Dead or Alive a Casual Retrospective Part 2

Dead or Alive 1 was rough. Innovative and unique in a lot of ways, but rough as all hell to play. I certainly didn’t enjoy it, but I was looking at it over 30 years after it came out. At the time it came out it was a decent fighter that reviewed well and sold enough to save Tecmo from bankruptcy. Naturally the only thing to do next was to make a sequel. With Itagaki and his team reuniting, their goal for this was to make the ultimate fighting game. Something that would not only play well and push the genre forward but also be the most visually impressive fighting game at the time.

To that end they would develop the game on the Sega Naomi arcade board. This allowed them to have much more detailed characters and stages since the Naomi was a much more powerful piece of kit that the Sega Model 2 the first game ran on. Aside from making the game look better, the Naomi also allowed the designers to have larger stages with far more interactivity than any other fighting game at that time. Itagaki wanted the game to emulate the look and feel of a martial arts movie. These kinds of interactable stages were part of that plan.

The second part was getting actual martial artists to come and do the motion capture. When they said they wanted this game to be the most visually impressive fighting game they meant it. They didn’t just want the game to have high graphical fidelity, they also wanted the animations to be as smooth and realistic as possible.

They would also see several tweaks to the gameplay system, but I’ll hold off on those. Don’t want to give too much away for the review. Point is they wanted this game to be bigger and better than the original as all good sequels are.

Dead or Alive 2 released in arcades in 1999. One year after the PlayStation port of the first Dead or Alive. Which, as I said last time, was a weird hybrid of the original and the sequel. Almost serving as a preview of it. It was also in 1999 that Itagaki’s team would be named Team Ninja. This was done for two reasons, the first was to give Tecmo more of an identity, and the other was to make it clear to consumers that this was an elite team within the company.

This was a fairly common practice in Japanese studios in the early 2000’s. You had the likes of Team Silent in Konami who did all the Silent Hill games on PS2, while Capcom had Clover Studios behind Okami and Viewtiful Joe. These names on their own would gain a cult following and be critically praised even if the main company name was never mentioned. Team Ninja would see a similar reputation and it started with Dead or Alive 2.

As for why it was called Team Ninja, well that was to make it sound mysterious. According to a behind the scenes video by G4TV, Itagaki likes to keep an air of mystery about his games. Often not allowing anyone into the office to see what they were up to. Or it could just be he has a thing for ninjas given how many he puts in his games. Who can say.

Dead or Alive 2 would help put Itagaki and Team Ninja on the map. It received near universal acclaim when it released in arcades, and its subsequent home console ports received equal praise. Even to this day it is in the top 10 best rated fighting games on Metacritic. At the number 10 spot yes but that’s still impressive. It even beat Marvel vs Capcom 2, which is insane to me given that is one of the most regarded and beloved fighting games of all time. I guess that’s what happens when your home console ports are richer in content.

You may have noticed that I said ports, plural. That’s because Dead or Alive 2 has a fuck ton of different versions. Not counting rereleases on digital platforms, there are just about 10 versions of this game. To put that in perspective, if we don’t count any modern remakes, there are only 6 main versions of Street Fighter 2. A game infamous for the number of different versions it had.

There’s actually a lot to cover here so I’ll try to get through them as quickly as possible. First you have the original arcade release in 1999. This was the base game that all other versions are based on and had 12 playable characters, a story mode, time attack and a survival and team attack mode that had to be unlocked via a code. Kind of cool to see an arcade game with different modes like that.

This was then followed by an arcade update called Dead or Alive 2 Millennium that added new costumes and had modes previously locked in the arcade mode being unlocked by default. This version was the one most of the home console versions were built from. The first being for the Dreamcast which had all the content of the Millennium update as well as the standard training and vs modes.

Though this version would have some gameplay differences such as a simplified hold system it is largely identical to the arcade. This is due to the Naomi hardware being essentially an arcade version of the Dreamcast. This made it very easy for the team to port the game over to the system.

The Dreamcast port released in February 2000 in North America, April 2000 in the UK and September 2000 in Japan. While I wouldn’t normally specify release dates like that, it’s important to do that here since all three regional versions had their own differences.

The strange thing is how late the Japanese one was. The European one is actually fairly standard for the time, having to translate into a bunch of different languages meant games in the region were often released later. But a Japanese developed game releasing later than the others? That is strange.

There is a reason for the delay though. The PlayStation 2 was launching in Japan around that time and Tecmo wanted to be in on the initial hype. So the idea was to get a PS2 port ready for its launch. Unfortunately, that port would wind up being a bit of a trainwreck. Itagaki found it difficult to work with the PS2 architecture and knew he wouldn’t be able to finish the game on time. He requested the game be delayed until he was satisfied with the final product. But Tecmo wasn’t having that and released the game as planned.

Despite featuring new stages and costumes, this port was not well received by fans or critics. It looked worse than the Dreamcast version being much more aliased due to having different rendering software, and the game was a buggy mess that was prone to crashes. It was almost like the game wasn’t finished, which is exactly the case.

During development someone went up to Itagaki one day asking for a copy of the game to playtest. Itagaki gave him a copy only for that the guy to send it off to production to be printed. They literally released an unfinished prototype just to get the release date they wanted. Who do Tecmo think they are? Warner Bros.

Itagaki himself was devastated with how the port came out. He wound up in a month-long depression, like full alcoholic levels of depression, and genuinely considered leaving the industry. This event would also cause a rift between Itagaki and the higher ups at Tecmo that would only get worse as time went on.

Since the European Dreamcast port would come out only a month after the Japanese PS2 release, it included the additional outfits from that version. It even included costumes based on the Shadow Man series since it was published by Acclaim in the region. And since Acclaim owned Shadow Man it was a bit of fun cross promotion. Even back then fighting games had the weirdest crossovers.

Anyway, the Japanese Dreamcast version was largely an apology to Japanese players disappointed with the PS2 release. It acted as a Limited Edition and featured a lot of new content. It had two new characters, though only in VS mode, a lot of unlockable new costumes, new modes including an online mode making it the first game in the series to have that feature, and a gallery mode featuring renders of all the characters.

Dead or alive 2 would later be brought to the PlayStation 2 in the west via Dead or Alive 2 Hardcore, or DOA2: Dead or Alive 2 in Europe. This was the most substantial update to the game yet. It had more moves for each character, more new stages and outfits, the game speed was faster, it had an item collection mode with a ton to collect, it had an English voice cast though it wasn’t a great dub admittedly, and the entire game ran at 60fps whereas the Dreamcast version dropped to 30 during cutscenes.

It’s essentially the completed version Itagaki wanted. It released in North America in October 2000 as a launch title for the console. Meaning if Tecmo had simply let Itagaki cook they both could have gotten what they wanted. Executives shooting themselves in the foot yet again.

This version would later release in Japan under the name Dead or Alive 2 Hard*Core. It’s largely the same but it has a new turbo speed option and, you guessed it, more new costumes. I’m sensing a pattern here.

That was a lot of fucking versions. Even the ports released on the same console are different in depending on the region. Granted, most versions are pretty similar with only slight differences, the only major update is Hardcore, which is the one that was on the Metacritic list I mentioned.

But that isn’t the version I’m reviewing. Instead, I’ll be looking at the final version of Dead or Alive 2 that was released, Dead or Alive 2 Ultimate. This version was part of the Dead or Alive Ultimate bundle that was released in 2005 on the original Xbox that I mentioned in part 1.

Unlike Dead or Alive 1 Ultimate though, this isn’t a straight port of the original Dead or Alive 2, but a full-on remake built in the engine of Dead or Alive 3. It features updated visuals, some gameplay tweaks taken from 3, a whole new set of stages with some having slopes as a new environmental hazard, and a new playable character. Oh and new costumes, of course.

While this version didn’t review as highly as Hardcore, it is generally considered to be the best version of the game by fans. Sort of. I see people go back and forth on which one is better. Most I’ve seen lean towards Ultimate, but there are others that swear by Hardcore.

Given the changes Ultimate made I was initially hesitant to review it. I thought it might be best to find Hardcore on PSN and review that since it’s closer to the original. However, as far as I can tell, outside of having better graphics, different stages and Dead or Alive 3’s movement system, mechanically Dead or Alive 2 Ultimate is almost identical to the original.

And since I’m reviewing all the other Xbox games it makes sense to stick with this version for the sake of consistency. Although, for the sake of the retrospective I won’t talk about the new character that was added in Ultimate. This is because they were originally from Dead or Alive 3 and it just makes more sense to talk about them when they were actually introduced.

