You are currently looking at the best game in the FGC.
Yes, I'm serious.
No, I don't care about horny fanservice or jiggle physics.

There's a fully featured free demo called "Core Fighters" that you can download right now.
Set all your matchmaking settings to Any and jump in.
Mash punch and kick and watch this game go crazy.
Block with the block button.
While blocking, AT ANY TIME, press back to counter a mid, back up to counter a high, back down to counter a low.
The game goes on sale for 85% off every 3-4 weeks if you want all the characters.
Or, just buy the one you want to main for $4.
Have fun, and welcome to the community

I play fighting games just about every day.
I go to two locals each week, one for Virtua Fighter 5 and one for Tekken 8.
Every other week, I go to one for Third Strike.
On occasion, I'll hit up events for SF6, Strive, and UNI2.
And every now and then I still play some PS2 games with friends (SoulCalibur 2, et al)

Variety is the spice of life and I'll always be playing more than one game.
But if I got stranded on a desert island with only one installed, it would be DOA6.


When you hang out with Tekken players, a lot of them will tell you that what they love most about the game is its "depth."
I don't think that's technically accurate. While Tekken 8 is deep in some ways, it doesn't have nearly as much depth as it has breadth. Huge move lists with tons of corner cases. Knowledge checks everywhere. Complex strings with really specific timings. All kinds of frame data.

That's just not what depth is.

Let's say your opponent executes a series of jabs in Tekken 8. You can:
Block until the end of the string when you'll have plus frames
Duck
Sidestep

In DOA6 you can do all of the above, and:
Catch their fist in mid punch at any point during the string and throw them
Rotate around behind them, causing their attack to redirect into a different string and trap them
Crouch dash and push them into a stage hazard, causing them to explode or go flying over a cliff, or get carried away by an angry pterodactyl


To paraphrase the creator of the series, during an interview about DOA and Virtua Fighter:

The two series will always be deeply connected, as they are based on the same core. But Virtua Fighter is like a traditional sushi restaurant, with a classically beautiful interior, where each item is prepared by masters. Dead or Alive is like sushi served at a rock bar, with bright colorful drinks and energetic music playing, where the dishes are brought to you by attractive men and women on roller skates.

Try to find a picture of Tomonobu Itagaki where he isn't wearing sunglasses. Try to find an interview where he isn't wearing a leather jacket and repping some rock band. The original inspiration for this whole game was music videos, specifically big wild over the top rock videos. The dudes in this game are all jacked and most are shirtless and every one of them gets sweaty as you fight so by the end they are absolutely glistening under the lights, like rockers on stage. Every lady is sexy in a ridiculous and over the top way, with utterly impractical outfits for practicing martial arts.

When you actually play the game, everything is exploding and your opponent is flying all over the place or being kicked through a pile of logs and over a cliff and falling twenty stories through an abandoned water park, or whatever else. It would make no sense to have serious characters in this game. Everything is so wild, so over the top, that if they were, it would be completely out of place. In the actual game, it comes across as way more comedic than sexy.

Unfortunately, when this game left Japan, the crazy music video influence was lost in translation, and the phrase "jiggle physics" was born. This was just never the intention, it was just one part of it to make the whole thing feel crazy and over the top. But, as a result, Itagaki ended up under a lot of pressure to make DOA more sexual, and to try to relieve it, he created a spin off series called DOA Xtreme Volleyball. That way, he said, the people who think that DOA is about sexy characters can go somewhere that actually gives them their fantasy, and DOA can continue to be itself.

Tragically, while this was well understood among a few very devoted fans, everyone else just saw DOA releasing an adult game, and thought the franchise was actually all about adult games, with a fighting game just being one of them. To make matters worse, this wasn't just opinion, as the DOA Xtreme series massively outsold the fighting games (and continues to today).

Itagaki's relationship to Tecmo took a dramatic downturn, they began micromanaging all of his decisions, threatened to fire him and withheld his pay when he pushed back, and even once stole a developer build from his computer and released it as a full game to prevent him from undoing changes they wanted. He left the company after DOA4, and the devoted team he left behind carried the series through DOA5 and DOA6, but are also now mostly gone. In fact, the director of DOA5 works on Tekken 8 now (ever wondered why all those stages are destructible?)


Well, with no developers from the original series left, this game is now run by the Koei Tecmo marketing team! And boy are they doing a marketing team job of running it.

Luckily, without any artists from the original series left, either, almost all of the DLC is completely stupid. The most basic and unimaginative costumes you can think of. Seriously, there's a santa outfit. And a school uniform. Nothing unique or original or even remotely interesting, unless you're for some reason desperate to play some generic department store mannequin fighting game. The most interesting costumes by the actual art team all come with the base game and are just unlocked from beating arcade mode or winning online matches.

