DEAD OR ALIVE 5 Last Round: Core Fighters

As someone who has been following the Dead or Alive franchise since DOA3 on the original Xbox, I’ve always had a soft spot for the series. After playing Dead or Alive 3, I went back and tried DOA2 on the PS2, and later enjoyed Dead or Alive: Ultimate, which included the original DOA and a remake of DOA2 for Xbox. I also spent a good amount of time with Dead or Alive 4 on the Xbox 360, so jumping into DOA5 Last Round: Core Fighters felt like reconnecting with an old friend.

From a gameplay perspective, Last Round doesn't stray too far from the series' tried and true formula which is both a strength and a weakness. The combat is still fast, fluid, and satisfying, with the signature rock-paper-scissors mechanic that rewards timing and mind games. Veterans of the series will feel right at home, while newcomers might find the depth beneath the flashy surface engaging once they dig in.

One of the things I really appreciated was the inclusion of several stages from previous titles. Seeing familiar arenas brought a welcome hit of nostalgia, and I thought that was a nice touch for longtime fans. The character designs are also impressive stylish, detailed, and full of personality. Visually, the game holds up well.

The soundtrack is decent not particularly memorable, but it does the job. It supports the action without standing out too much, which is fine for a game where the focus is clearly on the fighting.

That said, the story mode didn’t do much for me. It felt somewhat flat and didn’t offer much in terms of emotional depth or compelling narratives, especially compared to other fighting games that have raised the bar in this area.

My biggest issue, however, is with the costume system. While I understand the free-to-play nature of Core Fighters, I don’t think locking so many costumes behind paid DLC is fair. There should definitely be a way to unlock outfits through gameplay whether by completing challenges, leveling up characters, or progressing through various modes. That kind of reward system would keep players more engaged and provide a real sense of progression.

One of the best 3D fighting game ever

preserve this Masterpiece FOREVER!

Fun and cute!

ts tuff vro

Pretty good game but quite a lot of DLC. I still bought most of them, god I am a mindless consumer.

haha

Kasumi's boobs temporarily cured my depression

women

As someone with a deep love for Virtua Fighter and Tekken, I've been sleeping on DOA 5 HARD. The level of detail on every character, the multi-tier stages, the killer music, and gameplay that's intuitive and easy to pick up for newcomers and veterans. What also helps the fact is that it plays almost 1-1 with VF. That means it has a simple control scheme but a ton of depth to it. The general rock-paper-scissors also applies with rushdowns, guarding, and throwing countering and playing off each other. When done right, VF has a flow unlike any other game I've played. Until DOA came in and said, "Yeah we can do that, too."

I think having a handful of VF characters was also a really good choice to help lean VF players into it. It makes sure that someone like me has something familiar to ease into the different nuances of DOA.

The story's fine, too. I don't pay much attention to stories in fighting games. It's mainly just an excuse to do a bunch of matches but the cutscenes are also animated really well. I shouldn't be too surprised because it's Team Ninja and they're known for this kind of stuff.

If you're someone like me who loves 3D fighters, or was bummed that VF5 REVO didn't have much single player besides training and arcade mode, maybe this'll scratch that itch.

If I had to say a score, I'd give it around a 7 or 8. It's doesn't have the amount of single player something like MK11 or Street Fighter has, but the gameplay more than makes up for it. It's just a fun game, what more can I say?

good

I play this game at the last semester of my high school. I always play with my friend after school until dawn. In this game, it was our last fight session together forever.

I will miss you my friend, Fly High. Let's play another time

People playing this game for combat or boobs, instead I play it to enjoy the silly reasons why they fight in Story Mode:
"I don't like how you're dressed! Let's fight!"
"Damn, would you look at the weather. Let's fight!"
"How dare you insult my bike! LET'S FIGHT!"
"I want to find Alpha." "Ok. Well, at least I'd like to say so. LET'S FIGHT FOR NO REASON!"

This game is amazing !!!, i wish girls would hit me irl too

fantastic game, i loved it

7/10

my personal favorite fighting game ^-^

I have only played two Dead or alive games. This one, and whatever version is on the 3Ds. Both of them are great.

Came for hot girls. Stayed for the funny drunk dude.

This game goes hard, and i suck at fighting games but sadly i cant go into full screen anymore :(

The gameplay is very fluid and responsive.
There are also characters from Virtua Fighter in here, which adds a unique twist.
Incredibly well done game!

Great game, but very addictive.

Boba gud, boba noice







































WHERE IS MAI AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Good fighting game.

