I've always been a huge fan of the Dead or Alive fighting game franchise ever since I played DOA 2: Ultimate on the PlayStation 2. In fact, part of my reasoning for buying an Xbox 360 all those years ago was to actually play Dead or Alive 4, which is an Xbox exclusive.

However, my interest in the game started to waiver after Dead or Alive 5: Last Round and was not really reinvigorated with Dead or Alive 6 at all. Koei Tecmo had a really fun fighting game in their previous titles but took that development idea that we commonly see where developers need to try and make each sequel different than the previous game to justify it being something brand new rather than a 'rehash' such as what we see with Call of Duty titles.

This fighting game, while the gameplay is still good, just lacks something charming that the other games had. There's only two new (see: original) characters in this game, which is perhaps what they should have focused on instead of adding the lame "power" bar that we see as a staple for other fighting game franchises, where the bar charges as you deal/receive damage and then you can unleash a flashy sequence of attacks where you briefly lose control of your character as it plays out. This is actually such a problematic feature for the loyal fans of DOA that somebody went through the effort of patching it out with a mod to try and better fix the combat and make it more old-school back when it was perfect. This whole combat idea was to make the game more attractive for eSports but I doubt anybody really plays Dead or Alive competitively anymore, if they ever truly did.

Additionally, Koei Tecmo having the ambition for tournament play also resulted in their mascot, Kasumi, given the "modern design for modern audiences" (AKA woke character redesign) where her default outfits now lack any skin whatsoever . . . an odd choice given that Dead or Alive started as a game in which its best asset was its appealing female characters. Whether Koei Tecmo or the 'wokes' want to accept it or not, that's why we buy and play DOA. Anybody who has played any DOA title in the past knows the secret behind the "age" slider and what it does when you set it to 99. Don't try to make the game more serious and more mature and family-friendly when you have spin-off games that are essentially dating sims where you can watch the female cast sunbathing and playing beach volleyball in skimpy bikinis.

But Koei Tecmo here still understands the philosophy of "sex sells" and that's why they eventually added DLC outfits featuring said skimpy bikinis, maid uniforms, schoolgirl uniforms, etc., anyway. They wanted DOA6 to be a continuation of the 'serious treatment' that DOA5:LR received but perhaps they finally realized that wasn't what people wanted and abruptly changed course to having their roster showing more skin like it was in the past. Of course, you can get most of the DLC outfits (and the crossover characters featuring the likes of Mai Shiranui) through four overpriced season passes. In total, buying all of the DLC nets you an extra $250 USD or so on top of the game already costing $60 USD for the base game still. Because while you CAN play it for free, you get access to only four characters in a roster of about 31 characters split between 11 male characters and 20 female characters. A handful of those female characters are DLC, by the way, so the base game has less than 31 characters. Resourceful people can easily find a way to just unlock DLC for free, which I'd recommend instead of supporting a company that has become very greedy after Dead or Alive 4.

Dead or Alive 6 also has character customization, but not to the extensive degree that we'd find in newer Soul Calibur titles. It's mostly just changing hairstyle from long to a ponytail or vice versa, or adding accessories like sunglasses. It's actually rather grindy here, as in order to unlock many of the other outfits that come with the base game, you have to collect coins and "outfit pieces." You need these outfit pieces to first unlock the other outfits, and then you use gold to purchase them to have it available in the character selection screen. To unlock everything, you need well over 200k coins, and honestly, I just used a trainer to give myself infinite gold coins for the sake of just skipping the grind. As per usual, the male characters lack any character customization options whatsoever. While I can understand why that is, the female characters are who people like to look at the most, plenty of us (myself included) are experienced with the male characters and I feel like giving them some extra love isn't too much to ask for given it's kind of the jobs of the developers to do that. There's always been this huge disparity in attention that female characters receive compared to their male counterparts. It'd be critiqued as sexism if male characters were given more attention than female characters.

For people playing it offline, you have the basic campaign which ties up a rather convoluted and contrived plot that you honestly have to go to YouTube to really even fully understand, and you have the usual game modes like practice mode for your combo practicing, versus mode, time attack, and survival mode. DOA6 doesn't include tag matches where you could play as 2 characters versus another 2 characters and see some unique introductions and win poses for characters that have relationships to one another. Fighting results in characters becoming visibly sweaty and dirty and even forming bruises, which is either acceptable or not depending on your interests, and of course the fighting is very smooth and fluid as you'd expect from 6+ installments in this franchise. The animations are great and most of the female characters are still hot so long as you invest/obtain the DLC.

Of course, the main reason to buying these fighting games is for the online play. But most people tend to agree that Dead or Alive 5: Last Round has the better combat system and so they prefer to play that one. There's still a community here but I don't really recommend this game for it.

awesome game! always great!

Still no intro, no Gen Fu, no Tomonobu Itagaki