No one asked Boon for that character.

She's a joke as a 'titan' and the writers say that she's stronger than one being lmao xD. Nice video dude :)

The incompetence and story presence portions really stuck out to me. There was a lot of potential for he to me imposing, and intimidating. It's just that, with the Deadly Alliance dispatching Liu Kang, and just the severity of Onaga returning, Kronika could've upped the stakes significantly. If the DA and and Onaga were "Mortal" threats and Shinnok was a " Godly" threat, you'd hope the "Titan" threat would top it

I'd say calling her moveset as kreative is even difficult to agree, since they come off so underwhelming. So, you have a boss that is easy to beat ingame with a moveset that, other than a dinosaur, looks underwhelming, with a character that comes off as incompetent as opposed to intelligent. Also, she looks SO plain. All she has going is her voice actress. Meanwhile, old skool Shao Khan or MKX Shinnok felt lime a fight.

Honestly, MK11 being my first game back to the series (hadn't played since MK3) Kronika just felt extremely disappointing compared to the bosses I remember and she was more frustrating to fight than fun.

I think they wanting to make Kronica some kind of mastermind above all others just showed how failed the writting was. You cant just make a character overwhelmingly stronger than the good guys, a mastermind and expect to make the good guys win beliavable

You just described the Reapers from Mass Effect with your idea of the ideal Kronika! I loved it! xD (too bad they messed up the reapers at the end of the third game)

"she doesnt use brute force" *summons a t rex to stomp you with brute force*

Yeah, I never got the villain writing trope of "Oh, she's done this scenario 100,000 times, you are nothing to them", when in truth it just makes them seem even more pathetic that they somehow failed that many times, plus also makes them look stupid for falling for an obvious trap or ploy, I mean I much prefer your idea that she just feeds off everyone's souls slowly, then resets time to do that again and again.

Every time I do a classic tower, Kronika spams her teleport....we're talking like 4 to 10 teleports before I get a chance to land something

I don't know about her being easy... In the story mode, sure. But, on an arcade ladder on max difficulty, she's a nightmare!

They should've went with Raiden being the villian, rev liu being a big threat and Kotal preparing for a MK tournament like their MKX endings were Obviously they had an idea but I guess the reception with certain elements cause them to change course...similar to 343 with halo4s story and halo5s story and how it just said Fuck all to h4

I agree heavily when it comes to initially fighting her. Her attacks are vague and you can't tell how big of a hit box they have or what type of block won't work against it. It really made her annoying to fight.

How to balance kronika and make her a villlain that makes sense: 1:she can only stop/reverse/speed time with the hourglass 2:keep the other powers. That's it. She ain't the strongest character in all fiction anymore and still a big treat to our heroes

The other thing that kinda pisses me off about Kronika is how she makes the other villains kinda look like idiots for following her under the logic that she’ll just make everything better for everyone who sides with her (nevermind the fact that there’s a few people on the same side who’d eventually come in conflict with each other). Plus it never feels like Kronika is much of a threat throughout the game. With Shao Kahn 9 he’s the emperor out Outworld and Konquerer of realms. Anyone who works under him does so either because he’s a ruler or because he’s a brute who won’t hesitate to kill you if and when he feels like it. He threatens to merge Earthrealm to Outworld, and it’s believable because not only has he done it before but he seems like someone who will make good on that threat one way or another or to his dying breath, as most dictators do. Clear and present danger. Shinnok has followers mostly in part due to Quan Chi having everyone’s souls from the aftermath of 9. No one except Quan Chi really has any good REASON for bringing back Shinnok, but they’re spiritually enslaved to Quan Chi, and by extension Shinnok anyways. It’s less that anyone has a reason and more like a justification for Shinnok’s following. He threatens to destroy Earthrealm (I think?) and eventually the Elder Gods. While we never really see if he can do the second part (we just have to take the writers’ word that he can), he does successfully wage war on Earthrealm and almost wins at the beginning of the game as well, as well as getting even closer at the end of the game. Clear and present danger. (Okay maybe not “present”…) To a lesser extent Kotal Kahn is a respectable and charismatic leader who puts the safety of his realm above all else. Unlike Shao Kahn, where people only serve him for his power (out of fear or otherwise), it feels like people followed Kotal because they genuinely liked him. He’s not as much as a threat overall like Shao Kahn or Shinnok but I don’t think he was meant to. (Really only opposed the heroes due to having his opinion of Earthrealmers soured several times… and a misunderstanding brought from distrust which itself was brought from said soured opinions.) Kronika on the other hand… yes she can control time, which supposedly means she COULD theoretically give everyone the ending they want. But the thing about that is several characters side with her believing that she’ll help them come out on top. While it’s believable being that she can control time, there’s nothing that backs that up so it feels like an empty promise from the player’s perspective. Same with her supposed control over time. We see that she can freeze time and merge timelines together, but that’s really it. She rarely comes across as personally threatening for any reason and as a result she loses so much in story presence.