A great fighting game, nicely drawn, good plot, goes great, but it only runs with the esync-1 and fsync-1 commands, it doesn't want to run at all without this command. This is the only disadvantage of this game.

I Love This Game, super cool, im so Noob at it , but still i love it

Has all the components that made this franchise fun with its robust character roster, game modes, and outfits to collect even if it stumbles all over them for the sake of microtransactions. Graphically looks fine, but the strange filter effect makes everything seem like there's a layer of petroleum jelly on screen that needs to be buffed out. I needed to install ProtoDB for it to run on steam deck also. Overall a good brawl worth checking out on sale and a relic from a time before modern fighting game standards took over completely.

While this game is majorly known for its fanservice and over the top jiggle physics its still a fun game.It has some iconic characters such as Marie honoko Mai ect.Its multiplayer is dead tho as expected of a old game

goated game but weak PC port, play the PS4 version unless you use mods

came for the goon, stayed for the mechanics.

weally good marie so cute luv her lots xoxo

The gooner's fighting game... losing 10 times as a female character unlocks the "OMG" titty physics, and let me say, its a beholding sight. It's a good game overall, with mechanics and graphics being ahead of their time. DLC prices are absolutely outrageous but I'm probably going to buy them anyway. Worth it on sale, because $35 is too much lol

this is arguably the best DoA game, story mode is more structured and fair than previous arcade modes in the seires, the learning curve is pretty good with easy to follow tutorials, tag mode is a lot of fun as usual in fighting games it always allows for really dumb combos that are there to piss off the people who cant do them. finally the mods for this game are great and getting everything by any means isnt that difficult either so this one is a great time to this day. if doa7 ever happens please dont fuck it up again

Classic series. Most people don't know it but anime was actually invented after Hideo Kojima played the second one and was like "what if I took cartoons like space jam and Extreme ghostbusters and added way more bodacious juggs and karate matches." Soon after he came out with a little show you may have heard of called "Dragonballs Z." Worth 12$ to experience a little piece of this history? Hell yes. Also after all these years you can control how much the cans bounce in the options menu (no DLC required)

Don't @ me

it fun the peak of doa balances out a really fun fighter with fanservice

Bring back Mai...

Dead or Alive 5 Last Round (DOA5LR) is a pretty fun fighter which is unfortunately held back by its somewhat ridiculous over-sexualization of its female cast, and egregious DLC monetization tactics. But as a head-to-head fighting game, it's a good one with interesting mechanics and this package is a decent offering. As a quick intro, the DOA series uses a rock-paper-scissors system where the game has 3 types of moves, namely, Holds (counters), Strikes (attacks) and Throws. Its fighting mechanics revolve around this system where counters beat attacks, attacks beat throws and throws beat counters.

Unfortunately, the PC port is a mixed bag when compared to its console ports like PS4; some of which are potentially deal-breakers. 1) It's missing online lobbies for online play, which is bad if you and your friends want to play together online - it only supports online ranked matches, and that appears to be pretty dead too. 2) There appears to be some missing content compared to the PS4 port like stages, etc. 3) The "Soft engine" that is not present in this port, which while doesn't really hurt the game graphically, is missing certain particle effects. 4) Controller vibration appears to be missing (can't really be sure if this is in PS4 port). 5) No Steam cloud. 6) Photo gallery uses Steam overlay rather than in-game. As such, if you have the option of getting DOA5LR on PS4 (instead of PC), that's probably the better option. The only good reason to get this PC port over the PS4 one would be the ability to mod the game for community-made costumes.

The DOA5LR package has a significant amount of content especially if you compare it to other fighters out there. In terms of gameplay modes, it has Story, Arcade, Versus, Survival, Time Attack, Team Fight and can be played in solo or tag mode (the latter allowing you to switch between 2 characters). Local co-op multiplayer supports up to 4 players when playing tag mode (2 players on each side). The game features a comprehensive tutorial, commands training and combo challenges. A couple of things I really like about how the game helps you learn. 1) the tutorial does a good job of teaching you the system mechanics and even includes tests to check your knowledge. 2) The commands list doesn't just indicate inputs but also intelligently displays whether the attacks hit high/mid/low; you can even keep the commands on screen when fighting. For labbing, it has an decent training mode which displays comprehensive move/frame data. However, due to it having only one recording slot, its usefulness for practice is somewhat limited. There's also a lot of unlockables costumes, music, movies, titles in the game to reward you for playing.

