Dead or Alive a Casual Retrospective Part 6

Before we start the review, I must first address the tragic news that Dead or Alive creator Tomonobu Itagaki passed away on the 16^th of October 2025. While he was not involved in the game we are looking at today, I would be remis if I did not mention his passing given his importance to this franchise.

There is a lot to be said about Itagaki, some good some bad, but one thing that cannot be denied was his passion for creating games in his own unique style. I mean the man was a complete rockstar. The man had all the swagger in the world and whatever he did or said he commanded your attention.

Beyond his unique sense of style though, the man was not lacking in substance. He was a man who wanted to make the best games that he could, and he always had a firm vision of what he wanted his games to be. And while that often meant the games were divisive, there was also no denying they were distinctly his games.

Even if you didn’t like the guy you have to respect the man for being uncompromising in his vision. It is then a shame then that his career ended with a whimper with Devil’s Third, but it’s best to remember the man for the good things he created and how influential he was to the industry as a whole.

From innovating 3D fighters with interactive stages and jiggle physics, to helping lay the groundwork for the modern action game, Itagaki has left a lasting legacy and this medium wouldn’t be the same without him. RIP Itagaki San, you shall be missed.

Well, here we are. The final entry in the Dead or Alive series so far, and possibly the last one for a good long while. I’m just going to be upfront with this one, Dead or Alive 6 was a complete disaster. Not just because of the games actually quality, although as you’ll see that didn’t really help, but because they seemed to make every possible wrong decision they could while making it.

Dead or Alive 5 had done a lot of good for the franchise. Bringing it back into the public spotlight after a few years of absence. The DLC and overemphasis on fan service may have been a sore spot for some, but it was a financial success for Tecmo and at the end of the day that’s all that mattered.

Wanting to capitalise on the momentum, Team Ninja began development on the follow up sometime in 2017 when support for 5 was starting to die down. While 5 had been a decent financial success, it hadn’t quite pulled in the large general audience Tecmo had wanted.

Sure, twelve million downloads is nothing to scoff at, but that didn’t necessarily translate to direct sales. And while Dead or Alive had a dedicated core fanbase, it wasn’t quite as big as the likes of Tekken, Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat. Which were not only selling in the millions but also making big strides in the burgeoning e-sports scene.

While Dead or Alive had always been seen as a fun fighting game, it still wasn’t all that respected by the larger fighting game community. With 6 they wanted to change that, and bring in a bigger general audience that had previously clucked their tongues, stroked their beards, and wondered “what’s to be done with this Dead or Alive?”

Team Ninja wanted that sweet e-sports cash. They wanted to finally be taken seriously and not just be seen as the gooners fighting game of choice. So with Dead or Alive 6 they would double down on the serious direction they took with 5. Greatly toning down the fan service and silly elements to make Dead or Alive a respected fighting game.

As you can imagine, this did not work. Like, at all. Dead or Alive fans were furious. To them it felt like Team Ninja was stripping away a lot of the series identity in order to chase a general audience that had always looked down upon the franchise.

I can’t say the fans were wrong, lord knows we’ve seen multiple franchises lose their identities chasing the general audience dragon, but I can see where Team Ninja was coming from. Dead or Alive 5 had gone way too far with the fanservice. The DLC practices and ridiculously skimpy outfits had irreparably damaged the series image to the wider gaming audience. Toning down the fan service was the best course of action. The problem is they took it too far.

It wasn’t just that they were toning down the fan service, it was like they went out of their way to remove as much of the sex appeal as possible. Kasumi went from wearing a loose fitting blue ninja outfit, to a tight-fitting leather ninja outfit that showed so little skin you’d think she had a skin condition she was trying to hide.

When the initial trailer dropped, fans didn’t like it. The toned down fan service was one thing, mind you this was around the time the bullshit online culture war was in full swing so how much of it was genuine outrage is hard to tell, but it also seemed like a lot of the sillier elements from the franchise were also greatly toned down in favour of a grittier, more realistic direction.

In an attempt to gain back their street cred, Team Ninja had seemingly removed many of the elements that their core fan base liked about the series. People liked the silly stuff; they liked the big stages and sexy outfits. You can’t just get rid of them otherwise you lose what makes you unique.

It would be like if Mortal Kombat got rid of fatalities, or if King of Fighters removed the team-based gameplay or if Tekken got rid of, actually Tekken has too many goofy elements to count, the devils maybe, I don’t know. My point is, those may be elements that turn some people away, but they’re also what makes them unique. They’re the spice that make people interested in them to begin with.

By removing the spice, Team Ninja had made Dead or Alive look like just another fighting game. Sure, it looked good, and it had a grittier look to it, but a lot of fighting games have that. The sex appeal may have been what turned some away, but it was also what drew people to the series to begin. You can’t just remove it.

So, they didn’t. The plan wasn’t to remove it entirely, but to lock a lot of the sexier outfits behind unlock requirements, or as paid DLC so that in the tournament scene only the less provocative outfits would be used.

A flawless strategy, flawless in its stupidity that is. You do realise that tournaments already ban outfits right Team Ninja. Not just for provocation but because some costumes can interfere with gameplay. You didn’t need to lock away the fan service for tournaments since they were already going to do that. It was pointless.

It really felt like Team Ninja wanted to lock out the fan service just so the larger FGC would take them more seriously. Something which immediately failed when they all saw that the game did have sexy outfits, they were just unlockable.

So the real issue wasn’t that the fan service was being axed, it was that it was just being pushed into a corner. They clearly knew they couldn’t get rid of it entirely lest they incur the ire of their fans, so they just tucked it away from view. That way they could masquerade as a super cereal fighting game while also having all the cheesecake they wanted.

This dual approach would famously backfire at EVO Japan 2019. Where during a live stream promoting the game they got two models on stage to do sexy poses and touch each other up. It was apparently too much for Evo who promptly shut the stream down due to not aligning with Evo’s “core values”.

Look it’s easy to mock Evo for that statement, and many people did, but at the same time it’s probably not the best call when promoting your new fighting game that is supposedly going in a more serious direction by having models act out a soft-core pornography during the biggest fighting game tournament on the planet.

In short, they were trying to cater to both audiences and ended up pissing both of them off. The core fans already hated it for losing much of its identity, and the competitive scene wanted nothing to do with it after the Evo incident.

It’s like they were saying one thing but doing another. They were trying to appear like they cleaned up their image, when they were really just hiding it away. It was obvious this was all a shallow ruse to try to court the e-sports scene.

Which only became more apparent when people found out the DLC practices that plagued 5 were coming back to 6 in full force. With the sexier outfits naturally being part of it.

If that wasn’t bad enough, they even tried implemented a microtransaction just to change hair colour. I am not kidding; you had to pay to change a character’s hair. This got such a backlash they removed this system entirely, but the damage had already been done.

All of this wound up killing the games commercial prospects. The fans felt betrayed, and general audiences didn’t care about it ether. Mainly because all general audiences could see regarding the game were the hardcore fans bitching about it. If the Snow-White remake taught us anything it’s that bad publicity isn’t necessarily good publicity.

Critically the game did ok. Not terrible, but not great. it got an average score of 71 on Metacritic so it got a lukewarm but still mostly positive reception, with many of the criticisms aimed at the lack lustre content, especially the Story Mode.

Fans, I mean you can already guess. They hated it. Even today it’s got this stigma about it, as the game they may have killed the Dead or Alive series. I say may because it could always come back. But considering the games commercial performance and aftermath I doubt we’ll be seeing it again for a while.

I’ll get more into that at the end. For now, why don’t we actually start looking at the game itself. To get one of the major positives out of the way, the games presentation is fantastic. Shocker I know, a Dead or Alive game has good presentation. This has been the standard for this series since even the first entry. Say what you want about Dead or Alive, and I certainly have, but the games have always been graphically impressive for their time.

Honestly, I’m not entire sure what I can say about it at this point. The character models are highly detailed, and the animations are still top notch, but those were the case for Dead or Alive 5. 6 does look a bit better than 5, the lighting is better being a bit brighter and more vibrant which really lets the details pop out a bit more, and a lot of the texture work, particularly on the clothing, is a lot more detailed to boot.

I even like the HUD and overall menu design in this. it’s a lot more colourful which makes it a lot more visually interesting compared to the darker, more understated designs of the previous entries. Some may prefer the approach in those games, but I just like this more colourful approach more.

I find it funny that this was originally intended to be a more grounded, grittier take on the series because Dead or Alive 6 is arguably one of the more colourful entries in the series. It certainly has grittier elements, there’s a lot more battle details like sweat, dirt and even damage like destroyed outfits and blood making the fighting feel more visceral. Though you can turn that off if you want.

