Book Review - Mortal Kombat: Flawless Victory

The Artbook Collector
2 days ago
6 min read

Updated: 2 days ago

October 20th 2025

Mortal Kombat has been an iconic series for over 30 years, delivery gloriously violent finishers and a huge roster of fighters, all while being one of the cornerstones of the genre since its launch. From arcades to modern consoles, the series has seen many changes in gaming and visuals is very much one of them. That of course comes with a lot of art. some of which can now be explored in Mortal Kombat: Flawless Victory, a new book from Insight Editions and developer NetherRealm Studios!

The 304-page hardcover book is out on October 21^st 2025 and has joined the collection, so I can give you my thoughts on whether you should be shouting “Get over here!” and adding it to your shelf, or if you should mercilessly tear out its pages before kicking into oblivion.

Build Quality

Mortal Kombat: Flawless Victory: A Visual History of the Iconic Series, to give it its full title, comes in at a good size of 24.5cm x 33cm with 304 pages. It’s a good-sized book as you would expect and that’s great. The pages are thicker and glossy too, as seen in the majority of artbooks.

The cover is pretty basic, but does have embossed lettering which is nice, but I still consider it a downgrade from the placeholder which you can see here. I think it could have been more than a spot varnished logo, but at least the red letters pop as intended. The binding is also fairly tight, there’s no flex in the backing to help pages lay flat, but that’s actually not too much of an issue as you will see in the Use of Space part of the review. Overall, the quality here is very good.

Content

There’s a lot to cover in a Mortal Kombat artbook, it could easily be multiple volumes to highlight all of the characters and stages, but the approach here is not to include everything, but focus on selected elements and fighters to give fans an in-depth look, rather than just a catalogue of content. Some may be disappointed that their favourite character was left out, but I think this was the best way to handle it and I like what they included.

The early part of the book has a spread on the fatalities, giving details on how they have changed with some artwork and is a fun way to start. After that it hits its stride with a history of the series by going through the games in release order, from the original Mortal Kombat to Mortal Kombat 1. Each of these details the games, stories, and gameplay innovations through interviews and insights, followed by stages.

The text gives details on what it was like working on the game, the technology at the time, what they added to the sequels, how the visuals changed, and more. This is mostly done with interviews from the team behind the series, such as Creative Director at NetherRealm Studios Ed Boon, John Tobias co-creator of Mortal Kombat, and Senior Artist John Vogel. There isn’t a huge amount to read on each game, the book would be huge if there was, but it’s enough to get some interesting details and keeps the book flowing well.

Moving on to the art itself, this is a fantastic mix of art styles and techniques from over three decades of game development. Here you will find screenshots, paper sketches, early colour concepts, 3D models, and modern digital art. I always love seeing art at different stages, but that also applies to different eras too, so I enjoy seeing this variety a lot. Insight Editions have helped elevate the art with an exceptional print quality that especially helps with the modern and more detailed concepts.

The art for the stages is interesting as it changes a lot from the early games to the modern games throughout the book. The early games used paper sketches and art with less to showcase, possible due to them being hard to find and feature. As the book progresses and you get to the modern games, much more is shared, with spreads of digital concept art for the stages and assets. It’s a great look at not just the designs, but how the materials and approach changed over 30 years.

The interesting choice was to not separate out the characters, but to highlight 2-4 ‘Featured Kombatants’ for each game. As mentioned, they can’t show over 100 fighters, but instead use 36 with 1-4 spreads each. The reason this works is that you get to see the mix of art styles and techniques on one page, as well as character backgrounds. Featuring all the fighter would have given them a couple of pieces of art with no details, which would have been a bad choice.

For the characters chosen, which includes Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Johnny Cage, Baraka, Goro, Raiden, and many more, you get story backgrounds that cover the various eras and how they changed over time. It also features a list of their finishers and the games they were used in, with some of them getting a fun look at the concepts for a finisher that can be as simple as stickmen images. These pages are the highlight for me, with a look at their visual development and changes, as well as some incredible concepts from the more recent games that can be used in bigger sizes to highlight the finer details. Don’t expect a huge amount of keyframes though, the spotlight is very much on the character and costume design.

The book ends with a look at Other Realms, which covers movies, a live tour, comics, TV shows, and merch. I like this inclusion because it highlights the series’ legacy across more than just games.

Credits

Sadly, there are no artist credits to be found in the book. It does feature 17 chapters for different games, not to mention the spin-offs that are highlighted in places too, so it’s likely that hundreds of people contributed to the art and 3D models seen here. However, it would have been nice to see a list in the back or front with their names if they know who did the work featured.

Use of Space

Mortal Kombat: Flawless Victory does a brilliant job of making the most of the space provided, it fits a lot in and doesn’t waste the pages. Given that it covers so many games, it would be a big issue if they still didn’t fill the book, so I’m happy to say they fully succeeded here. The layouts are simple and very readable too, with a simple background that looks like marble with small cracks. Less is more when packing a lot in, so I like the designer’s approach.

As mentioned up top, the binding is a little tight and if you own other artbooks, you know this can spell disaster for double page spreads. The reason this isn’t an issue here though, is that outside of a title page at the start, only one smaller image crosses the centre fold (seen below), almost entirely avoiding the issue of image loss in the fold. I like to see a large image that takes up 2 pages, as I’m sure others do too, but here that would likely have been problematic, so I’m very happy they opted to not include them.

Value

The book has an RRP of $60/£45 which is unusual, because typically it would be $50/£45, giving people in the UK a lower price. Perhaps this is based on the current issues regarding tariffs and so is worth noting. At $60, it is on the high end, I’d have expected a book like this to be $55 at most.

As always though, deals are always coming and going on artbooks and at the time of writing this the day before release on Amazon, it is down to $50 in the US and 40% off in the UK at £26, a huge reduction. Of course, you can shop around or check your local Amazon if located elsewhere to find a deal. $50 or £40 I would say is a fair price, so anything there or below is great.

Verdict

Mortal Kombat: Flawless Victory is great look back at the series and the art that helped give it life, so you can then take it from other players with brutal finishers. It can’t include everything, but the choices of what it does showcase, along with various art styles and techniques, makes it a worthy edition to the shelf of fans. The art from the teams behind the series is superb and Insight Editions have given it the presentation it deserves. Whether you are a long-time player, new to the series, or perhaps an artist looking for some good character references, this is a book I would be happy to recommend!

If you like the previews and review and wish to add Mortal Kombat: Flawless Victory to your own shelf, you can do so here;