In terms of presentation, the graphics still looks really good though I found the music to be very mediocre. A nice touch in this game is that in character selection, you can customize your character looks beyond just changing costume. There is also a dedicated option screen for configuring the music theme for each character - but it's pretty moot since the music is probably the weakest aspect of the series as a whole. What's come across to me as being odd is that, while the game allows you to change character themes, it doesn't appear to allow you to change stage themes, nor randomize them. A nice surprise is that it has a lot of unlockable music from DOA1-4, with the amazing training theme "Evolution" from DOA4. Also, there are a few Warriors Orochi tracks included which are easily the best songs in the list, like "Ryu's Determination -DW SW MIX-". The colors of the game can look abit washed out, but thankfully it works with Nvidia App / GeForce Experience Freestyle so you can tweak it to look more pleasing to your tastes, like making colors more saturated, etc.

In terms of performance, it boots up fast on HDD and runs at a stable framerate for the most part. Unfortunately, there are occasions where the framerate will suddenly chug for no apparent reason, albeit rarely. There is no borderless window mode and graphics configuration is done via a separate launcher (as with older KT titles that are on Steam). A thing to note is that the amount of graphical settings is minimal at best and its screen resolution options appears to be missing 16:10 ones. Also, note that except during matches, the game runs at 30FPS (for things like cutscenes, menus, etc) and isn't because performance issues.

Overall, the DOA5LR base game (the "Full game" package which will net you nearly the full roster) is a nice package with a good amount of content. There will be only one remaining character DLC for Naotora Ii, if you wish to complete the roster. The other DLCs are purely cosmetic and the sheer amount of it is a testament to KT's egregious DLC practice. Out-of-the-box, the game already includes a good amount of unlockable cosmetics and there is also plenty of mods which are very easy to use if you are looking for cosmetics. The game has a lot of depth but yet relatively easy to pick up for casual players (compared to, say, Tekken) and has a high skill ceiling for more serious players. Unfortunately, for anyone looking to play online, it is limited to ranked matches (due to lack of lobbies) as alluded to earlier and has no rollback netcode. Regardless, this is a great game and is easy to recommend. I strongly suggest getting this when it's on sale as it is an old title and a somewhat compromised port that is not worth its original asking price.

Even though I have mad love for this franchise, buying this on steam was a let down. The little bit of nostalgia I got from this wasn't even worth it, my main reason for purchasing this was to fight online with an old homie of mine.... The kicker is there are no lobbies for whatever reason, if I had known there weren't any actual lobbies on the pc/steam version I wouldn't have bought this shit. Why port a game and not bring over all of its main features?? So the only way I can fight my bro is by us playing arcade mode at the same time and accepting the corresponding "throwdown" invitation, which pop up every like 5 seconds from other random players that are also playing the game... Also another issue was at first my game was bugging out and couldn't figure out where to save my game so it just flat out wasn't saving at all and I didn't know it till I played halfway through the story and quit, only to come back to the game later and be greeted with the same beginner title you get just for loading up the game and all my progress gone. One thing that could have helped me avoid wasting my time like that is if the pop-up windows for this game worked properly. The game was giving me little pop-ups on every load screen trying to give me an error message I guess but the pop-ups never had text only a title that says "Dead or Alive 5 Last Round"... Not very informative. Overall i'm very disappointed with this purchase and I don't really recommend you buy this unless you just want to play alone and relive the days of when DOA was still fun to play but otherwise there's no point fr

this game port is asssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

The best iteration of the DoA series. PC port has its quirks but is perfectly playable for the most part.

Its good looking and fun forsure

its an awesome game with good fan-service if u want, not to mention great tag system. So go check it out

Great fighting game. Nice characters.

Good game but needs support from the devs.
There's no reason why it shouldn't be getting updates as the last good DOA game

The Glyphs for this game are annoying and need to be changed to the now standard Xbox controller layout

a mans game. love it.

this game takes itself so unserious, that its funny as hell, absolutely recommend it

We all know why we bought this game lmao. Fr though, it is a pretty respectable fighting game for what it is . The Virtua Fighter style is just so fun . I just wish they added rollback (even though there is no incentive to add it in 2024) . Hitomi is best girl btw

I'm a mostly casual fighting game fan and the Dead or Alive series (and DOA5: LR in particular) has been a guilty pleasure for years. It's a shame that the series will probably never be a big mainstream hit because it's genuinely fun to play and easy to pick up.

The sexy fun starts to curdle a bit from this one onwards due to some dicey character designs *cough* Marie Rose *cough* and a ridiculous amount of DLC and microtransactions. Still, a lot of fun and the better of the two DOA games available on Steam. Runs great on Steam Deck, and can be modded with some fiddling.

Great DOA game.

Only downside would have to be the cosmetic DLC pricing is buns

The only fighting game I legitimately play to this day.