Don't buy the deluxe edition, don't buy the season passes.

Do download the free version. If you don't like the characters they include, buy one you actually want, they're all something like $4. Then get the full game when it goes on sale for 85% off (it currently does this every couple of weeks).

It's not rollback, but it works great. Don't get me wrong, I love rollback as much as anyone else in the FGC, but it's not like delay based netcode doesn't work. It just means if you play on a bad connection, the frame rate won't be 60fps and might dip lower to keep you and your opponent in sync. If you've really internalized the timing for certain moves, maybe that'll be annoying, but unlike with rollback, you'll always know exactly what has happened in the match. So, you know, pros and cons.

Otherwise, you can find ranked matches relatively easily still, and there are always a few lobbies open on the weekends. You can wait for a match from training mode and all that.

It's the most fun fighting game out there, no contest. And it just so happens to also be one of, if not the deepest 3D fighter you can play. There is no reason at all to not try out the free version, and the full version is regularly on sale if you ever want the full roster.

First of all, if you are familiar with the “fighting” genre via titles like “Mortal Kombat” or “Street Fighter”, this game is probably not for you.

There are no jumps, no flying kicks or fireball throwing here. This game is focused on close fist-to-fist fighting, blocks, holds and throws. The closest analog would be the “Virtual Fighter” series. Some people like it this way - it is actually more realistic, but for unprepared gamers it may look boring as different fighters barely differ from each other.

I suggest you install a free demo of the game and try it first before buying the whole product. Only if you are satisfied with the gameplay - proceed to the purchase. The developers treat you fairly here.

I am not familiar with the “Dead or Alive” series, so I can not compare this game with its predecessors.

As I already said this game does not follow the most well-known patterns with its gameplay. For example: there are 4 different types of blocks for the 4 different types of incoming attacks. In the fight you should focus on attacking and defending particular body areas, choosing the right combos for the particular situations and so on.

We have a good selection of fighters. Each represents a particular martial art school and has a unique set of combos and moves. Although the difference is not so noticeable as in other “fighting” games due to the very nature of the gameplay. The most notable difference is character alignment towards the “punching-kicking” or “wrestling” approach. Still each character is unique and feels differently once you dive deep enough in the gameplay details. But the player should be let’s say “attuned” to be able to enjoy these differences. For most of the audience all characters will appear almost the same.

The arenas are fully three dimensional. We can move in any direction during the fight, avoiding enemy attacks with backstep for example. Different arenas have a different layout: some are square or circle, some are long tight corridors and so on. We have to consider where the walls are during the fight, luring the opponent into a corner or using the wall to launch a special attack.

Some arenas have special objects, which deal extra damage if you manage to throw an opponent into them. It sounds like a good idea, but its implementation is quite poor. Usually they deal too much damage and these objects are not exhausted upon a single use. In the end the match often ends up in throwing the opponent into the same dinosaur over and over again, while he is unable to move out of the danger spot. These objects should be “single use”: take an opportunity and deal an extra damage, but only once - there should still be a room for the fist fighting after the environment usage in the same match after all.

There is a “story” mode, but a pitiful one. It’s just a sequence of the short cinematics, which is supposed to link the set of fighting matches into some logical sequence. Total crap. It is hard to understand what is going on, hard to understand different characters’ links and goals, it’s not interesting and not impressive at all.

The list of game modes is too short. Besides the “story”, there are “arcade”, “versus” and “survival”.

In “arcade” we fight the classic sequence of matches against different opponents, without anything special, like a boss fight or something. In “survival” we do exactly the same, but using a single health bar for all matches.

For the “single player” the game becomes boring very quickly. The only interesting part is completing the character specific challenges, like launching specific combos, winning in certain conditions and so on.

The graphics are good. The game appears more like a cartoon than like a movie, but the visual is quite enjoyable and has enough details. The animations are thorough. And of course, do not forget about let’s say “decent physics” around particular female body parts, which make the action more enjoyable.

The game attempts to compensate for the lack of diversity in the gameplay using extra visual content. The countless of “revealing” outfits for the female characters have brought the game a title of “DLC simulator”. This is quite a sad situation as the game ended up as a “doll dress up” instead of “fighting”. And the developers’ greed with the prices made the impression ever worse.

Music is unremarkable: nothing catches the ear. There is some diversity in character entry speech depending on the opponent he/she faces, but it is far behind “Injustice 2” or “Mortal Kombat X”.

Total rating: 5/10.
Even considering this to be a special type of “fighting” it has too many design problems.
And most of all: it becomes boring too quickly.

A fun fighter with surprising depth in the system and the most anime storyline outside Guilty Gear