It reminded me of Drifters, but in reality is subpar to it on every level. Well, maybe except music, although it often does not match the picture. Granted I've watched 1st episode and then fast forwarded the rest, to see that low quality is low throughout.
Art style is incredibly inconsistent. Pacing sucks (even Naruto/Bleach did not have such long fights, even though some could take a dozen of episodes). And in general it's just bad design.
You see, the general premise could be interesting. Tournament between gods and outstanding warriors sounds fun. But... There is no character development here at all. I was not a fan of God of Highscool, but it was much better in that regard. Mortal Kombat's plot is way better than this.
I think the main problem is the pacing itself. They have fights, that are incredibly slow, and those fights are interrupted by memories to tell us about characters, but we do not care much about them, we want a fight. Because there is nothing here.
Think about it: Mortal Kombat never starts with just fights. There is always something mundane going on, first, that tells us something about the fighters. Games always had some way of introducing a new character through events not directly related to fighting. There was interaction between fighters, something that showed why they differ (or not).
Same with Naruto/Bleach: fights were escalation of a conflict. And even flashbacks during those fights were placed exactly when they were needed: when nearing defeat a character was trying to find his/her strength to go on.
You will not find anything like that here. There are some character interactions, but they are minimal at best. And flashbacks are other characters telling something about the fighters, not something the fighters remembering.
Netflix missed the point of why people like to see fights: personal stakes. We do not want to see a random fight (most of us and usually, at least). We want to see a fighter's reason to fight. Not "to save the world", but his/her personal reason to do it. And even if it's to save the world - why this particular fighter thinks it's worth saving. We want to see the ideals being on the line.
It's not here. This one is shallow.