But it still has a lot of colour to it. I like the new fighter portraits on character select that look like fight posters, there’s still some creativity in the stage design, there’s even one stage that is even more blatantly like Jurassic Park, and even the character designs have a bit more colour and energy to them. Depending on the character that it.

I really like how the game turned out visually, but it’s not as big of a leap from 5 on a visual standpoint. Part of that is because they reused a lot of the assets like the character models and animations and just added a few more details thanks to the new engine.

It still does look better though, except maybe in the facial animations. Those can look pretty rough at times, especially in some of the win poses. Which is weird since one of the main highlights in early trailers was showing off close up shots of the characters in pain. Which is in the game, and in those instances the facial animation is fine, but in a lot of the game the faces look stiff and don’t emote that much.

Admittedly the facial animations in this series were never super impressive or anything. It was never on par with Street Fighter IV or anything like that, but they were perfectly serviceable for what they were. In 6 though, a lot of the time they feel just a little bit off. I don’t know if it’s the more colourful visuals or if it’s just more noticeable to me now that we’re six games deep, but they were more noticeably stiff this time around.

I would still say that the game looks great overall though. My issues with the faces aside I can’t find much fault with how the game looks overall. I even like a lot of the new costumes in this game. They did indeed tone down the fanservice significantly compared to 5, but honestly, I think a lot of the outfits look cool. There are some characters with very lame designs, but I’ll talk about them when I get to the roster.

But yeah, the visuals are great. the audio isn’t as strong but it’s still fairly decent. The fight music is ok with a healthy variety of genres, although I don’t find the music to be as good as previous entries. Except the main menu music, that one is actually a jam.

Luckily, much like in DOA 5, you can unlock music from past DOA titles and mix and match them as you see fit. So even if you don’t like the music, you can always swap it out for something you like more. Nice to see this feature come back, though the option to add our own music still eludes us.

The voice acting is ok. A lot of the VA’s came back while some were replaced. It’s still a damn good cast with big names like Wendee Lee, Mathew Mercer, Patrick Seitz, Kira Buckland, and Kyle Hebert among others.

They all do a decent job, although I don’t think the acting is as good as it was last time. I blame that mostly on the voice direction though. I don’t know if the director was inexperienced or if this was an Other M situation where it was a Japanese guy directing English actors which led to some awkward deliveries.

I have no idea because I couldn’t find out who the voice director was. Regardless, it’s noticeably worse this time around. The delivery can be just a tad bit off, and when you add on the stiff facial animations it can make some scenes very awkward.

Mind you there are some voices that are just outright grating to listen to, but I’ll get more into that when we get to Story Mode. That’s really where the voice acting is noticeably worse. During gameplay it’s mostly fine.

Despite some flaws, the presentation is still excellent. The visuals have a ton of detail in both the characters and the stages, the music is decent, and sound design is superb also.  It isn’t breaking new ground for this series, but it’s great for what it is.

Alright did you enjoy that. It’s looking pretty good so far isn’t it. Well, I’m afraid I have some bad news, that was best part of the game. it’s all downhill from here.

The first thing I did was hit up the training section to reacclimate myself to the game. It’s set up exactly like it was in 5. You have Free Training to practice at your own pace, Command Training that goes through a characters move set, Combo Challenge to teach you some combo’s a character can do, and a Tutorial that goes over all the important mechanics.

The Tutorial is still a great tool in helping new players learn the ropes. It’s pretty much the same as the one in 5, so all of the pros and cons that game’s tutorial had are also present here. It goes through all the mechanics in an informative way, with lessons that test you on the use of those mechanics.

The lessons still aren’t great, and in some cases are worse- it took me an embarrassing number of attempts to pass the basic Hold tutorial- but they do at least serve as a nice way to practice what you have learned.

The Tutorial is still a bit dry in how it delivers its information, but it helps that it’s nowhere near as dense as the one in 5. It doesn’t cover as many of the deeper mechanics that 5 covered, and that’s fine by me.

I appreciate 5 being as dense as it was but it was a bit too much at times. A Tutorial should just give you the basics of how to play and leave the deeper stuff for you to uncover through playing the game, not inundate you with every little minutiae of the game design.

The Tutorial didn’t take me nearly as long to finish as it did in 5. Both because the Tutorial itself got through a lot of its lessons much faster, and also because 6 doesn’t have as many mechanics to cover.

Yeah, things already were looking bad when I was playing the tutorial. It controlled well enough, and the combat system kept a lot of the standard mechanics I had come to expect, but I also noticed there was a fair amount missing from the gameplay.

In fact, nearly all of the mechanics introduced in 5 were MIA in 6. Critical Burst was removed, along with the Power Blow and Power Launchers it facilitated. Which also means all of the stage interactions that Power Blow enabled are also gone to. In fact, a lot of the stage transitions ideas that 5 introduced are no longer here. 6, for all intents and purposes, is a cleaning of the slate mechanically.

This isn’t anything new. A lot of fighting game sequels will often remove mechanics from previous entries and replace them with new ones to give each game its own distinct flavour. For example, Street Fighter III removed the Alpha Counters from the Alpha games and added the Parry, then Street Fighter IV got rid of that for the Focus Attack, V got rid of that for the V-gauge, and VI got rid of that for the Drive Gauge.

Ideally I’d rather see mechanics from fighting games be kept for the sequel, but I can understand why they do it. It prevents mechanical bloat. Fighting games are already super complicated and hard to learn, and if they kept just adding more mechanics on top of one another they would need entire school curriculums for people to learn them. That’s not even getting into the nightmare it would be to balance them all.

So I get why this is done. My issue with DOA 6 is it removes almost everything 5 introduced, despite many of its additions feeling like natural extensions of the core combat. I can at least understand getting rid of things like the Power Blow and Critical Burst since there are new mechanics introduced in 6 that serve as replacements.

That’s fine, but Power Launcher’s and the new stage interactions have no replacements. They’re just gone with nothing in their place, making 6 feel less mechanically rich than its predecessor. I understand wanting to change up mechanics to make the sequel feel like a fresh experience, but that doesn’t mean you need to get rid of everything the previous game did.

Look if Dead or Alive 6 wanted to go in a different direction with its systems, fine. It at least makes the sequels a little more unique, but it didn’t need to get rid of everything. They could have at least kept the new stage mechanics. Those were great and felt like natural extensions to the stage interactivity.

There is a reason they didn’t though, and it’s because they completely butchered the stage design. Ok, maybe butchered is a tad strong, it’s not like the interactive elements have been completely excised or anything. There are still things to interact with, but they have been greatly reduced in number compared to previous games.

Fewer breakable objects, less stage hazards like ice or water, even the stage transitions are fewer in number. In fact, of the fifteen stages included in the game, which is less than 5 already but this game did receive less support so I’ll let it slide, only five of them have actual stage transitions.

That means that only a third of the stages have transitions, which was a key hallmark of this series. The interactive stages in DOA were one of the most defining features of the series and they feel lacking here. Not only are the stages far smaller than they were before, but even the stages that have transition points don’t have that many of them to begin with.

Previous stages were often massive with multiple layers to them that made them fun to replay. They felt less like stages and more like actual places. Which helped add to the feeling that you were playing an interactive martial arts movie. But in 6 they never feel anything more than just fighting game levels.

This sucks. The sad thing is that the stages that do have transitions are really good. Forbidden Fortune and Lost Paradise both have really creative and out there themes with plenty to interact with, Chinese festival is huge and even includes the old explosive floor gimmick on one section, but my favourite is Unforgettable which takes place in a Dead or Alive themed museum and lets you enter different exhibits based on previous Dead or Alive stages replete with their classic themes. It’s a giant love letter to the series.

Mind you it’s probably not a good sign when my favourite stage in this game is comprised mainly of past stages so... I don’t know it feels like I’m damning it with faint praise. The other stages aren’t bad, they still have some interactable elements and they do all at least look nice, but they feel so much safer and blander than previous stages.

This is where the blatant attempt to court the e-sports crowd comes into focus. It’s very obvious the interactive stage elements were toned down in order to appear more competitive. To make it more like a no holds barred martial arts competition with even playing ground.

But in an effort to appease that audience, Team Ninja have unwittingly pissed away a portion of Dead or Alive’s identity. Team Ninja, we liked the interactive stages. We enjoyed the sillier elements of the series because they were fun, and they helped give the series a unique identity among other 3D fighters.

A lot of the personality of a fighting game comes from its stage design. Mortal Kombat has death traps, Soulcalibur has fantastical and exotic environments with simple square arenas and ring outs, Tekken has endless stages and boxed arena’ with different levels on occasion, and Dead or Alive has massive elaborate stages with different transitions.

