Welcome back to the Dead or Alive Love/Hate series! In this entry, we’ll be looking at Dead or Alive 5. This was my first DOA game: having played all the Ninja Gaiden games on PS Vita, I decided to check out this game’s Vita port since Ryu Hayabusa was also in it. And thus, this whole journey and obsession with this franchise began… I recall enjoying it at the time, but it has been probably around eight years since I last played it.

First off, a bit of history is worth mentioning before we get into the Love/Hate properly. Dead or Alive 5 represents something of an identity crisis for Team Ninja. Long-time studio leader, Tomonobu Itagaki, left Team Ninja and the series’ Xbox exclusivity ended with the franchise in a shaky position. Dead or Alive needed to figure out its place in the gaming market and evolve if it was going to stay viable. Could they pull together and accomplish this? Read on to find out…

Dead or Alive 5 has a lot of different releases: the game originally released on PS3 and Xbox 360, and then they released Dead or Alive 5+ on PS Vita. Then there was an Ultimate version which was released on PS3 and Xbox 360, and finally Last Round, which released on PS4, Xbox One, and PC (although the PC port was actually based on the last-gen versions, so it doesn’t look quite as good). I had Last Round on PS4, although I apparently sold my copy at some point years ago. As a result, for this replay I used the PS Vita version, but between the PS4 version and the PC port (which I have tried out), I can say that they all play pretty similarly, with each re-release primarily adding more content.

Love

• Story Mode – I’ve been pretty harsh on Dead or Alive games’ stories throughout this Love/Hate series, but that’s largely down to them being really dumb, or poorly told (or both). Dead or Alive 5 tries to modernize the series to match the sort of cinematic, western-led experiences we were getting in the late PS3/Xbox 360-era. The result is a story mode which dispenses with the “pick a fighter, play through a few matches with the occasional cutscene in-between, fight a boss, get a unique, character-specific ending when you’re done” structure and instead follows a more expansive, linear narrative that covers the entire cast by the end. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the old structure well enough, and Dead or Alive 5‘s narrative is still dumb, but I really like how this game presents its story and world. For the first time in the series’ history, we get to see how all these characters live, interact with each other, and the world that they inhabit. We get to see them interacting casually, like there’s this tight-knit community of Dead or Alive tournament fighters who stay in touch with each other and seek out new contenders to bring into the fold. The linear structure also helps the tournament to not feel completely superfluous: more than half of the narrative is dominated by the tournament, so we have some actual stakes and escalation and we excitedly wait and see who the winners and losers are. Then the last third of the narrative concerns the on-going DOATEC conspiracy narrative, providing a fitting conclusion for the game. I can see some people getting pissed off that they undid the climactic events of Dead or Alive 4 here, but I didn’t mind too much. I thoroughly enjoyed Dead or Alive 5‘s story campaign, it was nice to see a more cinematic take on these characters and this world and it helped me appreciate them all the more for it.
• The Characters (New and Old!) – Springing off of the last point, the more fleshed out story mode means that we also get more layers to all of the characters than we have been able to get up to this point.
  • Starting with the existing characters, I want to give a special shout-out to Eliot. I didn’t really care about him in Dead or Alive 4, but here I found him very endearing. As one of the younger cast members, he is insecure about his abilities, eager to learn from others (including a fun pairing with Brad Wong), and constantly training to become the best. There’s also a rather cute scene where he is crushing hard on Christie (poor boy, she would annihilate you), but is too inexperienced to know what to do about it. It’s refreshing, because we rarely see anyone (other than Zack) acknowledge how hot the characters of these games are, so it gives him some humanizing in the process. Bayman also gets some much-needed characterization. He was always such a boring, generic strong-guy mercenary character in the previous games, but here we get to see him as a consummate professional, a soldier, and a leader who tries to keep his comrades safe. It’s not a massive leap, but it’s enough to at least make him more interesting.
  • Of the new characters, by far the best is Mila. She’s just great all-round: she’s an employee at a diner whose hobby is MMA, which causes her to catch the eye of the Dead or Alive fighter community. She’s a big fangirl for Bass Armstrong, and it’s very cute getting to see her freaking out about getting close to these characters she’s idolized for years now. She also just has a cool, down-to-earth design, and plays well to boot.
  • I also have to shout-out some pretty major guest and DLC characters for this game. We’ve got four characters from Virtua Fighter (Akira Yuki, Sarah Bryant, Jacky Bryant, and Pai Chan), some of whom actually make cameos in the story mode. DLC/re-releases would eventually bring in Ninja Gaiden characters Rachel and Momiji (who is a god-tier DOA waifu), as well as King of Fighters‘ Mai Shiranui, and even Naotora Ii from Samurai Warriors. Some other major characters were added via DLC, but I’m going to hold off on mentioning them further until the next couple games where they got their proper introductions…
• New Art Style – The anime-like aesthetic from the first four games served them well and has helped those games still look pretty impressive today, but it was reaching its limits by the time of DOA4. A full visual overhaul was implemented for DOA5, adopting a more detailed and realistic art style, although it does maintain some more subtle stylization. All-in-all, I quite like the change, although the colours are a bit washed out (this was pretty typical of games of the era, and would get a lot more saturation in subsequent entries). It’s not going to have quite the same staying power as the earlier games’ style, but it was easily the best-looking 3D fighter of its era and still holds up today.