But now that we got all that out of the way, let’s finally talk about Dead or Alive 2 and answer the question. Is it truly one of the greatest fighting games of all time? Well, I don’t know if I would go that far, but I will say this, it’s one of the best sequels to a fighting game of all time. Holy shit, what a glow up this game is.

Make no mistake, Dead or Alive 2 is as good as Dead or Alive 1 was bad. Everything that I complained about in part 1 has been addressed and fixed. And I do mean everything. The controls? Buttery smooth. The piss poor throw system? Not only is it fixed it’s now a corner stone of the games combat system. The graphics? Ok, that one is a given.

Actually, why don’t we start with the graphics. One thing I knew about Dead or Alive going in, beside the preoccupation with bouncing bazongas, was the series is famous for its visual fidelity. For a long time Dead or Alive was considered something of a benchmark when it came to graphics in fighting games alongside Virtua Fighter.

Dead or Alive 1, I’ll admit, was visually stunning for its time, but after playing Dead or Alive 2 I now see why the series has the reputation it has. Even by today’s standards, Dead or Alive 2 looks stunning. Or rather Dead or Alive 2 Ultimate looks stunning.

This is where reviewing the Ultimate version becomes a problem. I’m not looking at the original Dead or Alive 2, I’m looking at Dead or Alive 3 since that is the engine that Ultimate was built on. For retrospective purposes, it does feel strange praising the visuals here since I’m almost spoiling the next game. It also makes it hard to judge the game as a graphical leap since I’m jumping ahead by 2 games, technically 3 since Ultimate came out a few years after 3. But I do have access to footage of the original, thank you YouTube, and based on what I can see it looked fantastic.

The stages were massive, the character models were detailed with impressive animation, and the special effects looked great. It’s probably the best-looking 3D fighter on the Dreamcast, even more so than Soulcalibur. Had Soulcalibur itself not been a massive glow up compared to it’s arcade version I dare say Dead or Alive 2 may have been revered higher than it.

The original was a graphical showpiece, and the Ultimate edition does look better. The more powerful Xbox hardware means the lighting and detail have been upped significantly. The character models and animations were redone to be more realistic. Moving away from the originals more anime inspired art style. Although it still retains some of that here.

I don’t know if I’d still call them realistic. Obviously technology has improved significantly since then and modern games are certainly a lot more realistic in fidelity, art style and animation quality. Whether or not that’s a good or bad thing I’ll leave up to you. But the point remains that Dead or Alive 2 Ultimate may not be as impressive today when viewed entirely through the lens of it being realistic.

Hence why the game keeping some of the stylised anime look was a good call. No matter how far technology advances stylised visuals will always hold up better over time than realistic graphics. It’s why Wind Waker holds up better visually than Twilight Princess. Dead or Alive 2 Ultimate still looks great today thanks to having visuals that were impressive on a technical and stylistic level. With the character animation being a particular stand out. The motion capture here is honestly some of the best I’ve ever seen. It even puts some modern games to shame.

Combine that with a smooth 60fps, and you’ve a visually pleasing package that’s candy to the eyes. The character designs are also much more memorable than they were in the first. This is where they started to get a better idea of how they wanted these characters to look and where most of the characters more iconic designs got started.

The previous games designs were ok, but these ones are more in line with what people expect these characters to look like. For example, Tina went from a brunette to a blonde, and Kasumi’s blue kunoichi outfit that was previously one of her alternates has now become her default look. It should be noted that Ultimate does add some new outfits like Hayabusa’s modern Ninja Gaiden design, but all the originals are still here as alternates.

Speaking of alternate outfits, Dead or Alive 2 Ultimate has a lot, and I do mean a lot of costumes to pick from. The game has so many unlockable costumes it will make your head spin. The boys have a few, but the girls have dozens, literally dozens to choose from ranging from classic designs to costumes so skimpy you want to keep the door closed when playing it.

Full, disclosure, I was originally going to talk more in depth about the fan service here, but this review wound up being so long I’ve opted to cut it out to save time. I had written a lot about it, but I’m actually going to save that for part 3 since there’s a bit of overlap between this and the third game. And I won’t have to go as long with part 3 so I might as well save it for there.

But short version, I don’t think the fan service is problematic. It is very overt, and some of the outfit choices are questionable, but a lot more of them lean to be stylish and cool rather than sexualised, and the outfits are entirely optional even if you do find them objectionable. I find the fan service harmless for the most part.

There is also the CG gallery, but that is tied to the Extreme games and I’m saving talking about those until later. It’ll be more relevant to talk about that offshoot when we get to Dead or Alive 4 because it had a big impact on how people viewed this series and it started around that game. Which was technically around Dead or Alive 2 Ultimate, but I don’t want to get too ahead of myself.

Now that we got that out of the way, let’s get back to the graphics. Basically, the games a visual marvel. Original or Ultimate both look fantastic. You really can’t go wrong with either, even if Ultimate does have a slight edge due to it coming out a little bit later. Even by today’s standards I think both versions hold up remarkably well.

But while I think Ultimate looks better on a purely technical level, artistically you can make an argument that the original does look superior. I do think the differing art styles will appeal to different players. Because of that I can see people preferring how the original looks over Ultimate. But really just pick your poison and rock out to it. They both look awesome for the systems they’re on.

I said the game had a story mode earlier, and I’ll get into the mode itself later, but if you’re expecting big CG cutscenes for it like many fighting games do for their endings, prepare to be disappointed. Sadly the endings, and most cutscenes in general are done with the in-game assets. This is likely due to the arcade not being able to handle CG. But using in-game cutscenes does help show off the impressive visuals, so it worked out ok in the end.

Even the original intro was done entirely using gameplay footage and the in-game story mode cutscenes. Although the Ultimate version does have a big CG cutscene when you boot up the game that goes over the backstory of the first game. Wait, wouldn’t that fit the first game more? I mean it does feature characters introduced in the sequel so it does make some sense to include it here. It just seems a bit disconnected. But whatever, why don’t we have a look at it.

Not a bad intro. The CG holds up and it goes over the story very well despite the short run time. I’ll go over the story in more detail later, I’m not looking forward to talking about Ayane’s backstory. But you may have noticed something in the intro sounded familiar. If you guessed it was Aerosmith’s Dream On, you were not wrong.

Dead or Alive 2 was the first game in the series to use licensed music which would be a running trend for the next couple of games. Incidentally, if you are interested in these old DOA games, I would get them sooner rather than later. Those licenses won’t last forever.

Speaking of which, the original arcade also had a licensed song for its intro, Exciter by Bomb Factory. Unfortunately, Ultimate didn’t have that. The license had run out by then and it had to have a new intro with a new original song. Here have a look at them.

And now Ultimate’s.

I like both intros fine. In game intros aren’t nearly as exciting as a CG one, but they show off the gameplay well enough, and the music is exciting and gets you pumped up. Losing Exciter for Ultimate is a bummer but the new intro song for it is great. Which leads me to my next point, the music rules.

It’s got a very heavy techno/rock sound that was all the rage at the turn of millennia. Which makes this soundtrack oddly nostalgic for me despite me having never played it before. The soundtrack is so of its time it actually it actually took me back to it despite me having no memory of it. That’s amazing.

I know calling it “of the time” could be seen as an insult, but I don’t mean it to be in this case. It’s like calling a badass hair metal song of its time; you call it that because it’s clearly a product of when it came out, but it’s still an awesome song.

The tracks here are upbeat and energetic which helps add to the intensity of the fight. Each track is tied to one of the characters. Despite characters not having their own stages. That is a bit weird, normally the music is tied to the stages in these instances. But since each character has their own theme, it means the music helps add to the characters personalities. I recommend giving the soundtrack a listen some time. It’s good stuff.

The Ultimate version even includes new remixes of the tracks, but they only play in one stage of the game. There’s no toggle to switch between them either, but at least you can listen to them in the games sound test.

The whole presentation is great. My only real issue is the story mode cutscenes often feel restrictive because they’re stuck using the in-game graphics. But even then they do a lot with those restrictions. Whether visually or audibly, Dead or Alive 2 is a treat. It really showed that Team Ninja were able to push the limits of what games were capable of visually.

Which brings us, at last, to the gameplay. Like last time, why don’t we start talking about what the game offers in terms of content. The various gameplay modes and the like. The last game was lacking in this department. It just didn’t offer much for the player to do and what it did have was standard and repetitive. Well, I’m happy to report that Dead or Alive 2 is much more robust package.

