Welcome back to the Dead or Alive Love/Hate series! In this entry, we’ll be looking at Dead or Alive Xtreme 3. For my 200th Blog Post celebration, I reviewed this game for the memes. I was pretty low on it at the time… and yet, this has been the one cartridge in my PS Vita for several years now. Have my thoughts changed then…? Read on to find out…

Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 has got to have the most confusing set of re-releases in the entire franchise (which is saying something). For one thing, there’s no game just called “Dead or Alive Xtreme 3“. The initial two games were subtitled Fortune (on PS4) and Venus (on PS Vita). An free-to-play PC version would be released shortly thereafter, but that ended up evolving into a completely different game, so I’ll cover it later. However, some content from the PC version ended up being incorporated into a re-released version called Scarlet, which would release on PS4 and Switch. However, even this re-release wasn’t identical, because the PS4 version had some censorship (to the point where things which were in Fortune ended up being removed in the re-release), whereas the Switch version is fully unchanged. As a result, the Switch version is easily the definitive version in terms of content, and also for being handheld (as previously stated, Xtreme games play best on portable systems). For my part, I bought Venus for my 200th blog post special, and I still own it to this day. While not as “definitive” as Scarlet, it’s still a very worthy way to check this game out if you’re interested (and, honestly, there’s very little changed between the two versions). That said, I did try out the Switch version of Scarlet as well for reference for this Love/Hate series.

Love

• Graphics – Good graphics are par for the course for Dead or Alive, but it’s especially worth noting in an Xtreme game where you’re meant to be lustfully staring at the character models for a hefty chunk of the runtime. The new art style from DOA5 really works in this regard, leaving a lot less to the imagination compared to its more stylized predecessors. The PS Vita and Switch ports are especially impressive in this regard, holding up flawlessly compared to their console counterparts.
• The Ultimate Handheld Experience – This only really applies to the PS Vita and Switch versions of the game, but the more laid-back handheld experience really does make this the best way to play any Xtreme game. The technology has advanced far enough that the compromises of Paradise are no longer a mitigating factor; this is a fully-featured version of Dead or Alive Xtreme 3. Being able to play in short bursts also really helps keep the game relaxing and cuts down on any tedium from the limited number of activities available. While I have my issues with the game, by virtue of being on a handheld, this makes DOAX3 probably the best way to experience an Xtreme game that we’ve ever gotten.

Mixed

• Missions – One of the new features of DOAX3 is a mission structure. These are basically what you’d expect from a game released in the last ten years: a little pop-up that says “perform X task to get a reward”. These can be an easy way to get a small amount of Zack dollars and gives you something to work towards. I didn’t really give them much notice at the time, but we’ve been so inundated with daily/weekly challenges in games that I kind of hate it now. The tasks are so arbitrary, some are way more trouble than they’re worth, and they ultimately don’t make the game more fun: you’re just doing some chore because the game told you to in order to get a tiny dopamine hit, instead of enjoying your vacation by doing what you want to. Look… the issue with previous Xtreme games wasn’t that there was no direction, it was that the content on offer was way too thin and shallow. Constantly prodding me to do things isn’t content, it’s just preying on people addicted to checking off boxes.

