Dead or Alive General

If you're more focused on the entire story, go for Dimensions for the Nintendo DS. It's a sort of reboot to the entire story. However, there's only focus on the Mugen Tenshin cast and later on, Helena.

Yes there are cool characters in DOA.If it wasn't a legitimately fun game with more than fanservice it wouldn't be around still. The fanservice stuff gets overstated by people who don't actually play the games. They're fun to play...most of the time. Thankfully DOA 5 toned down the AI's cheapness a good amount especially compared to DOA 4 where it was downright infuriating on harder difficulties.

DOA 5 U/LR are the best of the series gameplay wise and were some of the best 3D fighters of the generation. Personally I prefer it over many of the Tekken games.

DOA Dimensions has the best story, in that it's actually coherent lol. It does a good job covering the series up till 4. But it also lacks aerosmith, sadly.

My favorite character is Tina :]

Dimensions is on the 3DS, not the DS.

To add to what was already said, it retells the main storyline (which was always centered around the Mugen Tenshin ninja clan) in a way that ties it together more coherently, most notably also bridging the games with the Ninja Gaiden series as well. DOA 5's story seems to be based off of Dimensions's retelling, so if you're interested in story, you just need those two. And for the record, I found that the game plays very well on the 3DS. At least better than the SF IV port by a long shot. So don't worry about whether or not the gameplay suffers for being on a handheld that much.

Personally, I need to get back into DOA. It was my absolute favorite fighting series (the only one I actually bought every release for, even the Xtreme games) until I abruptly stopped playing fighters for a while. I've got Dimensions and two versions of Last Round, but barely progressed through the former and never touched the latter because I wanted to at least finish Dimensions's story mode first.

Back in the day, my favorite character to play as was Helena, but I hardly remember how any of the DOA 4 newcomers played, so I can't remember if I enjoyed them more.

edited 14th Nov '17 8:26:54 AM by Customer

My all-time favorite is Ayane. Even putting aside the obvious fanservice factor in her design, her fighting style is just so damn awesome to look at with all the spinning, flips and the back-facing stance. And of course, she has a (narratively) good backstory; the tragic elements convincingly paint the image of a dark antiheroine.

Oh, and she's a ninja, too. I always like ninjas.

edited 14th Nov '17 1:37:39 PM by MarqFJA

Ayane's backstory at times feels at odds with this series. Like it was supposed to be in a different one all together.

Hell, it feels out of place in the genre. I can't think of any other fighting game that includes rape in a character's backstory.

edited 14th Nov '17 3:38:02 PM by windleopard

Ivy from soul calibur was conceived via rape, through her mother from Cervantes. She has good reason to hate him.

I actually like her more than Kasumi because of her backstory. But TBH dimensions made her too much of a bitch so now I'm kind of split on the two. Plus her admiration for Hayate borders on creepy sometimes.

Helps that she was outright better than Kasumi for like half the series lol.

edited 14th Nov '17 2:54:49 PM by Vertigo_High

Wait, what? Where was this stated?

IIRC, nothing was said about whether or not Ivy was a Child by Rape; the only definite thing is that Cervantes had a fling with some unnamed woman somewhere, who then gave birth to Ivy before presumably dying. Somehow, baby Ivy ended up on the Earl and Countess Valentine's doorstep, and they adopted her.

That being said, Ivy did get horrified at discovering that her biological father was a vile pirate utterly consumed by his lust for Soul Edge's nefarious power.

I recall reading iton this very wiki actually, but that was a while ago. Someone on GameFAQs mentioned it as well

Nope, that's not the case. Ivy's real mother was the daughter of the owner of the Black Tail INN, Cervantes' original hangout place, located on a spanish port town (as well his stage in Soul Edge). After Cervantes slaughtered everyone at the port, he set his eyes on the woman, as Soul Edge commanded him to produce a child, as a sort of experiment. The woman escaped afterward, both mentally and physically damaged, as Cervantes and SE entered a deep-sleep hibernation in await of the child's birth.

The woman reached England and gave birth to Ivy. But she felt she was gonna die soon, so she placed the newborn baby on the steps of the Valentine Mansion and left, and shortly after she lost her strength and died.

Years after in Soul Calibur, Soul Edge was freaked out with the possibility of having its new host (Siegfried) suffer the same fate of Cervantes and thus leaving itself in a dangerous situation (near-destruction). So it procured Ivy, having her stay always at Nightmare's side, as her cursed blood would allow it to easily control her, thus making her the perfect "back-up" host in case Nightmare was killed.

Cervantes is a Complete Monster. Of course it's kind of difficult to track down the actual source of this so it could be fanon that's become so widespread as to be perceived as fact by some of the fanbase. given Cervantes was a pretty mean pirate, and pirates did a lot of raping, it's definitely not out of character.

edited 14th Nov '17 3:30:32 PM by Vertigo_High

So, what are people's overall thoughts on Rachel's inclusion in DOA 5?

