Mortal Kombat X – Tri-Borg Play Style Expectations

We’ve detailed every character to grace Mortal Kombat X, but now the best selling fighting game of 2015 is about to release a batch of four more combatants. Kombat Pack 2 will include Tri-Borg, Bo Rai Cho, Leatherface (Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and a Xenomorph from the Alien franchise.

While we don’t have full details on these characters yet, one will be shown off during the ESL finals later this month. Until that time we can take a closer look at the trailer to provide some general insight into what you should expect from these new characters.

Today we’ll be covering Tri-Borg, who is essentially Sektor, Cyrax and Robot Smoke as a singular character. This is similar to how Jade was included in Mortal Kombat X, as the Mournful fighting style variation for Kitana. While Jade fans may have been disappointed she only got one fighting style, it’s better than being excluded entirely. Robo Ninja fans may feel the same way as it seems as though each character will only have a single variation (compared to three for every other member of the cast). However, it’s a good way to fit in as many characters as possible into an already packed lineup.

It’s safe to say that Sektor, Cyrax and Robot Smoke will each take one variation in Tri-Borg. This means each variation will offer the trademark special moves of the robot Tri-Borg is mimicking. Sektor will have a Teleport Punch and missile projectile attacks, Cyrax will have a net and bombs, and Robot Smoke will have a harpoon and teleport.

The big question here is what normal attacks the three variations will share. Given the amount of time the development team has been working on the four new characters, it stands to reason that each variation should get a decent number of combos and normal attacks specific to that variation alone. We’ve seen characters that have a completely different play style in each variation, but retain most of the normal attacks, and we’ve seen characters who share special moves and have completely different normal attacks and combos.

Tri-Borg will hopefully break the mold and give us a character who not only has unique special moves in each variation, but also a large number of unique normal attacks and combos. That’s asking a lot of the development team, but it would be the best situation for fans of the Robo Ninjas. While it’s the special moves that define each of the characters, having unique combos and normal attacks would help to make it feel as though you’re playing a unique character with each variation, instead of the same character with Sektor’s special moves, or the same character with Robot Smoke’s special moves.

Another question that hangs over the new DLC is how the Cyrax variation will be balanced. It’s no secret that Cyrax was very difficult for the Mortal Kombat development team to balance in MK9. The team adjusted how he played multiple times, but it seemed as though new strategies to make the character extremely good were found with each adjustment. Remove a bomb infinite and he gains a bomb reset. Remove one reset and he gains another.

Looking at how many of the characters changed from MK9 to MKX, it seems that bomb shenanigans won’t be an issue, but we won’t know until Kombat Pack 2 is available. There’s no set release date for the second Kombat Pack, but it should be sometime in the first quarter of 2016. In the meantime be sure to check out our Mortal Kombat game hub for detailed breakdowns of each character.