I’ve always liked Dead or Alive – unfortunately, that sentence usually has to be followed by a “but,” lest people think you’re some kind of weird pervert. “Not like that!” you might yell. “I think the mechanics are rad!” It’s tiresome, and Dead or Alive 6: Last Round deserves better than that stuff dominating the conversation around it. I’ve spent the last few days shaking seven years of dust off, but I really want to put it through its paces and spend some more time in the ring before I slap a number on it – as well as test it out on live servers since this updated edition still doesn’t have rollback netcode for some baffling reason. Fighting games are complex beasts, even when they’re essentially just re-releases that bundle all of the DLC together into one big package, and I want to give Last Round its due. But, so far, my impressions are positive.
The Dead or Alive series has always been extremely simple: one button for punches, one for kicks, one for throws, one for holds, and a “new” (as of the 2019 original) special attack button that performs a Fatal Rush autocombo and unlocks special meter moves. But more than a lot of fighters, Dead or Alive is, at its best, a chess match. Using what’s known as the Triangle System, every move invites a countermove – strikes beat throws, throws beat holds, holds beat strikes – and every attack is also an opening, if you’re good enough.
What makes this fighting system great has always been the Holds. See, you can counter essentially any strike by pressing hold and the direction you expect the attack to hit (high, low, or mid, though mid punches and mid kicks require different directional inputs), potentially stopping any offensive in its track. Holds are inherently risky, though. They won’t stop throws and still lose to strikes if mistimed or if you don’t use the right one – but land a hold right and you can swing an entire round. It’s absurdly satisfying to pull off, even against the computer.
The mind game that creates rules, and it’s still here in Last Round, but it doesn’t change that Dead or Alive is also incredibly easy to pick up. It’s not quite as deep as, say, Virtua Fighter, but anyone can play Dead or Alive 6. Getting good at it involves really digging into moves and countermoves, knowing how both the character you’re playing and the one you’re playing against work, and using that knowledge to pick the right option at the right time. It feels great when you land a hit, and hurts to take one.
When you’re getting smacked around and watching your health bar go the way of the dodo, it stings. But it should. That means you made a mistake. Shouldn’t have mistimed that hold, ya know? But when you max out your Break Gauge in order to hit a Break Blow – think Critical Blows from Dead or Alive 5 – or get just enough Break Gauge to pull off a Break Hold and turn the tables with a nifty counter, the Triangle System sings. Adding a meter to a 3D fighter is always risky (just ask Tekken fans how they feel about Heat in Tekken 8), but I think Dead or Alive 6’s implementation has managed to stand the test of time.
This is mostly a re-release with its DLC, which is a fine enough thing for it to be.
As far as the “new” stuff, Last Round doesn’t have a lot beyond a new photo mode, which I haven’t played around with much yet. This is mostly just a re-release of Dead or Alive 6 with all the DLC included, which is a fine enough thing for it to be. As someone who played a lot around the original’s release in 2019 but then didn’t keep up with every update since, I haven’t tried all of the DLC characters yet, but I have run some sets with Momiji and Rachel, and they feel right at home. The former trades power for speed and aggression, while the latter is all brute strength through short strings that turn into lots of damage, which tracks if you’ve played as either of them in Ninja Gaiden.
Beyond that, I’ve been enjoying the disjointed but breezy story mode and the still-quite-good teaching tools as I mess around with various members of the cast. Story mode in particular is enjoyably silly. Sure, its story is about tournaments and evil corporations and global conspiracies and ninjas and cyborgs and all sorts of crazy stuff, but it’s also very endearing. Where else can you see a guy yell “Hey, ninja man!” at an actual ninja before throwing a steel drum at him and immediately thereafter watch two women bond over their love of fighting, and then watch a couple of kids cheer on a New York street fighter after a sparring match? Not many places.
It’s also nice to see a fighting game campaign that puts women in its lead roles instead of relegating them to supporting players like most others do. The boys play their parts, but overall this show belongs to Kasumi, Helena, Ayane, Honaka, and Hitomi. They make choices, have agency, and solve their own problems in a way people who have only ever seen them playing beach volleyball might not expect. And sure, the story is a little Looney Tunes, but every fighting game’s is. Ever paid attention to Street Fighter lore? There’s a guy who thinks he’s a car, and that might not even be the weirdest part of it. Dead or Alive makes a hell of a lot more sense than something like Mortal Kombat (and I say this as someone who likes MK’s nonsense), and while the overarching plot can be messy, the individual scenes and character interactions work well and are a lot of fun.
Of course, that’s not the reputation Dead or Alive is typically known for, and because one of the selling points of Last Round is that you get all the DLC costumes (though they still have to be unlocked in-game even if you own them), I suppose I now have to talk about the thing that consumes every piece of criticism ever written about this series: how everyone looks and moves. Yes, the women look Like That™. Yes, many of them are very bouncy. Yes, you can dress them in revealing outfits if you’re into that. Personally, I’m here for the punching.
If we’re being honest, there is no shortage of sexy characters in fighting games; Soul Calibur’s Ivy is quite literally a dominatrix and Capcom’s sexy outfits for Chun-Li sell so well that the last couple Street Fighters made the GDP of a small country. If anything, fighting games have only gotten hornier as time has gone on. I mean, have you seen the Guilty Gear cast? Or Street Fighter’s Juri, who is now Foot Fetish: The Character? Compared to some of that stuff, Dead or Alive 6’s brand of horny feels kind of… quaint? Some of the outfits here are tacky or tasteless, yeah, but I also don’t have to use them, or let them define my entire perception of Last Round. And if someone does use one of the ones I dislike online? All the more reason to kick their ass.
In fact, many of the visual improvements that were dismissed in 2019 as Team Ninja “being weird” actually hold up quite well. It rules that characters sweat during combat and you can see cuts and bruises on their faces and bodies when they’re doing their win poses. You should be a little sweaty and beat up after a fight, and it doesn’t feel like those details have been added with purely exploitative, leering intentions. Fighting is a brutal, bloody business. I like that Dead or Alive 6’s characters look like they’ve been in a brawl after a knock down, drag out fight.
Some stuff here deserves more praise than we previously gave it credit for.
So yeah, Dead or Alive is still Dead or Alive, but you have to take the good with the bad, and there is certainly good here. I’d kill to have this many costume options in most modern fighters, and I’d rather put Helena into one of her many fabulous dresses than a swimsuit anyway. There’s also an impressive visual variety across everyone’s designs, especially in an age when we’re seeing a lot of the same face shapes and body types be recycled. I want to be clear: I’m not saying Dead or Alive 6 is immune to criticism. Some of it is absolutely deserved; but spending time with it after a few years away also makes me think there’s some stuff here that deserves more praise than we previously gave it credit for. I hope we can be normal about that.
While I’ve so far enjoyed getting back into Dead or Alive 6 saddle, there are a few things about Last Round that concern me enough to spend more time with it before assigning a score. I can’t use Mai or Kula yet, despite the edition Koei Tecmo provided to us for this review supposedly coming with unlock codes for them, which I’m hoping is just a “the game isn’t out yet” issue and not a larger problem. I also want to test the netcode on live servers – just like the original, there is no rollback netcode in Last Round, which is… concerning, though potentially not gamebreaking. And I want to spend more time with the rest of the cast and run through stuff like DOA Quest to see how it holds up. But it feels good to be back in the ring. Dead or Alive has always felt good. And I hope Last Round continues to feel that way as I put more time into it.