i was actually really excited for kronika and enjoyed her for the most part until her crown existed

2:30 as an old school player of the Mortal Kombat series she sounds like a completely standard boss: nothing normal works and you have to exploit the AI to win. Heck, with the floating, no falling, and summoning other characters she sounds (mechanically) like a copy of the Shang Tsung boss fight in MK1.

Love these videos. Keep making videos like this.

The problem I have with the villains with mk, there’s always “one behind the scenes who pulls the strings” who is worse than the one before. Also I thought they were trying to restore shinnok, she could just rewind time before he gets his head chopped off.

5:05 like it is really cool and inventive that she uses all these cool powers instead of brute force, but that’s a problem in and of itself with a series that’s always borrowed and used real life martial arts, this boss literally isn’t a fighter. Imagine her being playable, animation wise she just doesn’t fit in with the rest of the cast and established way of fighting. She only works as a boss, and nothing else

Ok the whole “reset time” to eat the timeline is a pretty damn good idea

They've done every possible thing they could do with the characters to the point where they had to completely start over in the next game, remember when Mortal Kombat was about a tournament? What the hell have they turned this game into?

The biggest gripe I have is that her rewind attacks deal damage. If all it does is rewind your character back a few seconds, why is there suddenly damage that wasn't there before you were rewound? It already puts you at a huge disadvantage since it freezes you for a few frames, adding damage just feels cheap.

I also think that making her stage change over time whenever she changes periods would be neat, imagine she transports you to the ocean of pirates and a few galleons shoot at you, then a kraken pops out and grabs you, slamming you against a smaller ship breaking it in half. Then it changes to a western stage, cowboys and native Americans fighting in the background and you getting hit by some of the attacks, then a train has a chance to hit you leading you into a stage in the future with some spaceship stuff that fires at you. I dunno, I'm just spitballing, but using time travel and time stuff for a end boss has vast potential.

Kronika in one sentence: Super overpowered but INCREDIBLY dumb.

I'm pretty sure Liu Kang resetting history at the end of MK11 was NetherRealm Studio's way of Thanos snapping away the last 5 years of terrible storyline decisions.

Fighting Kronika Was The Worst Boss Fight I've Ever Played !

Wish I knew that you could perma stun lock her. First playthrough I was biting my nails for the win, atleast 3 cracks on hard to get it. I rely so heavily on kombos it was truly hard to bring it back to basics and get her.

You don’t know how long I have waited for this video

Time based villains are always such a hassle to write you write yourself into a hole because now you gotta have that same villain lose to the heroes in a way that makes sense. And it just doesn’t work.

6:31 I never knew gargos from killer instincts name was actually argus

do you have the intros as separate clips? lol they are so good

in your intro 1 of the charaters in your intro looks familiar to sub-zero cool feature keep up the good work

"But no she just sucks at her job & keeps resetting things" Holy shit!! Kronika is just NRS??

I was surprised when you forgot to mention onaga when you were talking about all of the MK bosses in the series

I can't agree with you more on this. I've had these same thoughts for about as long as this game has come out. Good video.

It’s the fact that Kronika didn’t need to involve anyone. No one has access to her Hourglass. Shang Tsung’s island was abandoned so there was no one to stop her claiming the crown. The only reason she’s stopped is because of her own doing - breaking time and bringing forth both Liu Kang and Raiden who would go on to defeat her. When your plot makes no sense, well… you PLOT makes no sense.