By de-emphasizing that part of the game, you are also de-emphasizing one of the series main identity traits. And for what? To court a competitive scene. Newsflash assholes, those guys would never pick those stages anyway. For fucks sake these guys will ban stages if the lighting is a bit off. They’re picky as shit when it comes to this stuff.

Dead or Alive always, ALWAYS had simpler stages made for a more competitive fight. Those were always an option, but they kept the focus on the more interactive stages because that was the main draw. If you wanted to add more, that’s fine. It helps add more visual variety to competitive matches. But you can’t do that at the expense of one of the series best features.

They even gave you an option to turn hazards off anyway. So why tone them down if you have an option to turn them off then? If anything, you should give us more interactive elements for those that do enjoy them.

I mean that’s what Super Smash Bros did. Different game I know, but when that added more options for competitive players, did they make stages less interesting? No, the stages actually got more outlandish after that because they recognised that their audience enjoyed the wacky stages. Something Team Ninja clearly did not understand.

You can already see the problem right. Dead or Alive 6 is so desperate to court a new audience that it willingly sacrifices its core identity to do so. Only to wind up with a neutered end product that ends up pleasing absolutely no one.

Let’s go back to the mechanics though. The basics of the game still remain largely unchanged. I’m tired of saying the Triangle System, Critical Stun and Hold system are here because by this point you should know about them.

The only thing of note regarding these is that the Hold System now gives you the option of switching between the 3-Way holds of Dead or Alive 3 or the 4-Way Holds of the rest of the series. Hey look at that, we went from them not knowing which system to go with to just letting us pick which one we want.

I actually really like this. For one it gives us more options in how we want to play the game, and if you’re like me and you prefer the simplicity of 3’s Hold System then having the ability to swap to that is a great feature to have. 4-Way Holds are the default and the intended competitive standard, but I like that we have the 3-way option for more casual play.

Aside from that there isn’t much to comment on. The core Dead or Alive mechanics are still as good as they’ve ever been, and the control and game feel is still smooth and responsive. Aside from the weaker stages I don’t have much of an issue with the base mechanics.

But then we get to the new stuff. DOA 6 introduces a new attack button called the Special Button. If you think this is going to be something akin to Dust from Guilty Gear or the Drive attack from BlazBlue, sorry to say it’s nowhere near as cool as either.

Instead, the Special Button is basically a one stop shop for all the games new mechanics. Seriously every new mechanic is tied to a simple press of the Special Button. You know how modern fighters a casual mode have where you can do special moves with one button? Think something like that but it’s on all the time.

It isn’t quite on that level admittedly, but the philosophy is similar. Every one of the major mechanics is now tied to a simple button press. Unlike the mechanics of Dead or Alive 5 where you had to learn the fighting system to properly take advantage of them, here you just press a button and cool shit happens. It’s like they watched that one Dragon Age 2 interview and thought the guy was on to something instead of being a raging dipshit who tanked his own game.

I’m not that against this idea. There are games that do something similar, Guilty Gear is one I already mentioned, but Marvel vs Capcom also had a dedicated launch button that could also be integrated into some characters in different ways. The difference is in those games the extra attack button was integrated into the main mechanics more cohesively and served one very specific function.

In DOA 6, not only are there multiple mechanics tied into a single button, which makes it feel like a bit of win button given the mechanics it’s tied to, more on that in a bit, but also makes the whole thing feel shallow since you don’t need to actually learn the game to use them. Just press the button and you’re golden.

Obviously you still need to learn timing, spacing and character move sets to integrate the Special Button more efficiently into combos. It’s not like you don’t need to engage with the game at all. It’s just that the mechanics tied to the Special Button end up trivialising a lot of the combat.

The first is the Fatal Stun, which is an attack that causes a stun that cannot be gotten out of. This is similar to the Critical Burst in 5, except you only need to press one button to activate it. That would be bad enough, but unlike Critical Bursts which had limited options to follow up from, with a Fatal Stun you can follow it up with basically anything.

Meaning you can hit an enemy with a Fatal Stun and you have a free opening to start a combo. Granted the Fatal Stun ends when you hit with a normal attack so the opponent can Hold out of it, but there’s nothing stopping you from going for a launcher after hitting with a Fatal Stun or a heavy attack for guaranteed safe damage.

The Fatal Stun might as well just be a free combo. In fact, it is a free combo. By repeatedly hitting the Special Button you can do a Fatal Rush. A simple combo that ends with a knockdown where every hit is a Fatal Stun.

The damage for this is on the low side though. You won’t get far just spamming this because, for one the initial hit can still be countered, but also because it won’t do much in the long run if you don’t mix in other attacks.

Which is not hard to do since you can just stop the Fatal Rush before the final hit and just get a normal combo going for some actual damage. I think the damage from normal combo’s is slightly lower, but even if it is, it’s still a safe way to get a combo.

Basically, there’s no reason not to go for Fatal Stun’s or Rushes all the time. There are ways the game tries to balance them out like making it unsafe on block, but it doesn’t change the fact that hitting with one is a safe and easy way to get a combo going, and all it takes is one button press.

Unlike Critical Burst where you needed to learn optimal combo routes to get the best results, the Fatal Stun makes it very easy to just mash buttons and dominate the match. It’s easier than Critical Burst I’ll give it that, but also far less interesting.

That’s the main thing you’ll use Special for, but it’s not the only thing. You can also use it to do a sidestep, which did apparently come back from 5. I thought it didn’t based off my research so my bad, but what do you expect from me at this point.

I’m surprised that of all the DOA 5 mechanics it was the sidestep that came back. That was the most boring mechanic introduced in 5. So let me get this straight, instead of bringing back any of the cool mechanics from 5, you bring back the lame one that didn’t make much of a difference to the gameplay. DOA 6 is a baffling game.

Not much to say on it. It works the exact same way as it did before, you can dodge linear attacks and do an attack from it. it’s a bit better I guess; apparently, they’re too good in competitive but I wouldn’t know anything about that.

Then there’s the Break Blow. This is 6’s version of the Power Blow. It’s essentially a Super Move that does big damage and it has super armour meaning you can power through attacks to activate it. You can also activate these through a Fatal Rush, but the damage isn’t as big there.

I don’t hate these, but they aren’t as much fun as Power Blows. They aren’t as flashy for one; they’re basically just a big attack which isn’t nearly as visually interesting, and it isn’t like Power Blows were all that flashy to begin with.

Honestly as far as Supers or equivalent attacks like it were concerned they were fairly tame, but they were also there to allow for stage interactions only it could activate. That was where the visual spectacle of those attacks lay. Without them the Power Blows were just ok.

Break Blows are basically a stripped-down version of those. With no stage interactions it can activate, aside from the ones you can activate with any other attack, they’re not all that great at visual spectacle. The battle damage they cause and the close up of the opponent in pain is the only visually interesting thing about them.

The fact they’re so easy to throw out too doesn’t help matters either. What made Power Blows so satisfying was that you had to work for them. You couldn’t just throw them out whenever you wanted, you either had to time a long charge attack or learn the Critical Burst system to get the most out of them.

But with Break Blows they’re way too easy to just throw out whenever you want. The super armour they have make it very easy to snipe an opponent with one, and they’re extremely easy to fit into combos. Because they’re so easy to get, I don’t feel that satisfaction in using them.

What makes super arts in other fighting games so satisfying isn’t just them being a big flashy attack, although that does help, it’s the fact that you need to work to land them. Throwing them out can catch an opponent off guard on occasion, but you often need to land a combo or create some kind of situation where you can activate a super with some level of certainty.

Basically, you aren’t always guaranteed for a super to work even if you just pull off the input. Which makes it all the more satisfying when you do pull one off successfully. But Break Blows are so easy to pull off that they don’t feel that good to do. You just press a button and then off they go. It makes them get dull pretty quick.

The only interesting thing about Break Blows is you can cancel them to allow for reset situations to extend your combo’s. This can lead to some cool combo’s that do require a bit more technical skill to pull off. This I do like, but the fact the most interesting part of Break Blows is not using them doesn’t speak highly of them.

You may be wondering if these are so good why not just use them all the time. Well, that’s because they’re tied to the new Break Gauge. Yup, DOA 6 added meter management to the fighting system. Because I guess the only way modern 3D fighters can add depth is through a meter apparently. First Soulcalibur and now DOA.

Actually speaking of Soulcalibur, DOA 6 makes the same mistake Soulcalibur V did by tying a main mechanic into the meter system. The sidestep attacks now cost Break Gauge whereas in 5 they were free.