First, let’s go over the returning game modes. You’ve got Story Mode, which is essentially the games Arcade Mode variant, Time Attack, Survival, Versus, Sparring, which is Training Mode that I forgot to mention last time and finally the Online mode. But since this is a 20-year-old port of a near 30-year-old game the online doesn’t work anymore, so you can just ignore that one. On the surface these modes are very similar to the modes in the last game. But they’ve made some clever tweaks that make each a lot more interesting.

Story mode, as I said, is this games Arcade mode. You fight through a series of opponents with a final boss at the end. However, since this mode is a lot more focused on, well, the story. Each character has their own little narrative arc with rival battles, cutscenes and even an ending that wraps everything up. By today’s standards it’s nothing too special. It’s not quite as flashy as the big cinematic story modes we have in modern fighting games, but for its time, it was a damned impressive mode.

Keep in mind, fighting games didn’t put a lot of focus on the story back then. The most you’d get is a character ending and maybe an introductory cutscene if you were lucky. But Dead or Alive 2 was one of the first to actually show more of the story through the gameplay.

It had unique interactions between the characters that help flesh out their personalities and relationships. The only other fighting games at the time that put this much emphasis on the story were Street Fighter Alpha 3, Rival Schools and King of Fighters 97. Even Tekken wouldn’t do this kind of Story Mode until Tekken 4 a few years later. So Dead or Alive 2 was one of the trailblazers that started the trend of having story related content in fighting games.

There is one major problem with Story mode though, a lot of it is lacking context. If you don’t know the character backstories going in you can get a little lost with what exactly is going on. This was at a time when developers relied on the manual to give more background of the plot. I miss game manuals man; it’s an art form lost to time.

The cutscenes are also very short and lacking in a lot of detail. You can tell this was an arcade game since the cutscenes were clearly designed for that environment. You can’t stand around watching this, we need you off the machine so the next guy can come in and drop £50 worth of change on this thing.

It isn’t too hard to figure out what is going on, but I would recommend looking up some character bios to get the gist of things. The bones of a great Story Mode are there, it just needs to have more explanation on the character motivations and longer cutscenes for more detailed interactions. Things that will hopefully be addressed in the sequel.

On the gameplay side it is a much better experience. It’s far less repetitive than the first game. Fights are now random, aside from the rival battles and final boss which are always the same, so each run is different. Combine that with each character now having their own story, and I don’t mind going through it multiple times. If anything I look forward to it. I want to know more about the characters, so I’ll gladly jump back in.

Interestingly though, Story Mode doesn’t have rounds. They’re all single round matches with the health bars are set to be longer by default. It makes every Story mode run super short. Which I don’t mind since it means I can move to the next character faster, but the short length does mean you can get through everyone’s story in an hour or two. I know that sounds bad but trust me the other modes and unlockables more than make up for this.

The next mode is Time Attack, which is a standard speed run style mode. Try to beat 8 opponents as fast as possible. It’s not all that different from Story mode, which is something of a problem with time attacks in general. They’re basically just arcade mode with a timer in most instances. But Dead or Alive 2 does make Time Attack stand out a bit.

For one, there’s no final boss. All you have to do is beat eight standard opponents as fast as you can. Second, Time Attack has actual rounds, making it feel more like a traditional arcade mode, minus the final boss anyway. Ok those aren’t major differences, but they do make Time Attack a different experience from Story Mode. It’s not something I would go back to, but it is fun for a couple runs which is more than I could say about it last time.

Beating Time Attack and Story mode will unlock new outfits for each character, and you unlock different outfits depending on the difficulty. Giving you a reason to replay them. Here’s the problem, you only unlock one outfit at a time. Now that may not sound too bad, it just means you’ll have to play them a few more times, right? Wrong!

As I said earlier, there are a lot of alternate outfits to unlock. With some characters, mostly the women, having up to twenty different costumes to pick from. And keep in mind, you only unlock one costume at a time, and only for the character you beat the mode with. Meaning that if you want to get everything you need to play through the modes several dozen times, on each difficulty, with each character.

It is a grind. Unlocking all the costumes in this is a massively tedious endeavour. Fortunately, there is another way in Survival mode. You know Survival mode, it’s a standard endurance round where you try to defeat as many opponents as possible on one life bar, with each defeat granting you more health. It’s a classic mode.

Well Dead or Alive 2 has one that does it a little differently. The real goal of Survival is to try to beat 100 opponents and get a high score. It isn’t an endless endurance round. You’re score goes up automatically so lasting longer means a higher score. But you can increase the score further by landing powerful attacks, knocking enemies into the wall to get a temporary point bonus, or, more importantly, picking up items that drop from defeated enemies.

These items aren’t just for points. They can also heal you, and once picked up are added to the games Collection mode. There are 66 different items to collect. If you get them all you unlock every outfit and extra the game offers. This includes the CG gallery and the G4TV making of special. Yeah, they added that segment as an unlockable in this. That’s awesome, I love behind the scenes stuff like this.

Sounds like a much easier method to get everything, and it is, but two things to keep in mind. One is that most of the items are tied to specific characters. Meaning you need to play through with all the characters if you want to get them all, including the unlockable characters. Though considering what you unlock this does make sense.

The other thing is that many of the later items will only show up after you’ve gotten the first fifty items, and one of them won’t show up until you’ve defeated fifty opponents. Which can be quite the challenge. And these later items are stupidly rare. It would take me a few tries until one of them showed up. I even beat the 100 opponents with the final boss, and his super rare never appeared once.

This method is still a grind, just not as big a grind as playing through Story and Time Attack repeatedly. Regardless of the method chosen it will take you several hours to unlock everything. Neither unlock method is perfect, but I do appreciate that the game has options for how you go about it.

I’ll give Dead or Alive 2 this, while unlocking everything can be monotonous it does provide a lot of replay value. This was at a time when arcades were dying and fighting games were starting to focus more on home consoles. There was a bigger push around this time to have more robust single player content in fighting games to give players more bang for their buck.

You couldn’t get away with the “it’s the arcade at home” pitch anymore. People weren’t going to fork down 40-50 quid for a fighting game if it didn’t have anything to do. This was the same period that gave us Street Alpha 3’s World Tour mode and Tekken 3’s Tekken Force mode, people wanted a lot more out of there fighting games than just arcade and vs.

Dead or Alive 2 Ultimate’s unlock method might be time consuming, in fact it can get quite tedious after a while, but it does give you a reason to keep playing it. Honestly, we didn’t mind the grind back in the day. We only got a few games a year if we were lucky, so we would play these games over and over to try get the most out of them.

I never grew up with Dead or Alive 2, but I did grow up with Soulcalibur 3. I remember playing that game religiously just to unlock all the characters, weapons and extras it had. It wasn’t tedious to me; I was having fun. I enjoyed the combat and story so much I didn’t mind replaying it, and I got the same feeling with Dead or Alive 2.

And to be honest, I don’t think the grind would be as bad if I wasn’t trying to rush and get everything for the sake of review. It was meant to be experienced slowly over time. Chipping away at it a bit by bit. That’s how it was for Soulcalibur 3. After a day of school, I would go home and play it for a little while to get what I could. When played like that, unlocking things in Dead or Alive 2 really isn’t that bad.

I got a little nostalgic playing this. It reminded me of a time where fighting games did offer this kind  of content. I know these days fighting games have everything unlocked from the start so you can play online right away, which is fine, but I liked unlocking things. It made me learn and appreciate the different aspects of the game. Now everything is unlocked from the start or just DLC and that’s not as fun. Remember that last bit for later in the retrospective.

I used to think having things unlocked from the start was a good thing, and it is if you play online, but if you only play single player like me, you need the unlockables because it gives you a reason to keep playing it. That’s where the longevity comes from. I didn’t think the booby ninja game would teach me that, but wisdom can come from strange places.

We aren’t even done with the modes by the way. There’s even more. The VS and Sparring mode are basically just the standard vs and training modes. Not much to say there, but Sparring does have a cool feature called Exercise that goes through a character’s entire move set so you can learn it. You could see it as a super early prototype of character trials in modern fighters. You can even unlock optional announcer voices for completing them too, so it’s worth going through them.

There’s also watch mode where you can watch the computer fight. I don’t know why you would want to, but it’s there. This was a feature in a few fighting games back then. I guess it was just a way to show off the game’s visual fidelity without that pesky gameplay getting in the way.

To Dead or Alive 2’s credit, the watch mode isn’t just watching an in game fight. I mean, it is, but they use different camera movements and techniques to make it feel more cinematic. It also never ends; they will beat themselves silly until you say otherwise. If this were real life it’d be horrifying. It’s a cute novelty, but one that doesn’t have much staying power. It was cool back in the day but now it’s just there.

