The Case

Dead or Alive is a fighting game franchise that dates back all the way to 1996. Despite being nearly 20 years old, this series has never seen the light of day on PC...until now. Team Ninja along with publisher Koei Tecmo have released Dead or Alive 5 Last Round on PC. The series is known for a nigh-absurd amount of fan service in conjunction with a fast and fluid fighting system, interactive stages and a unique counter system.

The Trial

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, let me start the proceedings off with some background info. I’ve played every entry of this series since its debut on consoles in 1998. I own Dead or Alive 5 Last Round on PS4, PS3 as well as PC. I say this to express two things. First, full disclosure, I’m a big fan of the series in general so there’s potential for me to be too lenient or too strict. I’ll try to stay in the middle. Secondly, I have the necessary components to compare the PC port to its console counterparts which is why I was chosen for this review...and I will compare them.

OK, let’s get some of the obvious stuff out of way. This is a port of the PS3 version of DOA5LR rather than the PS4 version. What this means in simple terms is that PC players do not have access to two of the stages added for the PS4 version, nor do they get access to the soft engine that the PS4 version has. Does this really matter? Let’s discuss.

For the stages, it definitely does. That’s two less areas to fight in. While the game does have a good number of stages and many of them have multiple levels and sections within them, more is never a bad thing. As to the soft engine? In my opinion it doesn’t matter quite as much as some people are making it out to be. Even before the PC version launched, we were playing DOA5LR on PS4 and trying to notice the differences between the PS3 and PS4 version. It’s very very subtle and I, personally, don’t miss it on PC. So in a sense it matters because I’d like the PC version to at the very least achieve feature parity with the console versions, but in actual practice PC players aren’t missing much from the exclusion.

Now that the big controversy over missing features is mentioned let’s move on to the proper review. This is DOA, meaning you’re getting a fast paced fighting game with loads of moves, interactive stages, characters, counters...and fan service. There is a TON of fan service in this game so if that offends you stop reading right now and know this game is not for you.

The fighting? The actual fighting in this game is some of the most fun I have in the genre. It’s fast, it’s fluid, and it gives a lot of visual and audio feedback when you land a hit. Every single strike in the game can be reversed with a well timed press of the counter button. There are stages where I can knock a fighter through the floor, then kick him down a flight of stairs before blasting him through a wall into an outer courtyard all in real time. No quicktime shenanigans. The spectacle is here in abundance and fights are almost always extremely entertaining. The DOA series has some of the best hit reaction animations and hit sounds in the business. Nearly every major blow looks and sounds like it hit with the proper authority.

Is the game balanced? Not quite. Some characters present a clear edge over nearly the entire roster. This won’t be the top competitive fighting game at EVO and honestly the series never has been about that. The focus is on the fun but that’s not to say that skill doesn’t matter because it does, a lot. Mashing the same combo out against someone who knows what hits land at what height will get you embarrassed by the counter system in short order. Conversely, mashing the counter button hoping to get a proper counter will get you destroyed as well by people who know how to stagger their combos or mix in throws with their strike strings. The game uses a rock-papers-scissors system where strikes have priority over throws, counters have priority over strikes, and throws have priority over counters. Using the right priority with the right timing nets you bonus damage and in some cases bonus states like knockdowns and stuns.

How does it run? My test system is an overclocked i7 4770K, 16GB of RAM, and an overclocked 780Ti. The game runs at 4K, with shadows set to 4K and 2X SSAA on top of all that at a locked 60fps. On my other test systems including one using an i7 860, 8GB of RAM and an overclocked 750Ti it runs at 1080p with AA on also locked at 60fps. The game runs damn good and I experienced no crashes or hiccups in any of the game modes. However, here’s an issue. If you play fighting games with a keyboard, this is not the game for you as the keyboard rebinding is non-existent. I played with a wireless Microsoft 360 pad and had no issues rebinding keys.

Game modes? We get a good selection here. There’s a story mode here that’s paper thin. It’s really just an excuse to get you to play with different characters as the story is fairly terrible. If you don’t know the story from the previous games you’ll be lost here. There’s an arcade mode that can be done in single or tag mode. DOA5 has the best tag system of any 3D fighter known to me. The tag throws are brutal as are the tag switch combos. There’s also versus mode, time attack mode, and survival mode that can all be done in solo or tag as well as a team battle where teams of up to 7 face off with the last fighter standing being the winner. There’s also a robust practice mode that offers a tutorial on all of the game’s systems, free practice where you do what you want, command training where the game makes you go through a list of all the major moves for each character and also a combo challenge mode. Lastly, we have an extra mode where you can view videos and saved replays.

Options? Standard stuff. Resolution, shadow settings, anti-aliasing setting. Resolution selections are very limited at present. The game does NOT support any resolution your monitor supports but rather has a specific list of supported resolutions. One nice touch is that the audio can be set on a per character basis. Did you like the character music in dead or alive 2 for example? I did. Well, you can set characters that were in DOA2 to use their DOA2 themes if you like. That’s just one example.

Online? Online? ONLINE?! Yeah, this is the big negative. If you don’t enjoy playing fighting games solo or don’t have friends to play with you in the same home then this game is a no go. NONE of the online features are currently present. There is a notice from the devs that online will be patched in 3 months after launch which is odd since that same notice was present before the game was delayed for several months. It’s a huge misstep and I’m frankly shocked they released a fighting without online, on the PC of all places, in the year 2015.

The Verdict

This is an amazingly fun fighter that runs damn well. While it’s great to see the series make its PC debut it’s disheartening to see it lack feature parity by being stripped of things that are present on weaker consoles. However, while it runs the same in my experience, it still looks far better than console versions due to sharper shadows, much higher rendering resolution and stronger anti-aliasing options despite not having the soft engine. Regrettably, the lack of online for several months post launch has the potential to kill interest in what is at its core a great fighting game before the game really takes off. It’ll be interesting to see how the player count fares when functional online is available...particularly since this will be months after another heavy hitter in the fighting genre, Mortal Kombat X, releases with online on day one.

What say you jurors? Ready to bounce on over to Steam to get a grip on this fighter? Or is this game already the first fatality of an upcoming Kombatant? Let us know in the comments.

Case Review