Review #673: Dead or Alive 6

 Dead. Mostly dead on arrival.

 I've got a... soft spot for Dead or Alive. While I've always been a crusader against fanservice in videogames, underneath its dumb otaku culture exterior lies a honest to goodness decent fighting game. The franchise has always been easy to pick up and play, a more casual take on Virtua Fighter, if you will. And I friggin' love Virtua Fighter. Sadly, Tecmo has really dropped the ball with Dead or Alive 6.

 The game covers well tread ground with its mode offerings: Story, VS(VS Cpu or Player, Arcade, Survival, Time Attack) as well as a Training/Tutorial mode. Special mention goes to how terrible the Story Mode is. Firstly, just as with DoA 5, it's a disjointed collection of scenes that might or might be relevant to the main story thread, the one concerning Ninjas, that unlocks as you play different chapters. The story is ridiculous, the voice English acting is horrible(And not lipsynched) and, like any Japanese game wanting to pander, shoehorned Marie Rose(Resident loli, very popular with the Otaku crowd, supposedly 18 years old) and Honoka(Her personality are her big breasts, really dumb design and voice, extremely popular with the Otaku crowd) into as many scenes as possible, to the game's detriment since both characters are horrible, their dialogue is completely idiotic and their scenes only induced cringe. As for how much of an after thought the story mode was is that you don't get a single thing for completing all chapters, not a single costume piece, not a single trophy. There's absolutely no reason to play the Story Mode besides wanting to cringe for two hours or so.

 Thankfully, the tried and true gameplay that originated from the very first game remains unsullied. You've got a punch, a kick, a throw and a 'hold' button, and that's everything you need to have fun. Every character has a somewhat extensive amount of different attack strings made up of Punches and Kicks, so even newbies can have fun pressing buttons and watching cool stuff happen. Indulge your inner daredevil and you might even try to use the Hold button in order to counter different attacks aimed your way. In this manner, combat in Dead or Alive is fast, furious and, above all, fun. Power Blows and all that jazz from DoA 5 has been axed, instead now we have Break Blows and Break Holds, powerful, gauge consuming moves. The hold consumes 50% of your break gauge and can counter any type of incoming attack, while the Blow consumes 100% of your break gauge and serves as a powerful special attack. Most characters have very similar Break Blows, so they are nothing to write home about, and, as a matter of fact, I thought they kinda got in the way of the match's flow.

 If it's pretty much the same old game as before, then how did Tecmo Koei drop the ball? Well, because there's absolutely no reason to settle for DoA 6 while you can get DoA 5: Final Round for much cheaper. Let's start with the roster, here we have 24 different characters. The same exact number as vanilla 5. Except that 5 got two further revisions with even more characters. What we get here is, basically, Last Round's roster minus the guests, Gen Fu, Ein, Leon, Alpha-152, Momiji, Rachel  but with two new characters, Otaku's wet dream NiCO and discount Travis Touchdown, Diego. That's pretty disappointing in and of itself, but let's add to this the fact that Nyotengu was a pre-order exclusive, as well as Phase-4, which happens to be another Kasumi clone. Both Nyotengu and Phase-4 are fought during story-mode, if only to let you know how shady their DLC practices are. With Last Round you get more characters and more costumes. Diego and NiCO aren't worth sacrificing Ein, my favorite, or Momiji. To add insult to injury, Mai Shiranui returned as DLC again, because we gotta nickel and dime dem otakus and weaboos.

 While I'm not one to care about graphics, it's hard to notice any difference between DoA 5 and 6. Mind you, if you look at them side by side you can definitely tell that the new game is much more colorful, and it's got more details, things like sharper muscle tones and looser clothes. But the stages are pretty similar, and plenty of characters reused their costumes, or very similar costumes to the ones they wore in 5, making for a very similar looking game. Koei Tecmo should've spent more time giving everyone new designs. Or maybe not, Rig and Bayman's secondary outfits, for instance, are as generic as they get. Speaking of outfits, as per usual, boys only get two different costumes, while girls get about six of them. Each outfit has 3 different colors, which is kinda neat. Unlocking them, however, is not neat. Playing offline modes(Survival, Arcade and Time Attack) rewards you with about 1 costume piece. Costumes require anything from 100 to 1000 Costume pieces. Pieces you unlock go toward random costumes. Notice a problem? Quest Mode is the easiest way to earn costume pieces, since you earn in the hundreds, but quests are limited, I was lucky I got to unlock a costume for Hayate, my boy, but I wasn't able to unlock anything for a few fighters. Conversely, I unlocked a ton of costumes for Kokoro, a character I don't care about or like to play as.

 Bottom line is: Get Dead or Alive 5 - Last Round. It looks practically the same, it has pretty much every character in this one plus a lot more, it has more costumes and it's cheaper. If Tecmo-Koei is planning on moving forwards with Dead or Alive into a seventh installment or beyond, they should really look into refreshing how every character looks, making new stages instead of trying to pay homage to the older games and adding more than new two characters per entry(Kasumi clones don't count) and not axing anyone unless the plot demands it. Story Mode should either get cut and reworked into Arcade Endings or given a better written plot, losing the disjointed narrative and giving everyone their chance to shine during a linear story progression. Males and females should have the same amount of costumes, axe the silly fanservice costumes and gives us cooler or casual clothes(Honestly, Mila's new casual clothes make her a cutie, although Rig could've done with something less generic) and stop trying to nickel and dime their fanbase. Either that or continue riding this horse and see where it gets them.

 The saddest part about this is that Dead or Alive 6 is a fun game, because its foundation is rock solid. Its simple nature makes it a joy to pick up and play, you don't need to spend time learning a character(Unless you really want to), just pick someone, mash buttons and have fun. The hold system was a brilliant mechanic back then, and it still makes for some very exciting back-and-forth. But Tecmo-Koei really need step up their game, because such a lackluster attempt at a husk to profit from through DLC can only take them so far. Or maybe not, there's got to be a reason as to why they keep getting away with things like a 90$ season pass.
 7.0 out of 10