Same thing with Battle Record. This lets you battle a computer opponent and then save a replay of the fight. This was a novel concept back then, but pretty mundane and useless now. You can’t even share the replays online so I don’t know what I would do with them. What’s the point of saving replays if I can’t share them online? That’s the one reason to have something like this.

Why don’t we move on to a mode with a little more substances. Like Team Battle. This mode is a classic; you pick a team of up to five characters and try to beat an opposing team. I always loved these modes. Sure, it’s basically just vs mode with more characters, but I always liked how they tested your knowledge of multiple characters at once. They were in a lot of games back in the day but have sadly vanished from modern fighters. I wish they’d make a comeback someday.

Team Battle isn’t the only team-based mode though. There’s also Tag Battle, which is a full-on tag team mode. Most games need to be built entirely around tag team, but here’s Dead or Alive 2 throwing it in as a bonus. The only other game I can recall that did this was Mortal Kombat 9. Yeah, remember when Mortal Kombat had a tag mode? Why did they never expand on that.

The tag system in DOA isn’t as robust as games built entirely around tag team combat, but there are some cool things here. Certain team combinations have unique intros and ending poses for one. Not much but it adds some charm to the game and ties into the characters relationships, which I always love to see. Some teams will even have unique tag throws which are not only devastating but also look cool. It’s fun to experiment with different combinations to see what you can find.

I love this. The fact that they threw this in as a bonus shows just how wild and free game development was back then. No way you could throw this in today as a bonus, it would be the main game or it wouldn’t be there at all.

The best part? Every other mode beside Story and Team Battle has a tag team mode attached to it. Survival and Time Attack both have a tag option, which not only makes them have way more replay value but also makes the grind a lot faster since you can get things for two characters at once. They could have just thrown this in for vs or something, but no. They made it a dedicated part of the game despite it being an extra mode outside of the main 1v1 gameplay.

They were cooking with this game. The number of things they added for players to do dwarf what the first game had. It’s not perfect. The grind to get everything is tiring, and some modes don’t have much longevity, but it’s still a marked improvement over the first game in terms of overall content. But the question is, are you going to actually enjoy playing any of it?

Yes. Dead or Alive 2’s combat is so much better. Right from the moment I started playing I could feel the difference. The game feel is so much smoother this time around. Attacks come out faster and combo into each other far better. Performing combos in the first game felt stiff and clunky. You had to basically rely on short three hit combos to get anywhere in the game and couldn’t get creative with it. It sucked.

Here though, the combos are so much easier to pull off. And it isn’t just due to the attacks themselves, although they come out much faster now, but due to the movement itself being a giant step up from the original. One of the biggest issues with the first game was the movement. It was so slow and stiff and made everyone moved like they were wading through a swamp. Dead or Alive 2 by comparison, is like wading through a calm clean swimming pool.

The walk speed is much faster. I can actually move the character normally without needing to rely on dashes just to make a step, and dashes themselves are much more responsive. Before the simple act of moving around was a hassle, but now it’s as smooth as silk.

Part of that is that the game now has actual 3D movement. Not only does that lead to the basic movement feeling a lot more natural, but it makes this 3D fighting game play like a 3D fighting game. I mean wasn’t the whole point of going 3D to allow larger depth of movement and gameplay. Why didn’t you take advantage of that last time?

I should note that Ultimate does use the movement system from Dead or Alive 3 and not the original. I don’t know how the original felt, but even if it was just a quarter as good as Ultimate it would still be miles ahead of the first game. However, because Dead or Alive 2 wasn’t designed around this movement system it isn’t implemented in the best way.

Side stepping attacks isn’t really a thing here. You can move around the opponent, but if they attack the tracking will catch you unless you are directly behind them. Sometimes it is possible to avoid attacks like this, but only in very specific instances. The better movement is only beneficial to positioning and not much else. Maybe Dead or Alive 3 does it better, the system was designed for it after all, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Just on a base level the game feel is great. Attacks have a lot of weight and impact to them. You can knock people ridiculously far with some attacks, and that always feels satisfying to do. Part of that is the sound design. The sound effects whenever you hit someone have that right amount of crunch that makes you feel every hit, every throw, every impact. When you land a big hit and you hear the sound of the opponent splatter against the wall, oh it’s so good.

But I think you get the idea, the game feels good to play. It’s fun to just start picking the controller up and start hitting buttons. Great, but what about the mechanics. How have they improved. Well in terms of control scheme it’s more or less identical to the original. You have a button for punches and kicks and a third button for holds, the games counter system. But it isn’t a Hold button, instead it’s called a Free button.

It works the same way, it’s mainly meant to counter an opponent’s attacks, but it also works as a way to stop in place if you need to crouch. With the games more freeform movement this helps immensely. I thought it also acted as a block button at first due to the stance you go into when you press it, but no. You still block by simply holding back. I prefer it that way, but it took me a bit to get used to because that stance was throwing me off.

The hold system itself has also been completely overhauled. Holds now feel much more like a counterattack. The first game did have holds like this, but they were command holds that were harder to pull off. Now they’re the standard.

The controls for holds have been simplified to make them much easier to pull off. You now have standard inputs for high, low and middle attacks. Some characters do have more complex holds, but those are the exception and most are simply extensions of the standards holds you get anyway.

The only thing I had trouble getting used to was middle holds. They have different inputs for kicks and punches, forward for kicks and back for punches. Or was that the other way round. See, that’s the problem I can’t remember which was which. It’s also weird that middle holds are like this when high and low holds use one input for both kicks and punches.

But I get why it’s like this. Middle attacks are more plentiful and if you could counter them too easily the game would be broken. You need some kind of guessing game with them to prevent that. I’m not critiquing the game for this because it makes sense for the design of the combat, I’m just saying it takes practice to get used to.

Which I did to an extent. I could never use holds reliably in the first game, but I can use them ok now. Or at least I’m better at it. It’s hard to learn this system in single player due to the AI, I will get to that in a bit, but it’s a much-improved system that is simple to learn but hard to master.

Another major change is that holds do not act as throws. They actually ditched that stupid system and thank God! I hated the way this worked in the first game. Having holds also act as throws was needlessly convoluted and made the normal throws outright worthless. Changing this to make the two distinct was the best decision they made.

This does two things. One, it makes throws work. They have proper feedback now and you can get them out more reliably. Second, it gives throws a purpose; before I didn’t know why they existed because holds did the exact same thing but better. Now I do, it’s to counter holds.

Dead or Alive 2 would introduce the Triangle System. This would be the core of Dead or Alive’s combat going forward. The idea is that the three different attacks counter one another; strikes beat throws, throws beat holds, and holds beat strikes. If that sounds a bit like rock paper scissors to you, that’s intentional.

Itagaki wanted the game to feel like rock paper scissors, wanting to make a game that was also a mind game between players. I mean fighting games are already like that to an extent, but the Triangle System simplifies things a bit to give players a better idea of what counters what.

It’s a good system that adds a lot of depth to the combat. Admittedly it can turn into a guessing game with you simply trying to use the right counter. I’ve heard a lot of competitive players say the Triangle System oversimplifies the gameplay. I’m not equipped to opine on what the game is like competitively, but on a purely casual level I thought it was fine.

And it isn’t like there’s no depth to it. There’s a bunch of different throws and attacks to learn the timing to properly counter for each character, and certain holds are more complex and have a greater utility like Kasumi’s teleport.

But I don’t know how good this is at a high level. Maybe the holds are too good and it devolves into a counter fest. I wouldn't know, but outside of that high level, which let’s be honest most of us don’t care too much about, Dead or Alive 2’s systems are fun. It’s just an enjoyable game to play, and the new combo system is a big part of that.

This is thanks to another new system Dead or Alive 2 introduced, critical hits. No, this isn’t like RPG critical hits where you do more damage, instead they act as a stun. When you land a critical hit it staggers the opponent and allows a follow up attack. This can be a great way to start a combo, but some combos can also lead to critical hits. Meaning you can start a combo, land a critical hit, then start a new combo chain to extend the combo.

This is a big reason why the combos are much better. The critical hits make creating extended combos a lot easier and let you style on the opponent more. It also serves as a great punish tool. Since hitting an opponent while recovering will serve as a counter hit that acts like a critical hit. Some moves will even change properties through this like acting as a launcher. It creates a great flow to combat where you can be aggressive and play the advantage but do it too much and too predictably and crow will be digested.

Holds can also be performed in the middle of a combo. If you simply throw out a combo and it whiffs or gets blocked, the opponent can counter with a hold. This is why you want to learn the critical hits to start combos since they’re faster, and while stunned the opponent can’t counter them.