I really don’t like this. Why take a mechanic from a previous game that could do whenever you want and then add meter requirement to it. it doesn’t add more depth; it just creates unnecessary meter management. Maybe the idea was to balance them out more since they made them more powerful, which seems like a backwards way of handling this. wouldn’t it be easier to nerf them.

I just don’t like the idea of adding meter requirements to old mechanics that didn’t need it previously. I hated it when Soulcalibur V did it for Guard Impact and I hate it here for sidestep attacks.

We aren’t even done with mechanics tied to the Break Gauge. There’s also the Break Hold. This is a more powerful Hold that doesn’t do damage but will counter any kind of attack thrown at it. Highs, lows, mids, it doesn’t matter it’ll work on anything. It’s also the way you break out of Fatal Stuns since it’s the only thing you can do in that state.

This is a terrible addition. What made Holds in previous games work was the guessing game that came with it. You couldn’t just do a Hold and counter anything, you had to do the right Hold for the right attack. Nor could you spam them since Holds were weak to throws in the Triangle System and you would take more damage from them.

But Break Holds are essentially the ultimate get out of jail free card. They may not do damage, but you won’t be using them for damage anyway but to reset the playing field. Which lets you go from defence to offence with very little effort.

They’re too good. The one downside with them is they cost half your meter to use, but that’s not a big problem since getting meter is not at all difficult. Using Fatal Rushes can give you a lot of meter quickly, and since you can cancel those and get a quick combo extension in, you can gain a bunch of meter in a single combo.

You gain meter so quickly in this game this game you’ll never be without access to a Break Hold. It slows the game down to a crawl since both sides will eventually be able to shut down the others offence. They’re way too easy to abuse because, outside throws, nothing can stop them.

While DOA 6 is still a fast-paced fighter, the Break Blows and Break Holds tanks the pacing of any fight. Since the action is constantly being broken up by either a short cinematic super or an omni hold that shuts down any offence.

What I hate about the Break Gauge is how unnecessary it feels. If all you’re going to do with it is copy the same things that 5 did, then what’s the point of changing it. Just do what 5 did and build on it.

Maybe that was the idea, but if that is the case then the failed spectacularly at it. Because these systems are far less interesting than the systems in 5. Not only did they make the stages less fun, but all the other mechanics just feel shallow compared to what 5 offered.

It isn’t like the fighting is bad because it mostly isn’t. It still has the core foundation of the previous games, and that’s just as strong as ever, but their attempts to build on them just made the game worse. The new systems are too easy to pull off with too great a reward and end up trivialising a lot of the interesting mind games previous Dead or Alive games had.

I won’t say this is the weakest playing game in the series or anything. Dead or Alive 1 is still the worst in that regard with how stiff and clunky it felt, and it doesn’t piss me off like DOA 4 did with its obnoxious AI, but it is a massive step down from 5.

So already I have to ask, what is the point of this game? if DOA 6 is simply a worse version of 5, then why would I ever play this game over it. This isn’t like most fighting game sequels which are unique enough in their mechanics that it’s more down to preference. I like Street Fighter Alpha far more than Street Fighter III for example, but with DOA 5 and 6 their mechanics are so similar that you can’t say it’s a matter of preference.

5 is just better. 6 oversimplifies the systems and removes a good chunk of their complexity. I’m not against simplifying fighting games, I’m all for accessibility, but it should be done in a way that enhances the depth of a fighting game. it should bring players up to the games level, not dumb the game down to the players.

6 can still be a fun game, but it’s nowhere near as satisfying as past titles. I just don’t find the mechanics that satisfying because of how easy they are to use. Instead of a system that makes you learn the gameplay which makes you appreciate it more, 6 waters it down to a point where it makes you appreciate the gameplay less.

I suppose if the game was made to court a more casual audience I could forgive this. Not necessarily like it, but I could understand the decision. But this was meant to be the DOA that showed the competitive crowd how deep this game could be, and if I’ve learned anything from fighting game discourse over the past few years it’s how much the FGC hate it when you simplify mechanics.

Honestly, I think this is why the added the Break Gauge. They probably saw other fighting games had them and thought it added depth, so they added it for the competitive crowd but simplified the mechanics to avoid losing the casual audience.

DOA 6 simply cannot decide what direction it wants to go in. it clearly wants to court a more competitive audience but it’s too afraid of losing its core casual fan base too. But like most things in life, you can have one thing or the other, but you can never have both.

Mind you they were probably never getting a casual audience to begin with because fuck me is this game barren. The single player offerings were absolutely gutted here. We do still have some of the standard modes from previous games. Arcade, Versus, Time Attack and Survival all return, and all are as you expect.

At least it had an arcade mode at launch unlike Street Fighter V. Though frankly that’s damning it with faint praise since that’s the bare minimum I ask for any fighting game. But the modes are serviceable. They’re decent fun for what they are but don’t add much interesting to the formula.

But while those modes return, there are two series mainstays that are now MIA, Team Battle and Tag Battle. Team Battle is something I’m said to see go but is somewhat forgivable since it isn’t all that common these days and it was always more fun as a multiplayer mode anyway. Tag Battle’s removal is far mor egregious.

To reiterate, Tag Battle is Dead or Alive’s tag team mode that has been part of the series since DOA 2. While it could easily be seen as a bonus it was a pretty robust feature that had a bunch of unique mechanics of its own to master. It wasn’t just a bonus it was a major feature of the games that could be played in any of the other modes.

And DOA 6 just up and got rid of it. Now the reason Team Ninja gave was that they wanted to focus on the one-on-one fighting and didn’t have time to implement it. Considering the new mechanics they added I might have been inclined to agree with them, if Dead or Alive 5 hadn’t also introduced a bunch of new mechanics and kept the Tag Battle mode in. it even expanded on it for god’s sake.

No I think the real reason is they just didn’t have time. DOA 6 began development in earnest in December of 2017 and saw release in March of 2019, meaning this thing had little over a year of active development. That’s one hell of a tight development window. I sincerely doubt the team had the time to properly implement any sort of tag mode.

I don’t know if this was a technical issue or a lack of development time, or more likely a combination of both, but based on this I don’t think they had the ability to implement instant character swapping in this game. Not with the development time they were given.

They should have been given more time to work on this. At least enough time to add some new modes, because what’s here? This isn’t cutting it chief. I mean the modes are fine, there’s nothing wrong with them, but they get boring quickly.

But what about the unlocks. Previous games had these modes unlock costumes for completion. Surely they do that here right? Yes, but also no. While these modes do unlock costumes like in the previous games, they only unlock pieces of the costumes and not the whole set.

Which brings me to this game’s utterly baffling unlock system. Dead or Alive 6 introduced a level-up system. You have a player level and a character level that will increase the more you play and when you gain a new level you unlock something new like new costumes for each character.

Now that doesn’t sound too bad. Here is where it gets bad. Instead of unlocking the full costume, you unlock pieces of that costume. And I don’t mean that in the way that you can customise costumes with different pieces. That be cool and an actual good decision. No, I mean you unlock part of the costume, and you can only use that costume when all the parts have been unlocked.

You know Gacha games where you have to gain shards for characters to use them? It’s like that. and you can probably already see the problem. In order to unlock costumes, you have to grind it out until you unlock all the pieces. WHY DID YOU ADD GRINDING TO THIS!?

Oh and what pieces you get are random by the way. So if there’s a certain costume you want right away you better pray to the RNG gods you get it first. You know I take back what I said about the unlocks being tedious in previous games. I had no idea how bad it would get.

At least in older games the costumes were unlocked in a set order. Making it easy to set-up a method to get what you wanted. It wasn’t random like this. Plus, past games gave you alternate methods to get everything.

2 Ultimate let you get everything by getting all the items is Survival, 3 let you get everything through save date from 2, and 5 had a cheat code. The only games that didn’t give you alternate methods were the first game and 4, which were also the games I didn’t unlock everything. Coincidence? I think not!

There’s even some unlockables tied to this that don’t make any sense. Like extra difficulties for the Arcade and Time Attack modes. You can only get the higher difficulties by reaching player level 35. Why? Why are these unlockable? Extra difficulty options should never be an unlock, they should be available at the start.

This kind of thing should only be allowed in action games. You know how in Devil May Cry where the higher difficulties are only unlocked after finishing the main game on normal or hard. But that makes sense because those modes are a more extreme test of your abilities and are designed around you having access to all the moves you unlocked in the lower difficulties.

What’s the benefit of doing that here. The different difficulties are there so you can customise the game to your skill level. Every other fighting game just lets you pick the difficulty you want and go. If players want a tougher challenge just let them pick it right away. There’s no reason to keep it hidden.