Mixed

• More Overt Sexual Content – In the wake of Dead or Alive 4 and Xtreme 2, I think that Team Ninja had a sit-down where they were trying to figure out the future for the franchise. Xtreme 2 sold very poorly in the west, and there was clearly a sense that they needed to appeal more to western gamers with the new art style, full English voice acting, cinematic production values, etc. Hell, they literally made the tagline for this game “I’m a fighter”, as if to remind you that this game isn’t just about hot women in skimpy outfits. In spite of this, Team Ninja continued pushing the Xtreme aspects further into the mainline games:
  • The main example of this is that every fight ends with you being able to control the camera as you focus in on whatever parts of your fighter you want, for as long as you want, whether they’re in a victorious win condition, or an exhausted and vulnerable crumple on the ground… which, I shouldn’t need to clarify, is clearly intended to invoke some rather lascivious fantasies…
  • Whatever the original intent for DOA5 was, they would lean harder into the suggestive aspects as the game went on: not only did we get hundreds of swimsuits and various other lewd costumes, but they also introduced full-on gravure videos straight out of the Xtreme games.
  • One indication of how focused this game is on pushing sex over its predecessors is what I call “breast inflation”. For four games, Tina had the biggest rack, and it kind of legitimately made sense for her character: she’s the ideal, hot, wild, freedom-loving American girl and, as a professional wrestler, it actually made sense for her to have some of the more revealing outfits in the series. However, come DOA5, we got not one, but two characters with bigger boobs than her. One was Rachel from Ninja Gaiden, which you could argue was just Team Ninja following that character’s established look. However, brand new DLC character Honoka doesn’t really have an excuse: she’s a school girl with boobs so big that you could suffocate between them. She’s clearly intended to be fetish bait, something that Team Ninja would continue indulging going forward…
  • One big positive I’ll say for this game’s sexual content though: at least everyone in the cast is of-age now!
  • By the way, that’s not to say that any of this sexual/suggestive content is bad, per se. However, this was my first DOA game: I had no idea that, only a couple games earlier, the sexy stuff was all in the marketing and the games themselves were focused on the fighting. The Xtreme-ification of the mainline entries only accelerated the notion that these games were made for “gamer weirdos”, furthered the punch-line that this series was not to be taken seriously, and made it so that these elements could not be separated or toned down without provoking backlash. If Xtreme had never happened and the games didn’t push the envelope each time, I doubt that the series would have declined as badly as it did. It’s unfortunate that that’s the case, but that’s just the reality of marketing a game to the sexually-conservative western audience.

Hate

• DLC Overload – Dead or Alive 5‘s DLC model really set the tone for the kind of bullshit which has infected the fighting game genre in the past couple generations. I get that it’s all cosmetic stuff, but it’s still scummy for several reasons:
  • First of all, the price of these sets is simply ludicrous. This game had seven season passes during its lifetime, each of which cost more than the entire game itself. For costumes! Just looking at Steam, where I know for a fact that some items have been removed, all DLC for this game currently totals up to a whopping $1,184.68 (Canadian)!!! That is, frankly, a ridiculous price to charge to get the “full” Dead or Alive 5 experience. Like… what experience can they possibly offer which is worth the price of fourteen full-priced AAA games!?
  • Secondly, it’s not exactly subtle that Team Ninja are monetizing the gooners in the audience. Most of the DLC packs are for swimsuits and other skimpy outfits, and there are also some DLCs for “private paradise” scenes (literally just the characters frolicking in the sand for like thirty seconds). It’s not an exaggeration to say that the horniness of the audience is being exploited here for a dirty buck (especially when the in-game unlockable outfits are far tamer in comparison to the stuff you have to pay for).
  • Thirdly, I feel like I really have to reiterate just how much DLC there is for this game, to the point where it’s straight-up confusing to navigate. The DOA wiki tells me that, just for Last Round, there were at least 952 costumes for sale across 43 costume bundle packs, some of which were included in the seven season passes, and some of which were not. I get that this was their way of monetizing the game and continuing to justify supporting the series, but it sets an awful precedent for the franchise: you’re producing a cosmetic cash shop with a fighting game stapled onto it, and every subsequent release needs to escalate this until the entire edifice implodes in on itself and the fighting game part becomes unviable to continue. Given how the series has advanced since DOA5, my fears at the time were well-founded…
• Core Fighters Is a Scam – Oh and exacerbating all the DLC issues is the Core Fighters release of the game. In theory, it sounds like a good idea: release a free-to-play version of the game where you can just pay to get the parts you want. Of course, like every other “only pay for what you want!” service, it ends up being a massive scam where you pay significantly more for everything in the end. Everything that could be monetized here is, including freaking stage music. Tecmo-Koei seem to have been pleased with the results though, because Core Fighters is the only way to get Dead or Alive 5: Last Round digitally now (you have to buy a bundle to get all the “base game” content, but it doesn’t make navigating everything less of a headache, and the fact that it’s an extra step to pull it off clearly shows that they don’t intend for you to take this route).
• Rig – Unfortunately, the other new character introduced in Dead or Alive 5 is Rig, who is one of the dullest characters imaginable. He very clearly is intended to “appeal to western audiences”, which is probably why his face looks identical to Jake Mueller from Resident Evil 6. He’s got a mysterious past, his own unique fighting style he developed, and he is literally named after the oil rig he works at and has spent his entire life on. Oh, and for some reason, he ends up being the big bad of the game with zero warning. Wow, so much information for me to latch onto. Is it any wonder that the female characters are the most popular in these games when the male characters get this much to work with?

Dead or Alive 5 is a pretty good time. I love the change in production values and how it makes this world and characters so much more believable. However, the ways in which it transformed the series into a DLC-factory sucked at the time of release, and have proven to be even worse than we imagined in hindsight. It’s unfortunate that that leaves a stain on this game’s legacy, because it’s otherwise a pretty great reimagining of the series’ formula.