Meaning if you want to go for longer combos you want to get those critical hits in or go for an air juggle. Which is also something new they added. Because who doesn’t love juggling their opponents like a rag doll. I think it is possible to counter after a critical hit. I saw the computer do it a few times, but I couldn’t quite do it myself. Maybe it’s a cheap AI thing, or I could just suck at it. Probably the latter but who knows.

The Critical Hit and Triangle System would become major parts of the games combat system going forward and helped give the series a larger mechanical identity. This is where the series would start to become what it is known for. The first game did have good ideas, but it felt like a prototype. Like they hadn’t quite figured out what they wanted the series to be yet. This is where they figured that out, and it is a massive improvement as a result.

Almost every problem I had with the first game was addressed here. Going from the first game to this is like going from a rundown diner in a back alley to a high-end restaurant on the pier. It’s such a jump in quality you might get dizzy from it.

But it wasn’t just the first games flaws that were touched up. Even the positive elements of the first game saw marked improvements in the sequel. And by positive elements I mean the stages. Because that was the only thing about the first game that actually held up. They were simple sure, but I liked the idea behind them. The Danger Zone’s added a level of interactivity you didn’t see in fighting games back then, and they were a lot of fun to mess around with.

Dead or Alive 2 takes the intractability of those old stages and runs to the fucking mountains with it. These are some of the best fighting game stages I have ever seen. Ignoring the visual spectacle many of them offer the level of interactivity here puts most fighting games to absolute shame.

Think about interactive stages in fighting games. 3D fighters specifically, 2D and arena fighters operate a little differently, so they aren’t really applicable. In most 3D fighters I’ve played the interactive elements are usually kept to things like ring outs, walls, or if you’re lucky a stage transition. You know where you go from one area of a stage to another.

None of them go too crazy with it. Even stage transitions are usually kept to moving from a top floor to a bottom. But Dead or Alive 2 does go crazy with it. It not only has walls, but other breakable objects in the stage you can interact with. I once won a fight with Tina by giant swinging someone into a stone pillar headfirst. It was awesome. Giant swings are always a fun move to pull off, but adding in an environmental hazard to it is like adding a chocolate dipped cherry on top of a sundae.

Second, the game relishes in stage transitions. Many of the stages have multiple different transition points that take you to different parts of the same stage. For example, The Crimson has two different transition points, one takes you down to the streets and the other to a small, enclosed room. Both of which change the stage drastically.

Not every stage is like this. Some just have one transition point, others have none and some are just simple squared arenas. But a good chunk of them have several different transitions that can make them feel like multiple stages in one. And these stages are massive too. Some of the biggest I've seen in a 3D fighter.

There’s also other hazard to keep in mind. Ice and water cause opponents to stagger longer when knocked down, and ramps can change elevation which affects the height of attacks. Which was a thing 3D fighters were trying to push that never took off. Virtua Fighter 3 and Tekken 4 did it to mixed reception. Dead or Alive 2 is probably the best example, but it was an element that didn’t stick around.

Mind you this was only a thing for Ultimate. The original release didn’t have these things, in fact a lot of the stages in Ultimate saw drastic redesigns from the original. Some had new obstacles and transitions added, while some had them removed and some stages didn’t make the cut at all. Honestly the redesigns are so extensive these might as well be brand new stages.

I can’t opine on the stages in the original. I haven’t played it and can only go with what I see on YouTube. But I will say that I loved the stages in Ultimate. These are some of my favourite stages in a fighting game.

Even the less interactable ones are still enjoyable to play thanks to the wonderful visual presentation. The stages are so intricately designed that these don’t feel like video game stages. They feel like an actual place you happen to be fighting in. it helps add to the feeling of being in a martial arts movie that Itagaki wanted.

The best part of them are the transitions. They’re just so cool to watch and the look painful as hell which only makes them more satisfying. Getting these transitions isn’t easy, it requires good positioning, timing, and a bit of luck, but it’s worth getting them because you get extra damage, and they just look really cool.

Strangely you can’t kill from these. They’ll still be a sliver of health left for anyone unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of these. This doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. From a gameplay perspective it can punish those who were lucky enough to land one. You could land one with the opponent at a pixel health and it will do nothing. That’s just silly.

And from a visual perspective, how the fuck are these people able to survive some of these. The one in Dragon Hill is especially dumb; they fall at least fifty feet, through a glass ceiling and land headfirst on solid concrete and they get up like nothing happened. I know fighting game characters are superhuman but come the fuck on.

Even throws can change depending on where you are when you do them. You can get extra damage when doing certain throws on a wall, and some throws can even help land a transition. The best one being the Hayabusa Izuna drop, landing a transition with that is one of the coolest fucking things I have ever seen. Doing it on Dragon Hill is like a religious awakening.

There’s a lot of things to interact with here. Stages like Dragon Hill and The Crimson are some of the best examples of stage interactivity in any fighting game. The square arena’s aren’t as interesting, but I don’t mind this too much. It adds some variety, and they’re mainly there to give Tag Team more places to fight in since regular stages aren’t compatible with it.

It is a shame you can’t have the tag mechanics and stage transitions, but what can you do. The available tech just didn’t allow them to do both. I don’t think it takes away either though. It just gives tag battles their own flavour and lets the stage transitions go as wild as the technology allows.

I’ve glazed the combat up and down, and not for underserved reasons. It’s a great fighting game that fixes a lot of the mistakes of its predecessor while improving on the things its predecessor got right. But it is not perfect. Some of the originals games stiffness does crop in here and there. Sometimes the movement isn’t as smooth as it could be, sometimes diagonal inputs don’t register properly, it feels much better but there are still issues. None that ruin the game, but they can be minor frustrations.

Some of this could be because the game isn’t designed for analogue movement. You can use the analogue stick this time at least and that does make things much more comfortable, but it feels designed for the eight directional d-pad. It lacks the finer input reading analogue provides.

There is an option to turn that on, but in my experience it didn’t work. It screwed up the inputs and made the game virtually unplayable. I don’t know if this is a problem with backwards compatibility or if the base game had this issue, but it was a problem I had with it. Just stick with the default, it’s easy enough to work around.

But the biggest issue is with the AI. Although it is noticeably better than the first game. I didn’t find it nearly as frustrating as the first game and it did seem better designed overall. But that doesn’t mean it’s good. Like a lot of old fighting game AI it reads your inputs like a motherfucker, and at the same will do the dumbest shit. If you get knocked down and do nothing it will just circle you for no reason. In fact it loves to circle in general which is likely another sign of the movement system not being designed for the game.

It’s wildly inconsistent. No matter the difficulty I picked, it seemed to fluctuate in challenge seemingly at random. Sometimes the AI was so braindead I could beat it with my eyes closed, and sometimes it went into overdrive and demolished me. This can happen in the middle of a match too. It’s like it hits a switch and goes from Chris Farley Ninja to Ultra Instinct Goku.

It also seemed to vary per character. Some characters like Bass weren’t too bad, but characters like Jann Lee and especially Ein were utter hell. Some characters feel like they’re playing 4D chess and others feel like they’re playing Buckaroo by banging their hand on the donkey. I suppose that makes it easy to predict when things will get bullshit, but even then, the inconsistent AI makes it hard to tell when it’s going to hit the “time to kick your ass” button.

It's incredibly frustrating. The worst part is that the AI knows how to abuse the critical hit system. It’ll often combo you with multiple critical hits in a row that you can do nothing about. On the one hand it did teach me how to better use it, but on the other hand can the game let me fucking play please! I would very much like to play.

You could try learning to counter their moves but good luck with that. It’s hard to learn the hold system against another human but it can be done. It’s all about learning your opponent and reading their moves. It’s hard, but it is doable with practice. But trying to learn it against a computer that reads your inputs? It’s like playing 20 questions with Professor X.

The AI is rough. It’s the worst part of the combat by far, but I don’t think it’s that bad compared to other fighters. it’s frustrating at times, but you can learn how to exploit it and get through with some practice. Dead or Alive 2 came out when fighters were starting to get fairer with their AI. It’s not as good as modern AI which are much fairer and much better designed while still offering a decent challenge, but it is nowhere near as bad as some of the early 90’s fighters could get. Those were pure undiluted bullshit.

Granted Dead or Alive 2 Ultimate came out a few years after the original so it’s possible they tweaked the AI to be harder, but I’m not entirely sure. Based on what I know about fighting games though, these games should get less frustrating as the AI improves. So hopefully the next game will be a lot better.