Hate

• Owner Mode – The big, marquee new feature of DOAX3 is owner mode. This mode allows you to… oh goddammit. It’s a full-fledged, goddamn dating sim mode. Given how much I hated the dating sim elements in the previous Xtreme games, you can imagine my feelings about owner mode. It plays out as a second layer for the main game, with your own inventory and money, and you can even switch between girl mode and owner mode on the fly. The main difference is that owner mode doesn’t allow you to play as any particular girl, so you can only really sit and watch everyone else vacationing, while managing their happiness with gifts and trying to get the girls to try on skimpier swimsuits. There’s not a whole lot to it to be honest, and it’s about as dull and tedious as the dating sim elements from the previous games. About the only thing it adds to the formula is that the girls are now doting on you, the player, instead of having fun interacting with the other girls the whole time, but that opens up some issues…
• Envelope Pushing – Look, by this point in the franchise, Dead or Alive is no stranger to racy content. Frankly, as much as I may roll my eyes at some of this stuff, none of it has been truly objectionable up to this point (other than the sexualization of minors in the first few entries, because Japan). DOAX3 has about as much sexuality as you’d expect, but it pushes the boundaries of taste moreso than any other game in the franchise thus far, to the point where even I have to admit that it gets downright creepy:
  • Sure, all the girls are officially over eighteen now, hooray. However, this is also the proper debut of Marie Rose, who initially appears to buck DOA design trends by having a very slight figure. However, this seems less of a character diversity decision, and more that she’s clearly been designed to appeal to lolita fetishists. There’s also her foil, Honoka, who is also designed to look like a schoolgirl, while also having the biggest knockers in the entire franchise, and the contrast between the two characters is clearly intentional.
  • In their efforts to play up the dev’s lascivious fantasies, the game can turn into a sexual harassment/assault simulator. If you give a girl a new swimsuit, she can choose to try it on in front of you if you agree to close your eyes. The game then gives you the option to peek, which causes the girl to freak out and cover herself up (there’s no nudity regardless, but it’s clearly about the voyeurism and humiliation fantasy). There’s no real incentive to do it… but, then again, there’s no in-game incentive not to do it (other than affecting their happiness), and the devs have clearly put it in there to be used. Same goes for the VR mode. Now, I do not have a PS VR, so I can’t verify this myself, but the VR mode allows you to poke and prod the girls and cause them to get audibly uncomfortable. However, no matter how far you go and how much they say “No!”, they’ll get over it and be back to doting on you soon enough. Team Ninja, I implore you: consent is fucking hot. There’s nothing hotter than an experienced woman who wants to ride your dick to oblivion because she’s obsessed with you. This game portrays its girls as a bunch of naïve, innocent angels who don’t realize how hot they are, and then allows you to take advantage of them. It makes everything feel way creepier than it needs to, all because it might appeal more to some degenerates.
• More Games Industry Bullshit – To the surprise of no one, DOAX3 continues the games industry bullshit that really started in DOA5, only this time it’s more predatory. Sure, there’s less DLC overall here, but the way that DOAX3 goes about it is more objectionable. Swimsuits can be bought with real-money premium tickets. There’s a swimsuit shop with random suits which rotates items daily, so you’re pressured into buying what you want now, because you don’t know when it will be back. Oh, and missions often will require you to buy a particular swimsuit from the owner shop, which further pushes you to make a purchase now, because the suit may not be there if you wait to grind some in-game currency first. Several swimsuits are also premium-only and it can cost $10 Canadian or more to purchase a single one, which is egregious, even compared to DOA5.
• Missing Characters – For the first time in an Xtreme game, there are female characters from the main cast missing from this game. These aren’t minor characters missing either: we’re talking Leifang, Tina, Christie, Lisa, and Mila. This is especially baffling for Tina and Christie, who are the most sexually-liberal characters in the franchise, and for Lisa, who was literally introduced in the original DOAXBV. Given that Marie Rose and Honoka take center stage in this game’s marketing, you can’t help but feel like more “important” DOA characters got bumped off the cast for either being too “old” (early-to-mid 20s for Tina and Christie? Not in my masturbation-fantasy, thank you very much!), or because racism (…c’mon, we all know that’s a big factor in why Lisa, the only black woman in the franchise, isn’t here. Even if you wanna say “well the game was released in Asia only and they don’t have black people there!”… that’s still racism, my dude, sorry to break it to you).
• Culture War Bullshit – To the outrage of fans, DOAX3 was never released outside of Asian territories. An official explanation wasn’t really elaborated on, but there are a few prominent theories:
  • Amongst dumbasses, the narrative is that SJWs (which is what they called “woke” at the time) whined too much and caused Tecmo-Koei to prevent the game from being released worldwide. While there were some game journalists reporting on the game at the time, generally people just didn’t give a shit about Dead or Alive anymore by the time this game released. That, and the game was announced to be an Asia-only release before any theoretical outrage could happen anyway.
  • According to Team Ninja themselves, the reasoning seems to boil down to “western retailers would not stock the game“. That was a pretty claim dubious at the time (you’re telling me that they couldn’t do a digital-only release at least to get some more money…?), but I can kind of understand it. I can see a big retailer like Walmart refusing to carry the game… but that’s because Team Ninja have spent so much effort marketing the Xtreme games as porn that of course Walmart doesn’t want to deal with Karen getting mad that Little Timmy was exposed to big booba from the box art he saw at the store.
  • The truth of the matter, as far as I’m concerned? Dead or Alive Xtreme games have never sold particularly well in the west. Manufacturing and distributing all the discs required for an international release is not going to have the kind of return on investment that Tecmo-Koei need to justify an international release. It’s ultimately more sensible for them to release it in Asia, drum up some controversy, and then have interested gamers import it. I wouldn’t even be surprised if we found out that Tecmo-Koei had some sort of deal with PlayAsia to split on the added import fees.
• No Innovation – When it comes down to it, this is still the exact same game we got on the original Xbox thirteen years earlier, just with a couple more features awkwardly bolted on. We’re still going on a fourteen day vacation with a morning/afternoon/evening/night activity cycle and doing the same activities that we did in the last game (less, actually, since marine race and water slide are still missing). The menus are basically identical. Art assets and animations have been reused wholesale. I complained about it at the time, but it still holds true: DOAX3 is the sort of game that would actually benefit from being open world and letting you actually explore a little bit instead of being on a strictly scheduled timeframe. But, of course, that would cost money to implement, and there’s no way Tecmo-Koei were going to greenlight that. So, instead, we basically just get more of the same, but in a prettier package.

For the most part, my original review of Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 holds true today. However, when I wrote that review, I underestimated just how compelling the “relaxing” part of the game was. It was so easy to destress by firing the game up for a twenty-or-thirty minute fantasy vacation. As a result, a lot of the game’s most serious faults are mitigated, while its qualities are enhanced. That said, the game is still definitely very niche and not particularly good, but I don’t want that to come across like I think the game is irredeemable garbage. It’s fine to find some enjoyment in something that is imperfect.