Alongside the next Dead or Alive game, the announcement of Dead or Alive 6 Last Round came as quite an unexpected surprise to fighting game fans during the February State of Play. Koei Tecmo is back to give Dead or Alive 6 one last chance before moving on entirely to the new game, and this time, everything is included in one package as it should be. Dead or Alive 6 Last Round isn’t a perfect game by any means, but from my time with it, it’s proof that the 3D fighting game space is getting really interesting.

Serving as the latest entry in the series, Dead or Alive 6 Last Round is a complete version of sorts with 29 characters already included on the roster, including 5 DLC characters from the original game. Dead or Alive has been notorious for having some of the most DLC ever on a single Steam page, but Dead or Alive 6 Last Round streamlines nearly everything into one base game at your disposal, with just a few exceptions. There are new costumes and a new Photo Mode as well, and for those who haven’t played the original version, there’s quite a lot of content that you can get into right from pressing start at the title screen.

Dead or Alive 6 Last Round Aims for the Complete DoA Experience

Dead or Alive 6 Last Round puts you into the live tension and behind-the-scenes turmoil of DOATEC’s sixth Dead or Alive tournament. The game lets you experience its story from the perspective of several characters with cutscenes and fights sprinkled in, just like other fighting games have done in the past. The expansive story mode is segmented into chapters that you can access in basically any order as long as the scenes are unlocked. Although you can progress in order with one character, you can switch to any other character’s route as long as their latest chapter is unlocked. There’s so much to explore there, but if you haven’t played previous games in the series, you might be lost on what’s exactly happening here. Despite that, you can have a lot of fun with the story, which is fully voiced in Japanese and English.

If there’s one thing Team Ninja always nails, it’s the combat. Dead or Alive 6 Last Round feels really great and easy to delve into, with the high skill ceiling of 3D fighting games being purely maintained here. There’s an emphasis on input timing with special moves and combos rather than technicality in the inputs and commands themselves, but it can still feel intense once the difficulty of your opponent ramps up, CPU or real-life player alike. The Special and Break systems make combos feel powerful and flashy, and the Danger Zones on stages give you yet another option to consider during a fight. 

Like most fighting games, you can get a hang of the combat system by learning your character’s abilities and move set in training and playing at your own pace in the story mode of Dead or Alive 6 Last Round. The story isn’t spectacular or exceptional for a fighting game, but there’s still plenty of content and moments that fans of niche Japanese games will definitely enjoy, including plenty of fan service. There’s also a DOA Quest mode, which offers 155 character-based challenges with unlockable rewards and cosmetics. To get the most rewards from each challenge, you must complete up to 3 objectives, such as landing certain types of attacks and winning the fight.

There’s plenty of single-player content here that you’d come to expect with Dead or Alive. All the modes of the original Dead or Alive 6 are here, such as Versus, Arcade, Survival, Time Attack, Training, and Online Ranked and Lobby Matches. You still have access to combo challenges and tutorials that help master each character and get better—it’s all here. I’d also like to point out that jiggle physics are still here in abundance, so that aspect of Dead or Alive wasn’t compromised. The original release looked really good on last-gen systems, but Dead or Alive 6 Last Round running at higher resolutions makes the game and its many character models look more impressive and life-like. 

Although there’s nothing new in terms of playable modes, there are a few additions that make this version “definitive” in a sense. Along with new costumes, you can access the new Photo Mode in the DOA Central menu, which contains Wardrobe, Library, and other miscellaneous and bonus materials. After customizing your desired character, you can head to Photo Mode to start up a fight that you have full control over. Once the fight begins, you’ll have the option to position characters in the playable area, play combo animations for either character, hide one of the characters entirely for solo photos, and even change facial expressions and other details. Photo Mode is exactly what I’d come to expect, but I am somewhat surprised that its a separate mode and not accessible from the pause menu of online fights. 