I think that covers the combat. Bottom line, the combat is great. It’s fast paced, controls well, the stages add a lot of interactivity and spectacle to the fights, the hold and triangle system add a level of depth that is still easy for casual players to understand, and the sound design makes every hit, throw and impact feel so, so good.

The only thing left to talk about now is the roster. And while we’re at it, why don’t we talk about the story. I didn’t talk about the story much last time because it didn’t have one. Whatever lore it had was told in the manual, and I didn’t have the manual.

There was no story in game to explain what was going on, so it felt pointless going over it. Since Dead or Alive 2 does have a story now I might as well start talking about it. But before we get into the story and characters of this game, let’s back up and explain the plot of the first game and how they lead into this one.

Somewhere in the mountains of Japan there lies a ninja clan called the Mugen Tenshin. This clan is composed of a set of elite warriors who train to be masters of combat. The clan was once led by a man named Burai who had two sons, Shiden and Raidou.

Raidou was the eldest and set to take over as leader, but over time Shiden began to surpass him in fighting ability and was the one who took the clans teachings most to heart. Raidou on the other hand was a power hungry little shit who had a habit of beating his opponents to near death, even when sparring.

So Shiden was selected to be clan leader instead, which pissed Raidou off something fierce. He challenged Shiden to a duel to determine the leader, and promptly got his ass kicked, and to add insult to injury Shiden went and banished his ass. This humiliation caused bitterness and hatred to swell in Raidou’s soul, creating a dark power that made him more powerful at the cost of what remained of his humanity.

Years later, Shiden married a woman named Ayame and had two children with her, Hayate and Kasumi. Hayate being next in line to run the clan meant he was also set to learn the clans secret technique, the Torn Sky Blast. Which is basically a giant bolt of lightning shot out of the hand. Because ninja in fiction always have magical powers despite that not really fitting what ninja are about.

However, literally the day after he learned the technique, Raidou showed up to learn it himself. Turns out, Raidou had the unique ability to copy the moves from other fighters like a ninja version of Taskmaster, and he had spent the last couple of years travelling the world stealing other people’s techniques. Training himself to steal the move he felt he had been denied.

He then proceeds to beat the living hell out of everyone. No one could stop him, not even Hayate who gets slapped around like a cartoon character. Out of options, Hayate breaks out the Torn Sky Blast, against the guy who can copy moves by looking at them. Great plan dumbass.

It goes about as well as you think. Raidou gets the Sky Blast, and Hayate ends up crippled and put into a coma. This causes Kasumi to leave her village in search of revenge, and this is what kicks off the events of the Dead or Alive series. With Kasumi entering the first Dead or Alive tournament after she hears Raidou is participating.

Now you understand the backstory, for the ninjas, but there’s a bit more going on with the tournament itself. The tournament was run by Fame Douglas and his company DOATEC. That stands for Dead or Alive Tournament Executive Committee, which tells you exactly what they do. The company was set up to run the Dead or Alive Tournament, but that wasn’t all it did.

It was primarily a weapons manufacturer. Which raises the question of why the fuck it was named the Dead or Alive Tournament Executive Committee? What did they come up with the acronym first and wrote the name afterwards. I guess that’s why it held a tournament, it was to make the name make some degree of sense.

Anyway, Fame had a lot of influence and power, which made his role as head of the company enticing. Especially to DOATEC scientist Victor Donovan. Fame Douglas? Victor Douglas? Those aren’t fighting game names; those are Bond villain names.

Victor was the lead scientist in the genetic research section. With his goal to engineer the perfect soldier via genetic experimentation. Unfortunately, Fame didn’t like the idea of experimenting on humans, and he threatened to shut the research down. With Donovan’s life’s work threatened and Fame’s power and connections being too good to resist, it was decided a change of leadership was needed.

So, in the most hostile of takeovers, Fame is assassinated and Donovan took over as the head of DOATEC. I guess the shareholders were perfectly ok with this. Oh who am I kidding shareholders would totally be ok with murder so long as it didn’t affect the stock. But now that he was CEO, Donovan’s sinister plans of world domination are put into full force.

Thus Donovan sets up the second Dead or Alive tournament. The plan? To lure strong fighters together to get test subjects for Donovan’s super soldier program, as well as try to eliminate all enemies that could stop him. But enough of that shit, there’s a tengu running around being a jackass.

I’m not making that up. The plot of the game is that there’s an evil tengu named Bonkostsubo running around for, seemingly no goddamn reason. The whole thing with DOATEC and Donovan doesn’t amount to anything other than they’re holding another tournament. We don’t even see anyone from DOATEC at all in the game. It would be like if in Street Fighter you fought through Shadaloo and in the end the main villain wasn’t Bison but a vampire who was just being a dick. It’s a little random.

But that is the set up for Dead or Alive 2. There is a bit more to the story, but I think it would be best covered by going over the individual characters and their own storylines. So let’s talk about the cast. There’s thirteen characters in the roster, ten characters at the start and three unlockable ones. The unlockable characters can’t be played in story mode, so they have no plot significance, but they are still playable, so I’ll still talk about them briefly. Except for one but you know that already.

For now, let’s stick to the initial ten characters. Starting with series poster girl Kasumi. In the first game Kasumi did succeed in killing Raidou at the end of the tournament. So good job Kasumi, I guess you’ll be heading home now right. Yeah, about that.

So, as it turns out, when Kasumi went off to kill Raidou she did so without consent of the clan. Meaning she is now marked as a Nukenin, a runaway ninja, and marked for death. So Kasumi may have gotten her revenge, but now she can’t go home because she’ll be killed by her own family.  Jesus, that’s a bit harsh. I’m not too knowledgeable about ninja law but isn’t this a bit strict.

It gets worse. After Kasumi defeated Raidou she was kidnapped by DOATEC and experimented on. Donovan saw the fighting potential she had and wanted to use her to create an army of clones so he can take over the world. In her story mode she ends up facing one of these clones, but it isn’t super important right now

But she’s able to escape thanks to Ryu Hayabusa busting her out, and she also discovers that Hayate has gone missing. So she enters the second tournament both to fight back against DOATEC and find her brother.

Kasumi is once again a very beginner friendly character. She has a lot of long easy command strings that lead into critical hits. It is very easy to rack up damage with Kasumi. In fact, I’d argue she’s one of the more overpowered characters in the game. Her basic punch combo ends with a critical hit and this can be comboed into pretty much anything you want.

To give you an idea of how busted Kasumi is, I got the medal in survival mode with Kasumi on my first go. No joke, I beat this things ass without even trying just by spamming Kasumi’s basic punch combo. I was initially planning to cheese it with the boss but turns out I didn’t need to. Kasumi is a great pick if you’re starting out.

From one ninja to another, we have Ryu Hayabusa. He’s entering the tournament to find Hayate and look after Kasumi. Turns out Hayabusa and Hayate are total ride or die bros and with Kasumi being hunted by the clan he wants to look after her as a favour to her brother. Also, he wants to deal with that Tengu guy. Yeah, I forgot about him too. He really doesn’t fit in with the rest of the story does he.

It should be noted that, as far as the lore goes, Hayabusa is the winner of the second tournament. So his story mode is the canonical ending to the game. The other story modes are canon in their own way, but his is the only one with the actual victor being accurate.

In terms of how he plays, well it’s very similar to Kasumi. He’s a decently fast character with a lot of long combo strings, though he’s a lot more technical. Many of his best combo routes and techniques require a bit more execution to pull off. He isn’t too hard to learn though, and he’s a lot of fun to play.

Plus, he’s got the coolest throw in the game in the form of the Izuna drop. I can’t pull it off in the middle of a match consistently, but damned does it look cool. I think Itagaki really liked this thing too because they added it to Ninja Gaiden where it became the go to way of killing enemies. I’m also 90% sure that the Izuna drop’s appearance in this game was the reason it was added to every fighting game ninja’s move set. I can’t prove I’m right, but you can’t prove I’m wrong.

Next why don’t we talk about one of the new characters, Ein. Ein is a mysterious young man with amnesia, and he’s exactly who you think he is. He is Hayate and the game doesn’t even try to hide it. After he got the shit kicked out of him by ol’ uncle Raidou, Hayate wound up in a coma.

During which he was kidnapped by DOATEC. They managed to patch him up and fixed his spine; planning to experiment on him to make him into the ultimate weapon. Now how DOATEC managed to kidnap him in the first place I have no idea. Him being unconscious would have made it easy, but how in the hell did they break into a secret ninja village in the first place. In fact, why was no one guarding. He’s only the future leader of the fucking clan guys. Could someone keep an eye on him please.