A nice surprise. Her heel stomp is pretty sexy too.I wish she got better costumes though.

A good use of Nicole's assets.

I do have to say it's a bit disappointing to see DOA has no Awesome Music page. Fighting Games are like RPG's in that I expect a good, possibly even phenomenal, soundtrack from them. I think those two genres justifiably have reputations for the best music in all of video games.

But I guess DOA is no Tekken or SNK. Not saying it's bad or I'll hate it but it does not appear held in the same high regard.

I confess, I was kinda hoping somebody would post awesome DOA music to prove me wrong.

Oh well, I have decided to start the DOA series next month when I have some money. I haven't played a new fighting game series in forever. Dunno why I feel such a sudden urge to start this one but I'm kinda random like that. Given my love of Tekken you'd think I'd have started the Soul series forever ago but nope.

Is there any news on when the next DOA game comes out?

Awesome music? Plenty to choose from :]

• Tetsui no Toki, Kasumi's original theme. Personally this is my favorite theme for her although Hitohira is also really good and arguably her most iconic at this point. Her DOA4 theme and DOA3 themes are not bad at all, however. I use her DOA 3 one for sarah in DOA 5 Ultimate.
• Aya, possibly ayane's best theme,
• Blazed up melpomene,Helena's most iconic theme. It has a cool remix for the club stage too. Solitary Desperation is another good one for Helena
• Vigaku, the theme of Ein, is pure 90s arcade game cheese rock and glorious for it
• Natural High, Jahn Lee's DOA2 theme. This one is cool and my favorite for him his DOA 1 theme sounds VERY Virtua Fighter-ish and is good in its own right.
• Raidou's theme, probably the most iconic music for the first game and the original DOA boss music. Still the best one too IMO.
• Lei Feng's DOA3 theme is underrated IMO and i use it for Pai who I feel it fits nicely. However it's hard to top Grand Style, her DOA 2 theme and perhaps most iconic one.
• One of the few memorable tracks from DOA5 IMO, this one actually sounded like a DOA theme unlike the forgettable, generic stage themes that plagued vanilla DOA 5.
• Hitomi's It's to show, a fairly popular theme and her most iconic one. I'm one of the very few people who likes *Turn on the lights more though.
• Christie's monster is one of the darker tracks and fits her best, Serpent Dance doesn't get as much love but it still captures her personality nicely IMO.
• Nyotengu's theme, fitting more in the ninjas' trend of fusing traditional Japanese with modernish sounds]].

edited 15th Nov '17 8:45:35 PM by Vertigo_High

Sweet, thank you. I did like those songs quite a bit and suspect I'll like them even more when I fight with them playing in the background.

Out of curiosity, which DOA game is seen as the best? Best here can refer to anything, be it gameplay, characters, whatever.

And on the flipside, is there a game that is seen as the worst?

Probably the Xtreme series lol

Damn, I remember that Helena theme, it's good shit

Nyotengu always makes me laugh because on another forum, there was constant bitching about waifus and lack of Tengu

Cue what we got

Yeah as soon as I wrote that I was thinking somebody might say the Xtreme games but I meant which is the worst out of the main series.

I personally don't think I'll have any problem enjoying both DOA and at least Xtreme 2. Xtreme 3 being tied up with "SJW's" and being imported by assholes makes me want to avoid it like the plague, though. Also it's like $100 and I'm not forking out that kinda money for pseudo porn.

Here's hoping whoever wrote that bit about SJW's was fired or whatever. I glanced at the DOA YMMV page and it made it sound like they were nobody and this whole thing was dropped.

I don't what you mean with that

Last Round is probably the most polished

Hot damn.

That was pretty awesome.

Although, as a lifelong Tekken fan, I am now curious if DOA has a character like Anna Williams. She was always my favorite. I mean like her in terms of personality and stuff.

Christie

Yeah probably Christie, though she's more cruel and less fab.

DOA 5 LR/U are IMO the best DOA games.They make the vanilla version obsolete and are probably the best the gameplay's been, although the critical stun + burst combos can be a bit aggravating.

Xtreme 1 was fine for a side game(if somewhat shallow/arcadey like the older DOA games and a bit unfair lol) but X2 added some inane minigames and X3 is kind of embarrassing for today's market.

I hope that doa6 will be good as doa5. I know people are saying that "Dead or Alive is dead", but the director only said that Dead or Alive 5 is dead, not the whole franchise.

For shame!

The "is dead" thing seems to be some sort of weird mistranslation, and what they actually said was that they're through supporting DOA 5 now (as in no more DLC), which possibly means they're ready to move on to a new title. For some reason I've been seeing people treat the news as if they said the series was done.

...Really need to get on with playing my copy of DOA 5 LR someday...