DEAD OR ALIVE 6

Halt
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.
Good lord, I don't want to read another Steam Review essay
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
Good lord, I do want to read anothe
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.
Isn't this just a worse Tekken 8?
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
But seriously why is everyone so sexy?
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 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?)
Ok, even if I take this game seriously, wtf is all this DLC?
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).
What about online?
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.
In conclusion
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.

Great game, abandoned to death.
DoA could also stand for Dead on Arrival because the game hasn't been updated since 2020. The developers have abandoned their game. Nevertheless, the final product is fully functional regardless.
The issue with DoA6 is that Koei Tecmo is following a very greedy business practice by chopping the game into pieces and selling every main roster character individually as well as their costmetic items. Now of course you can purchase characters and cosmetic items with season passes or with outfit packs. But this drives the total cost of the game skyhigh.
I have experienced the full game. I used DLC unlocker to access every single main roster character as well as their cosmetic items. If you do a quick search on the internet, you can figure out how to, it's out there. That being said, since the total cost of the game to me was zero, I absolutely loved the game. Would I support the devs? If only they made the next installment and that they changed the way they market their game. Full main roster release with their outfits available on launch. I would happily get the next DoA game if they would change the way they market it.
- Good visuals and texture quality (on par with 8th gen consoles hardware).
- Awesome soundtracks.
- Character variation (Guest appearances).
- Short story mode.
- Quest mode.
- Ability to unlock cosmetics and musics with in-game earned money.
Conclusion: Potentially great game ruined by greedy business practice. Does that still make the game bad? Not unless you manage to unlock everything for yourself without breaking the bank.

Not enough DLC's. Maybe another 400 will suffice.

Good game, maybe one of the most fun fighting game out there, but saddly abandonned both by the gamers and the devs,
I hope the serie isnt dead and we could expect it to come back.
If anyone playing the game reading this you can add me to play together.

I don't play fighting games much these days, but back in the day used to enjoy them, and Dead or Alive 3 on PS2 was one of my favourites. Dead or Alive 6 built on what the older games in this series were good at. The fighting feels fluid, each impact can be felt, you can string some impressive combos, and there is a nice parry system. And as a bonus, there are lots of beautiful female characters. ;)

Now, I don't really like playing games such as this online, so my entire review is based on single player experience. And gladly there is plenty to do if you don't wish to play online. There's story mode of course. Then there's a quest mode, where you're given certain tasks to perform during fights. Then there are the usual modes that you can normally expect in fighting games - arcade (fight through a series of battles and try to get as high score as possible), time attack (fight through a series of battles and try to win in as shortest time as possible), survival (keep facing new opponents with the same character till you're defeated), and versus mode (fight 1 on 1 against another player or a computer). There is also training mode where you can practice moves and get a hang of the game or a particular character.

In many of the game modes where you face computer opponents, you can choose between multiple difficulty levels, so you can get enjoyment from the game whether you're new to the genre or a veteran. Playing on higher difficulty modes gets you bigger rewards. The rewards are usually in-game coins and also costume pattern points. These are mainly needed for unlocking new costumes for characters - and there are plenty of those. In the versus mode, you can set additional options to make it more fun - number of rounds, amount of health, round time, etc. Oh and you can save a replay of the whole fight here if you want to re-watch it later.

Ok, let's address the elephant in the room - the massive list of DLCs the game has. Many people frown upon this sort of thing - having to buy many DLCs for a game that already has a high price point. However, vast majority of DLCs for this game are merely character costumes and aren't necessary to get. Only 7 DLCs are additional characters. But that's only 7 DLC characters in a game that has a total of over 30 characters. So the base game already provides you with almost 25 characters, and the DLC characters are not necessarily stronger or better (though having them sure can add more to the game; they're not particularly expensive). As for the costumes - many of the costumes can only be unlocked in-game, while others are paid DLCs. There's no necessity to buying them all. Most are fan service and sexy costumes for female characters. So if you really want some of that, you can get a few of them for characters you use frequently to spice up their look a bit.

There are lots of fighting games out there, and each series has its own distinct strengths and features. Mortal Kombat is all about gore and maximum brutality, Soul Calibur is great for its variety of fancy weapons, Street Fighter for faster-paced fights with lots of flashy effects, and so on. Dead or Alive to me is more grounded in reality, with more realistic moves and combos (aside from a few elements of fantasy and sci-fi in the backstories and abilities of some characters), no over-the-top blood and entrails, and no "10 punches in less than a second" kind of thing, but its pacing is still fast and fluid. And as mentioned before, Dead or Alive has hands down the best-looking girls, in quality and quantity.

One thing that's been a little on the annoying side for me is that in some stages, there is a large number of humans in the background and/or special effects, so the game can lag a bit on those stages. Wish it was possible to switch off those parts of the environment to improve performance.

I recommend it to those who enjoy fighting games or who are new to the genre and want a satisfying and not too complicated game as a good entry point. It's certainly a good relaxation to just whack a few enemies with impressive combos after you've had a long day.

Fantastic game for jiggly wonders! Do not buy the DLC skins! Use mods instead which are free and better!

Aside from the game's large assets, DOA6 is a genuinely fun and well made fighting game. It's unfortunate it's not taken seriously and the online playerbase is pretty much non existent now