But I digress. He eventually broke out before they could do anything to him. He was kept in the same facility as Kasumi so when she got out so did he. He had gained amnesia due to all the crap he went through and wound up wandering around aimlessly until he found himself in the care of a karate dojo where he took up their fighting style.

Since he had no clue who he was, the family who owned it named him Ein. They were German, hence the Germanic nomenclature. Thinking DOATEC might have answers on who he is, he enters the second tournament. Thankfully he does find out his identity and returns to his old self. Spoilers I know, but it’s so obvious Stevie Wonder could see it coming.

Now if you want the best character to start with, go with Ein. He was designed to be a character that could be enjoyed by players on any skill level. While Kasumi does fill that role well, she’s also a rush down focused character while Ein is much more balanced with good defence and offence. He’s got decent speed and combo potential, as well as great command moves that do great damage on their own.

He’s a very well-rounded fighter. He’s not my favourite, but he is a lot of fun. Now Ein wouldn’t return in future entries, outside of Dimensions, but Hayate himself would become a recurring character. Albeit with a brand-new move set. However, Ein’s move set did return but as for how you’ll have to wait until next time.

Alright, since we’ve talked about most of the main players in the story, why don’t we get the last one out of the way and talk about another new character, Ayane. Although technically she isn’t new. She was introduced in the PS1 port of the first game, though I’m pretty sure her inclusion there was meant to be a preview of her appearance here since this game was in development at the same time as that port.

Regardless, this is the first time I’m seeing her, and her story is a doozy. Ayane is another member of the Mugen Tenshin clan, but she’s a member of the Hajinmon sect. They’re essentially the b-team of the Mugen Tenshin; still a group of skilled warriors but they don’t get sent on the big ninja missions like the main clan does.

Growing up Ayane was close friends with Kasumi and Hayate, but she was also ostracised by most of the clan for reasons she didn’t know. I would have blamed it on her purple hair, because come on that’s just weird, but no, it’s much worse than that. So, remember Raidou? Well turns out him breaking in and crippling Hayate wasn’t the first time he attacked the village.

He had also done this years before. During which he did the small, tiny, very low key event of RAPING HIS SISTER IN LAW! Yeah, just got dark all of a sudden didn’t it. And yes, Ayane was a result of that. You know, this series is known for sexualising its female characters, I don’t think making one of them a product of sexual assault was a good call.

To its credit they never show it, the closest you get is the shot of Ayame topless in the intro to Ultimate but that’s about as bad as it gets and it isn’t framed in a titillating way. It’s treat like a serious thing. Which it should be; rape isn’t something to make light of. It’s one of the worst things you can do to another human being.

And they do tie this into Ayane’s backstory and motivations, so it isn’t some out of place detail that derails everything. But it’s still a tasteless thing to add to the story. I think sexual assault can work as a plot point, but it needs to be handled in a tactful way, and I don’t think Dead or Alive does this. Mainly because it doesn’t do anything with it at all. It’s just a dark detail in Ayane’s backstory that could have been something far less fucked up.

You could have made her the result of a consensual affair, and it still would have worked. Hell it arguably would have worked better because it could have had deeper dramatic weight. Making Ayane a rape baby though? That’s just dark for the sake of being dark. It’s the kind of thing an edgy teenager comes up with to make his 7th grade fan fiction deep. And considering that Itagaki dresses in a leather jacket and shades, and his propensity to put massive breasts on every woman he creates he’s probably not far off from that mindset.

Ok, so the sexual assault thing is messed up, but it does at least tie into Ayane’s character. Because Ayame was also the wife of the chief, Ayane was given the Hajinmon sect to cover up the whole thing. Eventually though she does find out from her mother, and this causes her to become extremely jealous and bitter at Kasumi.

They both shared the same mother after all. But Ayane was scorned and shunned for things that really weren’t her fault, and Kasumi was given nothing but love and praise. It’s not hard to see why Ayane is pissed. So, when Kasumi is marked for death, that’s an opportunity she couldn’t pass up. Entering the tournament, she plans to eliminate Kasumi or at least beat her to prover superiority. In short, she’s the rival character of the game. The Sasuke to Kasumi’s Naruto if you will.

While Kasumi is friendly and cheerful to everyone, Ayane is cold and sarcastic. She’s meant to be the opposite of Kasumi in every way; the only thing they have in common is they both have a close bond with Hayate. Hey just because she’s jealous of her sis doesn’t mean she can’t love her bro.

Ayane is by far the breakout character of the game. She’s a massive fan favourite and would go on to appear in multiple other Tecmo games, usually as the main rep for Dead or Alive in crossovers. Surpassing even Kasumi in that regard.

She would also have a major supporting role in the Ninja Gaiden games. People love Ayane and I can see why. She’s a bad bitch who doesn’t take anyone’s shit. Her backstory, while unnecessarily dark, is one of the more interesting ones, and she has a very striking and unique design. I like Ayane a lot. Well, I like Ayane’s character at least. In terms of playing her, I’m not that keen.

She has a lot of fast combos like Kasumi but she’s a much more technical character. Her main gameplay hook is that a lot of her attacks will leave her facing away from her opponent, where she can then attack out of. A lot of fighters can do this, but Ayane’s entire game plan is built around it. I couldn’t figure it out. Maybe the idea is you’re supposed to surprise your opponent with a quick attack out of it.

I don’t know. I’m not a competitive fighting game player so I can’t tell you how Ayane is supposed to be played. She is generally considered a high tier character, so clearly there is a lot to her, but it requires some practice to figure her out. She can be fun though. Her combo potential is high, and when you do learn how to properly move into and out of her stances, she can kick some serious ass.

But if I wanted to play a fast, rush down centered character I’d rather play Kasumi . There’s even another stance character that I like playing more than Ayane that I’ll get to later. I don’t mean to say Ayane doesn’t add anything unique. She does, I just personally don’t get into playing her as much as other characters. But I am in the minority on that one.

Alright, why don’t we take a look at some characters whose stories aren’t as complicated. Let’s start with Tina. She is once again entering the tournament to be recognised by Hollywood, only instead of trying to become an actress, she’s trying to become a model. I guess she figured it would be best if she worked her way up the ladder.

I have to question why she needs to enter a fighting tournament for this though. I mean she’s a smoking hot blonde. Just snap some photos of yourself and send them in Tina, you’ll be a model in no time.

There is one problem that Tina has to overcome though, her dad Bass Armstrong. Bass is also a wrestler and a very overprotective father. So naturally he wants what any good dad wants, to crush his child’s dreams and make them do what he wants. So, he enters the tournament to try and convince Tina to go back to wrestling. Bass is the other character that was introduced in the PS1 port of Dead or Alive 1.

Since these two are both wrestlers they both serve as the trademark grapplers of the game. Bass is the big body wrestler who hits hard but is slow as hell, while Tina is faster and has a bit more combo potential. This is evident by how their throws work. Tina has a lot more chain throws, while Bass is all about big single throws that do massive damage. Tina is the more effective of the two I find, but Bass can be a lot of fun in his own right. You can’t go wrong with big meaty damage.

I will say, I do find Bass to be an odd inclusion. I know that every fighter needs its big body wrestler, your Zangiefs and your Kings and your Wolf Hawkfields, but one thing I loved about Tina was how she bucked the trend of grapplers in fighting games.

She wasn’t a big bulky meathead; she was an athletic playful woman. It was something unique. I suppose Bass doesn’t take away from her, but he does feel like Team Ninja trying to add a more traditional wrestler archetype when I don’t think they needed to. But I guess there are some fighting game niches’ that need to be filled.

Since I did two characters whose backstories are connected why don’t we do two more. Leifang is a young Taijiquan practitioner who enters the tournament to seek out Jann Lee, a bouncer looking to test his skills. This was the case in the first game, but it was never explained why. We’re giving some reasoning in the second, but only a very vague one. So I decided to look into it more.

Turns out Leifang was once rescued by Jann Lee when she was attacked by a group of thugs. But she wasn’t too happy about this. Oh, she was grateful for the help, but she’s also a very headstrong woman who felt like she could handle things on her own. So she learned Taijiquan to prove her strength to Lee.

I’m certain that she just wants to bang him though. There’s some romantic subtext to their relationship that are not hard to spot. I’ll give them credit that it is just subtext; unlike someone like Mai whose entire story is wanting to be with Andy, Leifang and Jann Lee’s relationship is mainly focused on them being rivals in martial arts. Considering this series penchant for fan services, not having an overt romantic relationship shows a lot of restraint.