This unlock system is bad, but it is like this for a reason. It’s very obvious it was done this way to encourage you to play online. The idea being you would play online over and over again to level up your character and unlock all their costumes.

I know this because it’s how every game with this kind of system works. Seriously if you see player or character levels in a game it’s the developers not so subtle way of telling you “Stop goofing around with single player and go online mister”.

While I understand the idea, that doesn’t make it good. Besides making single player a grindy chore, it can make the online feel like it’s being forced on you. I don’t like playing online, but I usually don’t mind if there are unlocks kept behind it so long as they’re things tailored for it. Stuff like titles or hud customisation, things that wouldn’t be used in casual play.

For stuff like costumes and difficulties, it should either be there from the start, or something that can be gained from single player in easy and defined ways. Because those are the kind of things you will want access to when playing casually. Keeping those locked behind this grindy method doesn’t make me want to play online more, it makes me want to play single player less.

So I hope you didn’t like the costumes from past games, because unless you’re willing to grind them out you will never see them. Or I guess you could just buy some DLC costumes instead and get all the fanservice you want.

I’m not going to go off on this because I already said all I needed to in the last part. Although I will say it is handled better if only because the outfits aren’t nearly as bad.

Besides that whole hair colour debacle, that was complete bullshit. But I can’t comment on that because they’ve long since removed the feature. They shouldn’t have done it, but they did address it at least.

Plus, while the whole paying for sexy costumes is still incredibly predatory and wrong, the costujmes themselves aren’t as bad. There are still some outfits clearly designed to fit specific kinks, including wedding outfits because of course they’d make everyone a waifu, but since there aren’t as many this time.

I can’t say much more on it. I think I got all that out my system last time. 6’s DLC is just a continuation of 5’s only it never got the chance to be nearly as bad. I just can’t muster the energy to be that angry at it.

The one big ire I have with the DLC is the characters. Specifically that half the DLC characters are returning characters from 5 Last Round. I could Maybe understand if they were substantially different, but the characters are largely recycled from 5. There’s no reason to make them paid DLC. These guys should have been free.

The entirely new characters you can charge for, but not the veterans. Those should have been in from the start. They probably were planned to be in at the start since they have roles in Story Mode, but they obviously didn’t have enough time.

Things are not looking good so far, but there might be a ray of light in this cavernous catastrophe of mediocrity. We have two modes here that are clearly the main highlights. Literally, there the biggest thing on the main menu. We of course have the Story Mode which I’ll cover in a bit since I have a lot to say on that, and DOA Quest.

DOA Quest was the one I was most curious about. Mainly because everyone talks about how bad Story Mode is and almost no one talks about DOA Quest. Turns out there’s a reason for that, it’s because it isn’t all that interesting.

DOA Quest is basically a mission mode. You’re given a set of missions to complete each with three objectives and completing each objective rewards you with a star and some other reward like money, titles or entries in the encyclopaedia.

The latter of which is an in-game glossary of DOA lore, which is a great way for newcomers to get themselves up to speed on the plot. I don’t know why any of it is unlockable, it feels like that should all be there from the start. But I think we all know by now the unlockables were not that well-handled in this.

Complete all three missions and you’ll be rewarded with more costume parts, quite a lot actually. You can potentially get two costumes at once depending on how lucky you are. So this is the best mode to play if you want to get those.

DOA Quest certainly has plenty of missions to keep you busy. The problem? It has too many missions. There are 155 missions to complete in DOA Quest if you factor in all of the extra DLC missions. Because the DLC characters also have missions attached to them.

Trying to complete all of that gets tiring. Mainly because there isn’t that much variety in the mission types. Most of them are just simple fights with some added objectives to them. Occasionally you might get a survival type mission to help change things up, but for the most part it’s just simple fights with a small arcade/time-attack ladder.

There aren’t that many interesting missions thar really shake up the gameplay. If you compare it to other mission modes like Soulcalibur 2’s Weapon Master, which is still the gold standard for fighting game mission modes even 23 years later, it doesn’t even come close.

Weapon Master not only had a much better structure with it having RPG elements and an actual story, but the missions themselves were also a lot more fun and varied. They had interesting gimmicks like slippery floors, wind, low gravity and more which not only tested your skills with the mechanics but also let you play with those mechanics in some fun and quirky ways.

DOA Quest is just too dry for how many missions it offers. Most of them boil down to use specific move during combat, get a number of counters, beat in a specific time. You know basic shit. There’s very little creativity which makes the mode get boring fast.

I was already sick of it at mission 30 or so, and the later missions can get a little frustrating to complete if you’re trying to get everything. Even the line of opponents gets repetitive since some missions will have you face off against the same opponents in the same order. The only variety is in which character you play as.

However, I don’t think this is meant to solely be a mission mode. I think it’s also trying to be a sort of tutorial. If you look at the objectives most of them are about using the base mechanic. Like activating a hi-counter, or using an air combo with a minimum combo count, you know things you need to learn if you want to play the game seriously.

There are some missions that are just win in a certain time limit or get a point total above a threshold, but even those require some knowledge of the game to complete. DOA Quest is really all about teaching you how to properly use its various systems. Sort of like how World Tour in Street Fighter VI was set up like an adventure mode but was secretly one giant tutorial in disguise.

In that case, DOA Quest is ok. It’s a perfectly fine learning tool to get you into the games systems while playing the game. It’s honestly a better way of acclimating yourself to its systems than the actual tutorial mode.

But at 155 missions it just goes on for far too long. World Tour could get away with its length because it also had a big open world to explore with RPG elements and characters you could learn more about. For as much as DOA Quest has it needed something extra to justify the length.

Plus, it’s just another example of the game pushing you to play online. It’s very obvious between this and the grind heavy unlock system that single player content was not a priority. The single player content was just a funnel to get players into the online competitive modes.

This was a running trend with fighters at the time. Street Fighter V did the same thing at launch and that was a much bigger disaster. I’m glad more recent fighters are trying to have more single player content again. It’s still not great, but there have been some improvements on that front recently.

Still, DOA Quest mode is ok. It’s a decent distraction and is fun is short bursts, but it doesn’t work as well in long play sessions. It’s fine, but it isn’t anything I’ll want to go back to after finishing it. much like the final mode the game offers.

Which unfortunately brings us to the Story Mode. If you will recall, I did not like the story mode in Dead or Alive 5. In fact I found it to be absolutely fucking awful. One of the worst story modes I had ever experienced in a fighting game, and I‘ve played Tekken 7, Soulcalibur V and Street Fighter V. I know how bad these things can get.

This makes me worried. Because, according to most critics and players, Dead or Alive 6’s story is even worse. Now how that is possible I have no idea, but it is terrifying regardless. And after playing it for myself, I think they undersold it. This thing is fucking abysmal.

They learned absolutely nothing from Dead or Alive 5. Every single issue that game’s story suffered from aren’t just here, they somehow made them even worse. The structure being the absolute worst part of it.

For those who don’t remember how 5 was structured here’s a refresher. In Dead or Alive 5 the story was split into different chapters that each focused on a different character and followed their story along with developing the main story.

In theory anyway. What actually happened was that the story was put on hold for a few hours while you went through a bunch of side stories that very rarely tied into the main plot, and then you had two main story chapters at the beginning and end that actually covered the main plot.

It was not a great structure. It tanked the stories pacing and was repetitive. Since some scenes wound up being repeated across multiple chapters. And to give 6’s story mode some praise, it does address these issues. There are now no repeated scenes, and the Story Mode gives you a bit more freedom in how you want to tackle the story.

The way it works is that you don’t have individual chapters. Well, sort of. You do have chapters but instead of giving a chapter to most of the cast like 5 did, 6 instead opts for having five chapters of the story, and you unlock individual scenes for each character that you can play in any order you want.

This quickly makes the Story Mode a convoluted mess. Because to unlock scenes for one character, you need to play a scene from another character, and some early chapters for characters don’t get unlocked until much later.

The issue of jumping between the timeline in 5 is amplified here. At least in 5 there was a general structure to how the story was presented. It wasn’t great, but it was at least laid out in a way that you could follow what was going on.

6 doesn’t really have a structure. The way you unlock scenes seems almost random at times, and because you can view scenes in any order you choose it’s entirely likely that you will view scenes out of order. It’s entirely likely you can skip important context that can completely ruin the impact of other scenes.

This actually happened to me once, and I was very careful to avoid that. There is at least a rough timeline so you can try to view scenes in a somewhat intended order, but it’s still easy to miss some sequences due to the terrible menu. Yes, even Story Mode’s menu is terrible. That is how bad this thing is.