Another addition is the Lost Paradise “OBORO” stage, an improved and graphically enhanced version of the original stage. OBORO is a new lighting system from Koei Tecmo’s Katana Engine with more realistic illumination and natural ambient light and shadows. It really makes the stage feel more lifelike when you have the settings turned all the way up on PC, and OBORO itself has its own dedicated performance settings to consider. OBORO will be added to the other stages for free over time with updates in what I assume is a test of sorts for the lighting effects and graphical systems that will be used in the next Dead or Alive game. This is a neat inclusion, but I wouldn’t say it’s a selling point at the moment. At the very least, the stage and characters look even better with the setting enabled.

Some Caveats and a Free Option

There are a few caveats to consider with Dead or Alive 6 Last Round, though they might not be too glaring if you’re just buying into this iteration of Dead or Alive for the first time. As I’ve mentioned, 29 characters are available in the base roster, but this excludes Mai Shiranui and Kula Diamond from SNK’s The King of Fighters franchise—assumingly due to licensing for the release. Instead, you’ll need to purchase their Unlock Character Keys from your platform’s storefront. If you purchased these two fighters in the original Dead or Alive 6, you will still need to buy them in Dead or Alive 6 Last Round, since those character licenses do not transfer over. I can see this being a sore spot for returning players buying into Dead or Alive 6 Last Round and not so much for the first-time buyers who purchase it for the $39.99 MSRP. Transfers for DLC costumes and save data from the original game are supported, but keep in mind that there will be obvious exceptions for Mai and Kula. 

Dead or Alive 6 Last Round has been optimized for current-gen platforms, and it certainly shows in gameplay and OBORO. However, there’s still room for improvements. Some of the menu UI and story cutscenes have a roughness to it that was slightly distracting. This doesn’t appear to be tied to any in-game settings either, as I was playing in 1440p with all settings turned up to their highest values on PC. It’s a minor issue, but it’s still one worth pointing out. Dead or Alive 6 Last Round runs at a locked 60 FPS virtually every time I played it with the highest settings. I can see a lot of systems running it just fine based on the performance specifications that Koei Tecmo revealed ahead of release.

Another unfortunate caveat is the lack of cross-play. Fighting games can thrive and have active communities for a lot longer with a feature like cross-play, so it’s a bit disappointing that Dead or Alive 6 Last Round doesn’t support it. From the looks of it, there’s no rollback netcode either, and it wasn’t a supported feature that was mentioned in the lead-up to launch. The next Dead or Alive game must have these important fighting game features, as it’s part of the standard that fighting games have accepted and adopted in earnest these past couple of years.

Similarly to Dead or Alive 5, there’s a Dead or Alive 6 Last Round Core Fighters edition that can get you playing the game immediately for free, albeit with notable content and characters being locked away. Marie Rose, Honoka, and NiCO will be available to use at launch with all modes except Story Mode being playable. The Core Fighters edition helped Dead or Alive 5 cultivate a dedicated community well beyond the game’s years of active support, so there’s no harm in this version at the current moment. 

Dead or Alive 6 Last Round is a Great Fighting Game that Whiffs Some Throws 

Like its title suggests, Dead or Alive 6 Last Round is one last release to give this game some extra life before what’s inevitably on the horizon. For the most part, Dead or Alive 6 Last Round does what it should by giving players a way to finally buy Dead or Alive 6 without spending an insane amount on the original game and its many cosmetic DLCs and playable fighters. The free-to-play option is always a plus, but Dead or Alive 6 Last Round is missing features that would make it a really excellent fighting game in its class. The lack of rollback netcode and cross-play makes it questionable, but for more casual fighting game fans, this could be the game that gets you into Dead or Alive to see what its core fundamentals are all about.

At the very least, Dead or Alive 6 Last Round does give a small sample of what the developers at Team Ninja are up to for the next Dead or Alive game. The OBORO system does make Dead or Alive 6 Last Round even more eye-catching with its enhanced illumination, and if there’s one thing that the series pushes, its technical innovations in fighting games. This is what brought Dead or Alive to the dance against Virtua Fighter back in the day, and I’d hope Team Ninja really brings it so we can see that competition heat up once again in the not-so-distinct future. 

Dead or Alive 6 Last Round launches on June 25 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam.

Disclaimer: Koei Tecmo provided a Steam key of Dead or Alive 6 Last Round for review purposes.