Leifang is another character with very quick combo strings, but she has an added layer of precision with a lot of her command moves. Meanwhile Jann Lee has a lot of fast critical hits that can give him insane combo potential and powerful command moves like the flying kick. Both are a lot of fun and are easy enough to pick up and play. Jann is still one of my favourites, you just can’t go wrong with a flying dragon kick. He’s a pain in the ass to fight against but playing as him is great.

Next we have Gen Fu who has the same exact story as last time. He’s simply entering the tournament to get money for his sick granddaughter. Although in his story he takes Tengu’s nose as a cure since they can cure any illness. I guess that’s one way of doing it.

I didn’t like Gen Fu in the first game. He was way too hard to play, and the stiffness of the gameplay did him no favours. But in DOA2? Yeah, he’s doing just fine. He doesn’t have many long combo strings, but he has a ton of critical hits that can chain into one another, and he has several hard-hitting attacks that can send opponents flying. He’s still one of the more difficult characters since he’s very execution heavy, but he’s much easier to figure out now and I generally dig him a lot more.

Next is Zack, and he’s also got the same story. He’s just in the tournament to get rich. What can I say, Zack is a simple man with simple aspirations. Dead or Alive 2 would establish Zack as the series main comic relief character. He isn’t serious at all, and he’s just there to have a good time and, honestly, that’s fine with me. Considering how serious everyone else is, you need a goofier character to help add some levity. You could argue Bass does this too, but I feel Zack does it better.

That goofiness carries over into Zack’s move set. He has some of the weirdest looking attacks in the game. He isn’t a joke character though; he can be very effective thanks to his long kick strings. Though he’s considered a low tier character by most competitive players. Still, he’s a fun character in my opinion if only for his over-the-top animations. Well, that and one of his costumes is a chrome Teletubby. No I’m not kidding.

Next up we have a brand-new character, Leon. He’s an Italian mercenary who fell in love with a woman named Lauren while he was travelling along the Silk Road. Unfortunately, Lauren would die of an illness, with her final words being “the man I love is the strongest man in the world”. Now it’s obvious she’s talking about Leon. It’s a sweet farewell to her lover, but Leon isn’t certain that’s what it was. So he enters the tournament to prove he is the strongest to make Lauren’s words ring true.

Leon may be a new character story wise, but gameplay wise he’s basically a reworked version of Bayman from the first game. He’s a big body character that focuses on powerful strikes and chain throws. I’m not the biggest fan of him.

In fact, I find him to be my least favourite characters to play as. He isn’t bad, but I find him awkward. He can’t take advantage of the game’s combo system much due to having few critical hits he can combo into, and his slow speed and attacks make it difficult to get his chain throws off.

I didn’t mind Bass because his playstyle was a bit more straight forward, but Leon requires a bit more precision that I just can’t quite get the hang of. Again, he isn’t bad, and there are somethings I like about him like being able to do an on the ground grab. But if I wanted to play as a grappler I’d rather play Tina or Bass.

Leon was a replacement for Bayman in the arcade version, but Bayman was added back in with the home ports and would make a comeback in Dead or Alive 3. He has a similar move set to Leon, but he does have some slightly different moves to make him a more distinct character. As for what Bayman was up to, he was the one who assassinated Fame and let’s just say it didn’t end well for him.

Speaking of which, our final character is Helena Douglas. The daughter of Fame Douglas, though not legitimately. Fame conceived her with his mistress, a famed opera singer named Maria. Maria is the one who raised Helena, though she would keep the Douglas name, and Fame did financially support them from a distance.

Helena wasn’t close to her dad and had little interest in DOATEC, but his death meant that Helena had a massive target on her back since she was heir to the company. One day while performing opera with her mother, an assassin on Donovan’s orders tried to kill her with a sniper rifle. Maria saw the sniper just in time and jumped in front of the bullet to save Helena, dying in the process.

Wanting revenge, Helena enters the tournament to find the assassin. It’s hinted in the story that Ayane was the one who did it, but spoiler alert it wasn’t her. We won’t find out who it was for a few games. Helena is a very important character to the games story. She has the biggest personal connections to DOATEC and would be a major player in the story going forward.

Helena is a tricky character to learn since she is a stance character. For those not caught up on their fighting game lingo, stance characters main gameplay hook is focused on transitioning into different stances that change up there attacks. If you’ve played Xiaoyu from Tekken, then Helena will be familiar since she plays very similarly.

I’m no good at these kinds of characters, but I will say I enjoyed playing as Helena. She can do some really cool combos when you figure her out. She’s not my preferred playstyle, but I wouldn’t mind picking her up and learning how to get the hand of her different stances.

The last character to talk about is the final boss Tengu. Well in terms of his playstyle he’s a typical overpowered final boss. He doesn’t have a large move list, but he hits hard and has stupidly busted attacks. He’s the one scrubs pick when they want to act like they’re good at the game.

As for fighting him, it’s not great. I don’t mean that he’s hard, he’s pretty mid as far as difficult final bosses go, just that he’s really annoying. He has some obnoxious moves, and every time you get hit by him a blur filter gets put on screen that makes it hard to see what you’re doing. I think the idea is it’s meant to convey how much power he exudes, but it’s more annoying than anything else.

Trust me, I have faced way more bullshit final bosses in fighting games and Tengu doesn’t even crack the top 20. Combine that with the fact that he just comes out of nowhere story wise, and how goofy a lot of his moves are, and I find him to be pretty weak as final bosses go.

The only cool thing with him is that he can change the seasons on his stage. It doesn’t do anything gameplay wise, but it looks cool at least. It was clearly added to be a technical showpiece, it was a cool effect at the time, but it loses its wow factor after you see it the first time. Hell he’ll sometimes do it several times in a row which dampens the effect even more. So his only cool quality is one that he ruins. Congraturation Tengu, you are winner.

But that’s the entire cast of Dead or Alive 2, and I’d say that it’s a pretty good roster. I find that thanks to the story now being part of the game the characters have a lot more personality. I found myself liking a lot of the characters, even if the story mode was lax on certain details I was able to follow along with what the characters were all about just fine.

The different playstyles also offered a decent amount of variety. There were some clone characters, but that’s mostly a by-product of Ultimate adding characters that weren’t initial in the game. When looking at the base roster it’s very diverse. Even characters with similar playstyles have small differences that make them unique.

It’s a good roster. Is it the most balanced? I’m going to say no. Even my scrublord ass could tell certain characters were stronger than others. It all comes down to the critical hit system. Because that is the cornerstone of the games combo system, the characters who can best take advantage of it, Jann Lee, Ein and the ninja’s, are far stronger while the characters that struggle with it like Zack are far weaker.

This doesn’t ruin the roster. The important thing is that the playstyles are varied, and I did have fun with the vast majority of the cast. At the end of the day, I always prefer it when fighting games are fun and not when they’re overly balanced. That’s when they’re boring. And let’s be honest there is no such thing as a balanced fighting game. They’re all busted in some shape or form.

I think it’s a good roster. It’s got some flaws, but it has plenty of gameplay variety and it’s a pretty good size for the time. The rosters for these games get bigger over time, and the characters get remixed in a bunch of different ways. So it’ll be fun seeing how they evolve as this retrospective goes on. Though I don’t think I’ll need to be as detailed as I was here.

And thank God because this review was long enough. I think it’s time to wrap this up don't you. Dead or Alive 2 Ultimate is the supposed best game in the series according to many fans. Now I don’t if I can say that yet, we are only 2 games in after all, but I will say that as a standalone fighting game, Dead or Alive 2 Ultimate is great.

It’s got all you want in a fighting game. Engaging combat, smooth controls, a memorable cast of characters with diverse playstyles, fantastic presentation that holds up really well, and it has plenty of content with how many things there are to unlock. I had a lot of fun with this one, but it isn’t perfect. The single player is marred by a poor computer AI that feels very cheap, and while unlocking things is fun at first, it becomes tedious as repetition sets in.

But those are products of their time. I don’t view these as major flaws, just reminders of when this game came out. In many ways Dead or Alive 2 is emblematic of fighting games of the period. They were pushing the boundaries of 3D graphics, adding tons of single player content, taking the lore and story more seriously. It took me back to a simpler time for the genre that I am beginning to miss.

At the time though, Dead or Alive was riding high. Critics loved it and it was selling well to boot. Now the version we reviewed was the Xbox version that came out a few years after the original, and there’s a reason why it was made.

See, while Dead or Alive 1 and 2 had seen success on Sony and Sega consoles, it wasn’t until the series made its way to Microsoft’s machine that it really started to take off. That was the time when a lot of people would be introduced to the series and when it started to truly carve its own niche in the 3D fighting game space. But that’s a story for next time.