You might be thinking that the story is some kind of Tarantino/Nolanesque confusing non-linear mess, but you would surprisingly be wrong. Oh, it’s a mess don’t get me wrong, but it’s actually not that confusing to follow the story. Mainly because there isn’t much of a story to begin with.

The plot of the game is that Helena hosts the sixth Dead or Alive Tournament and Mist has another evil plot of trying to resurrect Raidou as a cyborg. That’s about it. Nothing much really happens in the story beyond resurrecting the boss from the first game.

The tournament is once again completely pointless to the main storyline. Meaning that most of the games cast have nothing to do with the plot. They’re just off doing their own thing while the ninjas are handling the main threat.

I know it’s not uncommon for fighting game stories to have the bulk of the characters not be important to the main story. I mean if you’re name isn’t a Mishima in Tekken you’re likely relegated to a comic relief character at this point. But at least in other fighting games they at least give the other characters their own stories you can play through. Even if they aren’t important you can still give them something.

5 sort of neutered this with it’s shift to a cinematic story mode structure. But, for all it’s many faults, it at least attempted to give every character an arc. It attempted to develop the characters and move their story forward, and it actually did succeed at that. The individual character stories were far better than the main plot.

6 doesn’t even attempt to do this. The individual character segments are more like mini vignettes. They’re just a bunch of disconnected sequences with no narrative or thematic throughline to connect them all together.

No one gets any kind of character development. Most of the interactions are played mostly for comedy and none of them develop the characters in any significant way. I wouldn’t mind this so much if it was actually funny, but it’s not. Most of it was very painful to sit through.

Because most of the scenes are basically just comic relief, it has the unfortunate side effect of making the vast majority of the story mode completely pointless. I’m not kidding when I say that about 80-85% of the Story Mode is comprised of completely unrelated scenes where absolutely nothing is accomplished. It is a complete waste of time.

This is especially bad for characters who are part of the main story, but don’t partake in the main story chapters. I complained last time about Rig and Lisa Hamilton switching allegiances with neither being explained and credit where it’s due both are addressed here.

For Lisa it turns out she was a mole for DOATEC, except she also acts as a free agent saying she values top of the line research more than anything else. I don’t think they knew what to do with her to be honest. As for Rig, turns out he’s some kind of sleeper agent. Christie whispers sweet nothings in his ear at one point and he’s evil with no memory of what he was before.

While I appreciate 6 attempts to address the plot holes in the previous game, because neither character have chapters of their own there are still details for them that remain unexplained. Like, why was Rig a sleeper agent? Was it to infiltrate DOATEC. I guess that makes sense, but then why do it via working a menial job on one of their oil rigs? That doesn’t seem like the best place to gather information.

A lot of the story is like this. When they aren’t wasting time with pointless vignette’s, they have story moments that never go anywhere or just leave you with more questions than answers. It makes it so half the characters never get any kind of development.

The two characters hit most by this are Marie Rose and Honoka. With how popular those two became after 5 they gave them a much larger role in 6. At least in theory, because they honestly do not do a whole lot here.

A big part of the story is their growing friendship, and it completely falls flat. The two of them just meet in one scene and they’re just instantly friends. There’s no growth of development to their relationship, and there’s barely any scenes of the two interacting. So the final scenes of Marie Rose crying in worry over her friend don’t work because we haven’t seen much of the two together.

Mind you this is a blessing in disguise because good, sweet Christ are these two annoying. I went easy on them last time, but not anymore. I fucking hate these two with all my soul. They are the absolute worst aspects of anime moe culture.

The childlike personalities, they’re overly bubbly moods, the cloying high pitched voices that make nails on a chalkboard sound like Michael Jackson. I lack the vocabulary to describe how irritating I find these atrociously asinine anime airheads.

It’s the voices that are the worst part for me. I said earlier that the voice acting is ok, and it is for the bulk of the actual game, but in Story Mode it’s awful. The voice direction is atrocious, half the time it sounds ok but if they ever need a character to have a big emotional outburst it just sounds awkward and forced.

They can’t even get the lip movements to sync up properly. It’s like watching an old Hong Kong movie, which would fit the series well to be fair, but I don’t think this was intentional. Even the subtitles are wrong sometimes. You guys seriously couldn’t double check the subtitles.

But let’s talk more about Honoka. This game reveals that the reason behind Honoka being able to copy other fighters moves is because she’s Raidou’s daughter. Apparently the dude got another woman pregnant after he assaulted Ayame.

So, he did he rape another woman? I hope not because I don’t want sexual assault to be a reoccurring plot thread. That’s the last thing a series known for sexy outfits needs. I’m just saying it’s not a good look.

But let me summarise, Honoka can copy any fighters moves, a skill that she got from her dad who just so happens to be one of the series main villains, and through her parentage is also related to Ayane one of the series most popular characters, and she’s super important and everyone likes her and she has the biggest boobs. Fucking Audrey 2 wasn’t as big a plant as this bimbo.

And poor Marie Rose. In the last game it’s hinted that her childlike personality was all an act. A performance to go along with her gothic Lolita look. But now that’s just her personality. So it’s not, “ha I was only pretending to be retarded”, it’s that she’s actually retarded.

So Mist apparently needs Honoka to resurrect Raidou because she has the same energy as her dad. and Helena sends Marie to watch her because of this. This raises the question of why Mist also don’t target Ayane since she’s also related to Raidou, which they do but only after Honoka isn’t enough. Wouldn’t it make sense to go after both.

Actually, why can’t Ayane copy moves like Honoka can? She’s related to Raidou too, but she can’t do that. in fact, why can’t Hayate and Kasumi do it since Raidou is their uncle. Why is it only possible for Honoka and Raidou to do this.

See I always thought this was more of a technique that Raidou learned. Hence why he returned to the village years after his initial banishment to learn the Torn Sky Blast. But if it’s hereditary we now have a lot of unnecessary questions. It’s almost as if Honoka was always intended to be a joke character and trying to tie her into the main story was a short-sighted decision based on her inexplicable popularity or something.

I also need to ask, why are Mist resurrecting Raidou to begin with? It makes sense from a character perspective since Nico, one of the games new characters, is trying to perfect the process of bringing back the dead so she can revive her father.

Fair enough, that’s at least a simple enough motivation to understand. Except she’s the only one in Mist who seems to care about any of this. Donovan doesn’t seem to care about it since he’s still on his Kasumi clone crusade. Spider-Man comics in the 90’s weren’t as obsessed with clones as this guy.

And before you ask, no, Donovan doesn’t do anything. This guy is the most worthless fighting game villain of all time. How sad is it that the Dead or Alive movie is the only media in the franchise that does anything with the main villain.

And of all the people Mist could resurrect as a cyborg, why did they pick him. I know he was known as a strong fighter, but he also got his ass kicked by Kasumi. That’s why they cloned her, because she’s stronger. So they’re wasting millions of dollars to resurrect a weaker fighter as an undead cyborg, just to fulfil one anime girls own personal pet project? These people are idiots.

Now from a meta perspective this is meant to be a bigger deal. They’re bringing back the original boss and he’s stronger than ever. This should be a big “oh shit” moment. One problem though, nobody cares about Raidou.

No seriously, absolutely no one on god’s green earth cares about this guy. Who the fuck is Raidou anyway? He’s just the boss from the first game. You know the one even fans of the series don’t talk about much because it’s old and crappy. Raidou wasn’t even cool in the first Dead or Alive. He always came of as Pound Land Akuma.

Look, bringing back old bosses is new for fighting games. Hell, bringing back villains that have died has become a bit of a meme in modern fighters. But here’s the thing, when they bring back a character like M. Bison, Heihachi or Shao Kahn it works because those guys had a powerful presence. They were not only tough, but they had charisma and were entertaining as a boss and as a playable character.

By comparison, Raidou is boring. He has no charisma, he wasn’t a particularly interesting boss and he wasn’t even fun to play. He’s regularly ranked as the worst character in Dead or Alive 5. Which is another issue. Bringing back this old boss that hasn’t been seen for a while doesn’t have as big an impact when you already brought him back before. Hell you did this twice if you count Dimensions.

So who cares if Raidou is brought back. I don’t even think he’s the boss people associate with this series. Tengu is arguably more well known since he actually appeared in multiple games and for as weird as he was, at least he was memorable. Raidou is just evil ninja guy. I don’t really care if he’s brought back or not.

On its own this isn’t too big a problem. The real issue is that Raidou’s return is the entire crux of the narrative, and because Raidou sucks it falls flat on its face. You don’t care about it because nothing in the game makes you care about it, nothing in the series makes you care about it, and because you don’t care about it, it’s really hard to care about the story in general.

All of this is bad enough. Frankly it’s enough to put this up there with Street Fighter V as one of the worst story modes of all time. But Dead or Alive 6 has one more thing that, in my opinion, makes it THE worst story mode in fighting game history.

Trust me when I say that is not a statement I can make lightly. Because Street Fighter V’s story mode is horrendous on almost every level. But, for as bad as Street Fighter V’s story mode was at least it had a conclusion. It wasn’t a great conclusion, but at least it had an ending that tried to wrap it up in a satisfying way.

Dead or Alive 6 can’t even give us that. There is no ending here, no conclusion point where all the plot threads are wrapped up. The ninja’s just beat Raidou and then it’s over. The game doesn’t so much end as it does stop. When the credits rolled I got whiplash because of how fast they came at me.

But here’s the best part, it’s not just the story itself that doesn’t have a proper ending, everything doesn’t have a proper ending. There are entire characters and plot threads that get dropped without any proper resolution. Well ok, some do but only if you read the trivia section in the encyclopaedia.

Because that’s a great way of telling a story, keeping plot points locked away in supplementary material. Worked like a dream in Final Fantasy XIII. If by dream you mean crack induced nightmare.

Even individual scenes don’t have proper endings. Most of them just fade to black without anything in them really being accomplished. It’s one of the reasons why half the story feels pointless. This is the definition of shit just happens. There’s no proper build up, and there’s not anything close to a payoff. It’s just a random series of events that pisses you off.

The worst part is how much of a sequel bait the “ending” is. It doesn’t technically end with Helena confronting Nico over her bringing back her mother. Oh did I forget to mention that Mist brought back Helena’s mom. Because that makes total sense for them to do.

Why in the holy name of Buddha did you bring back Helena’s mom? What narrative purpose will that serve? Helena already went over this. Her entire arc for the first four games was getting over her mothers death, and you end this one with the revelation that it’s going to start all over again.

This really is the perfect cherry to top off this shit sundae of a story mode. Because it is definitive proof that they have no idea where to take this series next. If this whole thing is really the next direction for this story, then I hope it stays dead. This should be treated like an anime filler arc and never be brought up again.

This is awful. There is nothing redeemable about it at all. Even the presentation isn’t all that good. The acting is annoying, there’s barely any cool action scenes, they can’t even get the subtitles right. This is dog water. Absolute trash on every level.

Maybe it isn’t as bad as Street Fighter V. I admit that could be hyperbolic and there are certain ways in which that is worse, but the fact that this is even in the same conversation as that is the farthest from a good sign.

I could end the review here guys. I think by now you should get the point on how bad this was. But I can’t can I. There’s still the roster to go over and I did it for the other games, it wouldn’t be fair to leave 6 out too.

Side note: this screenshot does not show the full roster.

As far as the roster goes, Dead or Alive 6 actually doesn’t do too bad. It has fewer characters than the last game, having 31 characters as opposed to 5’s 36. That’s not a huge drop, although seven of the playable characters are paid DLC, so on disk you get 24 characters.

So a bit of a steeper drop off when looking at the full context, and to make matters worse four of the DLC were in Dead or Alive 5 Last Round’s base roster. I will play devils advocate here though. Dead or Alive 5’s roster got as big as it did thanks to receiving several revisions and updates. In fact, the base launch roster for the vanilla release of 5 was 24 characters. So in context the two rosters are fairly even in size.

It’s not a bad sized roster at all. Having 24 characters for a base roster is pretty good for a modern fighting game. The DLC certainly could have been handled better, although that’s true for the whole game, and while there are characters that are missing from 5’s roster they are understandable omissions.

Really the only characters who didn’t come back were the guest characters, except for one I’ll get to later, Alpha-152, Gen-fu, Ein, and Leon. The latter group of which are clones whose fighting styles are already in the game anyway.

To be honest I felt that by 5 they were only including these guys out of some nostalgic familiarity since, as far as move sets were concerned, they weren’t given the same kind of upgrades the rest of the roster got. I can’t say I’m too sad to see them go.

Everyone else did return though. They all received some new moves and techniques, but still largely play the same. I will say the updates do help make the characters feel the most refined they’ve been. Even characters I didn’t like before like Phase-4 got some nice buffs that make them more fun to play.

Really, aside from the DLC, I don’t have much to complain about the roster. Everyone plays well, and I like a lot of the new moves they gave the cast. It’s a solid roster. Except maybe for one thing, the lack of new characters.

There are only two brand new characters added to DOA 6. Technically four if you count the two new DLC guest characters but guest characters don’t count as “new” characters since they’re guests from another series so… yeah only two new characters.

To play devils advocate once again though, 5 also only introduced two new characters in its base roster too. So I can’t be too hard on 6 for this. What I can be hard on them for is the quality of the characters. Because these newcomers are pretty fucking lame.

First is Diego and I think the best way to start with him is just to show you what he looks like.

What is this character design? The faux hawk hairstyle, the facial scars, the hideous combination of a yellow t-shirt and red leather jacket, along with the ripped jeans, I’ve never seen a character design try to be down to earth and cool and fail this disastrously hard.

It’s very obvious that Diego is meant to be the DOA equivalent to Miguel from Tekken. They’re both of Latin America descent, both have a rough and tumble but carefree attitude, and both don’t have an actual fighting discipline and just use street fighting skills.

Here’s the difference though, Miquel is cool. Miquel has a swagger to him and a tragic backstory that actually makes him interesting. he has a sense of style that can be very down to earth, but it also makes him look awesome too. Miguel is so cool that he has a move where he taunts you then knocks you out in one hit. It’s impractical as hell, but that doesn’t matter because it’s just fucking cool.

Diego though, he’s just a guy. A very, very boring guy. His personality is about as basic a tough guy as you can get and there really isn’t much more to him other than guy who wants to fight. Which would be fine, except that also applies to half the fighters on the roster. There’s no sauce to Diego; no spice that makes me actually want to pick him up. They tried so hard to make him tough and street, but they failed to make him interesting.

I’m not just talking about his personality either. Diego’s fighting style is just plain boring. It’s too basic and straightforward with nothing unique to make him stand out. He was designed to be a very simple, beginner friendly character. But unlike characters like Kasumi or Hitomi who are not only easy to pick for newcomers and have interesting gameplay for veterans Diego just doesn’t have enough going on to make him that fun to play.

Again, look at Miguel. He had so much more going for him. He had a stance he could combo into that made for some fun combo routes to lab out, and did I mention he could one shot you after he laughed in your face. Diego is so basic he feels more like a prototype for a fighter, not an actual finished character in the roster.

The next character is Nico and like with Diego it’s best to start by showing her off.

Could this character be any more anime. Honestly looking at these two back-to-back kinds of shows the identity crisis that plagues DOA 6 in its purest form. You’ve got one character design that’s a rough and tumble street tough, and one who is a blue haired anime scientist with lightning powers who does magical girl poses.

You got one character that was designed for a western audience, and one designed for Japanese audiences. Instead of designing two characters that appealed to both, they tried to make one for each camp.  Say what you want about Rig and Mila but at least there was some unification behind their designs.

Team Ninja committed to the gritty direction with 5 and as a result the new character designs were much stronger for it. 6 cannot commit to any direction for fear of losing any part of it’s already fractured fanbase, and as a result we get two-character designs trying to appeal to different audiences that simply do not satisfy either.

I don’t even dislike Nico all that much. Her design is perfectly ok, and her lightning-based fighting style is fun to mess around with. It’s just that she feels like she’s in the wrong game. She feels more like a King of Fighters character than a Dead or Alive one, and that makes her stick out like a sore thumb.

Speaking of which, our first two guest characters are from King of Fighters. The first one being Mai Shiranui. Now Mai is not new for this series. She had previously debuted as the final DLC in Dead or Alive 5, but she was sadly delisted by the time I played it so I couldn’t talk much about how she played.

But she was also added in this game, so now I can. They did a pretty good job at translating Mai into Dead or Alive’s fighting system. All her classic moves are here, and she even has a unique system where she can cancel some of her strings into her special moves. Something taken from the King of Fighters series.

I liked Mai in this, though she isn’t a character I would personally pick. I don’t like playing as her much even in KOF since I don’t her all that fun. But she is still a good character to play, and I think she fits into Dead or Alive really well. I mean she has the figure for it.

Our other King of Fighters rep is Kula Diamond. That’s a bit of a strange choice. I mean I like Kula and she is a decently popular character, but why her? King of fighters has so many more characters that are far more recognisable than her.

Even if we stick to just the female cast, because this is Team Ninja we’re talking about, why not go for someone like Yuri, or Blue Mary, or King, or how about Athena. I think Athena would have been far more fitting. I mean the number of costumes alone makes her perfect for this series.

Kula isn’t a bad pick by any means though. She does at least fit the series story wise with her backstory of being a rogue science experiment, and I do admit I like it when we get weird picks for guest characters. Kula isn’t super weird or anything, but she is just odd enough a choice to be interesting.

Like with Mai I think they did a good job of transferring Kula over to Dead or Alive’s fighting system. She has the same cancel mechanic as Mai and all her classic special moves are here as well. I think overall I do find Mai a bit more interesting, but Kula is fun in her own way and is easier than Mai to play. So she might be worth trying if you want to see how a 2D fighter translated over to a 3D game but want someone easier to pick up and play.

The final guest character is one that I find hilarious. Not because the character themselves are funny, but just the fact that they were added in to begin with. The character in question is Tamaki. Now if you don’t know who that is, I wouldn’t blame you, but she debuted in Dead or Alive Xtreme Venus Vacation.

Now how a character that debuted is a DOA spin off counts as a guest character in DOA is anyone’s guess, but whatever. The reason I find her inclusion so funny is that series producer, Yohei Shimbori, blamed the Xtreme games for the series image as a fan service heavy fighter. The changes made to Dead or Alive 6 were made largely in response to what Xtreme did.

If that is the case then I have to ask, why did you include a character from Xtreme if you wanted to move away from Xtreme? Isn’t that like wanting to remove comedy from a movie and then adding a clown. It makes no sense.

Maybe the idea was to reclaim their image by cleaning up the Xtreme original characters. It’s entirely possible there were plans to add more of the Xtreme girls in to try to show them as more than just sex symbols. Or it could be that this was a last desperate attempt to get any kind of money out of a game that already significantly underperformed. Who can say.

I mean it wouldn’t be the first time they’ve done this. Lisa was also introduced in the Xtreme games, and she was successfully integrated into the main series. But I think Lisa was able to be integrated so well because she was designed more as a real person, or at least as real as this series can get.

Tamaki on the other hand looks and acts like she’s from a dating sim. There’s just no hiding the fact that she was designed as a waifu first and foremost, and looking at the other Xtreme girls, yeah, they were probably better off not including them.

Tamaki isn’t even a fighter. Her storyline is that she’s a model and fashion designer. Granted, Lisa being a luchadora is also something that’s just never been explained, but at least her being a DOATEC scientist ties her into the series main story. Tamaki’s only connection that I can gather is that she knows Helena which is about as flimsy as you can get. She really doesn’t feel like she should be in a fighting game.

I don’t even dislike Tamaki all that much. She’s surprisingly pretty fun with her Aikido based fighting style. Although I freely admit that could be because it’s the same fighting style as Geese Howard, and seeing that being used on an anime waifu is absolutely hysterical to me.

But that’s the roster for Dead or Alive 6. Despite not being as big and the new characters leaving something to be desired, I don’t think it’s bad. The refinements made to the rest of the cast are all good and the few characters that didn’t return are either completely reasonable omissions or just aren’t missed all that much. It’s a solid if unspectacular roster, which for this game might as well be a gold star.

 If I had to summarise the problem with Dead or Alive 6 at it’s core it would be a complete lack of confidence. A game that was so afraid of losing any side of its audience that it could never commit to any direction.

Which is not what Dead or Alive is. Say what you want about the series, but it was very confident about what it was. Itagaki as a game director was an extremely confident man with a clear vision of what he wanted his games to be. He didn’t care whether you enjoyed the final product or not, all that mattered to him was whether or not the game he wanted to make came to fruition.

There are issues with that approach, and several of Itagaki’s latter output was more divisive, but no matter what you thought of the games themselves you had to respect them as games with a clear creative vision.

The team behind Dead or Alive 6 lack that confident vision. If they had simply stuck to going grittier and more serious then it could have found an audience. But instead, it got cold feet at the new direction, tried to pivot back and in the process pissed away what remaining goodwill it had with it’s core fanbase, and wasted an opportunity to expand it.

Even disregarding that, when looking at DOA 6 as a full package it simply has too many shortcomings. While the core gameplay remains solid, several of its most defining features are either toned down or flat out removed, and the new additions are weak replacements for the new systems in 5 and only make the gameplay shallower and less engaging.

Then there’s the content. While the classic modes remain fine, the grind for unlockables makes them a chore, and the big single player offerings are a bust. An abhorrent Story Mode that you will likely play once then never go near again, and a Quest mode that becomes boring extremely quickly do not robust single player offerings make.

I simply cannot recommend Dead or Alive 6. Not when 5 exists and offers far more content with more entertaining gameplay. 5 also goes on sale a lot so it’s a much easier sell, although I did bag DOA 6 for ten quid on an Xbox sale. Although when factoring in the DLC it still wound up being £45.

Plus, if you have an Xbox you can get the classic DOA games for far less than that, and I would recommend any of those over 6. There just isn’t much in 6 I want to go back to. Combine that with the controversy prior to release, and it’s almost like they wanted the game to fail.

And fail it did. When all was said and done, DOA 6 was a complete flop. I couldn’t find any sale figures, which is a very bad sign in and of itself, but the game only shipped 350,000 copies in it’s first month and the free to play version only managed to garner two million downloads. A far cry from the twelve million downloads 5 achieved.

The game was a commercial failure, and they dropped support for it after only a year. It was basically just swept aside as Team Ninja moved on to bigger and better things, like the Dead or Alive Xtreme Venus Vacation, a gacha game based on the Xtreme series that is still receiving updates seven years later.

This might be the ultimate tragic legacy of DOA 6. In a desperate attempt to prove this series was more than just waifu bait, it wound up failing so spectacularly hard that all that remains of the series is the waifu bait. Hell, they just released a new Xtreme game last year. Sometimes irony is delicious, and sometimes it’s just depressing.

But that’s all she wrote. That is where the Dead or Alive fighting games ended. Not with a bang but with a whimper. I really didn’t want to end the series on such a dour note but that’s just how it goes I guess.

It is a shame though because I wound up really liking Dead or Alive. Not all the games were great, but I really enjoyed a good chunk of the series. 2,3 and 5 are the ones I would recommend the most, but even 4 wasn’t bad, it was just too frustrating for its own good. When looking at the series as a whole, it is a solid fighting series.

So, will it ever come back? I don’t know. I do think it should come back because we need more competition in the 3D fighting space to stop Tekken from shooting itself in the foot, but the odds of that happening are not looking good.

Not long after Dead or Alive 6 flopped Shimbori would leave Tecmo and would go to work for Bandai Namco where he worked on Tekken 8. Although he’s since left and I’m sure it has nothing to do with that game’s second season being an utter dumpster fire. The man is cursed I swear to god.

It’s entirely possible he could return to Tecmo, but I doubt it. I don’t even think Tecmo are interested in continuing the DOA series outside of Xtreme which is a decent money maker for them, and without a champion to vouch for it the fighting game side of the series is likely dead. I mean that’s what killed Soulcalibur.

Look, the Team Ninja that exists now are not the same Team Ninja Itagaki formed in the 90’s. it can’t be since that team left when Itagaki bounced. The Team Ninja now is a younger team with their own ambitions and games they want to pursue. They’ve had great success with the Nioh games, they’ve worked on some decently successful Final Fantasy spin-offs, and I heard Rise of the Ronin is pretty good too.

I don’t think the modern Team Ninja are interested in the old franchises Itagaki created/revived. They didn’t even work on the new Ninja Gaiden 4, that was Platinum Games. So while Team Ninja are keeping some old stuff alive, it’s not a huge priority for them.

Still there is always hope it could return. The Xtreme series is at least keeping it in the public eye for better or worse, and while Ninja Gaiden 4 focused on new characters it still included the old cast. So there’s some love for the old series in the new Team Ninja.

Plus, there is that new Virtua Fighter on the horizon. God knows when that will come out, but it could hopefully be the reinvigoration of the 3D fighter that Street Fighter 4 was for 2D ones. And if it is, maybe they’ll go back to this and give it another shot. It may not be the same as the old games, but as long as they learn their lessons from 6 and be confident in their vision, I’m sure they’ll find their audience.

I just hope they get another chance so this series can end on a better note. I’ll certainly keep an eye on it. I wouldn’t say I’m a super fan of DOA, but I certainly appreciate it far more now, boobs, butts and all. Whatever is in the future for it here’s hoping it ends up more alive than dead. Yeah I’ve been waiting all this time for that joke, want to fucking fight about it.