Dead or Alive 6 Last Round has largely been fun for me, giving me a chance to properly dig into the franchise’s systems and see whether the core loop was strong enough to keep me invested.
Well, I can’t say it clicked for me personally, but there’s definitely a lot of potential for this one to work its magic on fighting game enthusiasts who love nothing more than a deep combat system that’s mechanically accessible but quite challenging to get right in the heat of battle.
Let’s begin with the mechanics. The controls are quite simple, although I quickly remapped the buttons for the hold function, switching them up with the inputs for punches and kicks to a layout that made sense to me, and the option to do so is a welcome addition to this one. You’ve got inputs for punches, kicks, holds (which I’m going to talk about in a bit), throws, and a special input that lets you pull off a flashy combo to gain a bit of breathing room in a fight.
That’s excellent in terms of making the game welcoming to newcomers, and the tutorial that you can dive into at the start of the game does a good job of introducing you to the basics. This is where the Break Gauge comes in, giving you access to two important meter-based options: Break Hold and Break Blow.
This is where things get interesting. At 50%, it lets you use Break Hold, a meter-based counter that can answer high, mid, and low strikes when timed correctly. At 100%, you can cash out with Break Blow, the heavier cinematic attack. Fatal Rush, meanwhile, gives newcomers a simple way to apply pressure and can flow into that bigger payoff when the gauge is full. It creates a neat push-and-pull: do you spend meter defensively to escape pressure, or save it for a more damaging offensive sequence?
It’s great because it brings in a tactical layer to a combat system that would feel a tad insipid without it. Do you use your Break Gauge to stay on the defensive, or preserve it to unleash Break Blow and a more damaging offensive sequence? It was definitely a highlight of the combat system for me, and it is one of the mechanics that make DOA6 stand apart once you begin to understand its rhythm.
As for the rest of the combat, I’m personally more inclined to the dial-a-combo mechanics in games like Mortal Kombat and Injustice, but DOA6 does bring the potential for chaining together combos with juggles and launches once you get the hang of things. With that being said, actually pulling those off is going to take a significant amount of time with a character, as you learn their animations and figure out their moves.
For this review, I spent time sampling a wide range of the roster rather than fully mastering one or two characters, so my impressions here are based more on broad feel than high-level character knowledge. I’d recommend picking a couple of your favorites and sticking with them before you begin to branch out. The Story Mode is a good place to start since you’re going to be given control of a significant chunk of the game’s roster, which is good for finding the ones you want to devote yourself to learning.
Of course, knowing your opponent’s moves is also key to victory, given that you’re going to have to time those Break Holds to the last second if you want to pull them off. That’s where the DOA Quest and Arcade Modes come into play.
The former is a great way to fine-tune your mastery over the various mechanics you’ve got at your disposal, while the latter lets you pit your skills against a rotating roster of combatants, letting you gain the much-needed knowledge required to take them down in a fight.
I’d pick Survival Mode for that very purpose, since it involves single-round fights that give you a chance to quickly test your mettle against as many different fighters as you can in a short period of time. Of course, Arcade and Time Attack are equally handy, and the difficulty options on offer work well to gradually ramp up the challenge.
I must say that anything above Medium is going to be an uphill climb, though, and it’s where you’re going to have the most fun once you put in enough hours to learn your character well. Just know that this one’s going to take time and patience before its depth reveals itself to you, but it’s certainly worth sticking with when the results are as satisfying as they are.
“The online modes should have been the star of the show, but the lack of rollback netcode, cross-platform play, and crossplay with the original DOA6 seriously hampers its ability to stay interesting.”
But that also leads me to my biggest complaint: the online modes should have been the star of the show, but the lack of rollback netcode, cross-platform play, and crossplay with the original DOA6 seriously hampers its ability to stay interesting. My time with Ranked Mode saw very long waits to get into a single fight, and laggy inputs and freezes made stringing together even a basic combo a chore.
It doesn’t help that wait times for a match ranged from nearly three minutes at best to more than five minutes to find an opponent on occasion, a detail that had me sitting in front of my console aimlessly doomscrolling on my phone before the game finally told me I had somebody to play against.
That was with the highest possible connection quality selected, and it’s an omission that’s probably going to cost Last Round quite dearly. Finding a lobby was equally tedious, presenting me with long waits before telling me there wasn’t one available. It was time that I could have otherwise spent fine-tuning my skills in the elaborate Training Mode, or perhaps even playing the story.
The story on offer may not be as egregious as the Online option, but it doesn’t come with enough to serve a purpose other than acting as a trial run for a significant part of the game’s roster. Your mileage with it is going to vary depending on how engaged you are with the franchise’s lore, but as someone more interested in the fighting itself than the franchise’s lore, I found myself dropping off in favor of the Arcade options fairly quickly.
The presence of an expansive roster of fighters is certainly welcome, although I do take objection to Mai and Kula Diamond still being locked behind a paywall. The teased debut of Minato, a brand new character, would have me intrigued if a lot of the game’s roster didn’t feel different enough from each other for them to be unique.
Sure, fighters like Brad Wong and his drunken style immediately stand out, but while approaching the roster broadly rather than from a competitive DOA background, some characters made a stronger first impression than others. Long-time players will obviously find more nuance in their move sets over time, but several fighters initially blurred together for me.
“The game still gives players plenty to work through, with a sizable roster, varied fighting styles, and enough unlockables to keep completionists busy.”
However, the upgraded visuals and frame rates definitely made fights look and feel smoother than what’s on offer in the PS4 version. The loading times are vastly improved, too, but that’s not really a surprise at this point in the current generation of gaming hardware. On my base PS5, the visuals, frame rate, and load times were excellent, and I found no hints of frame drops or bad textures during the dozen or so hours I’ve sunk into Last Round over the past couple of days.
The arenas are quite cool, looking really good, while there are enough ways to use the environment to your advantage. I only saw one stage transition over my time with the game, but they’re quite hard to pull off, needing you and your opponent to be in the right place at the right time. The one I saw was cool enough, involving my opponent crashing through multiple wooden boards on their way down to the next stage in a well-animated sequence that looked like the fall really hurt. It was cool enough to make me want to find more of them.
The game still gives players plenty to work through, with a sizable roster, varied fighting styles, and enough unlockables to keep completionists busy. The post-fight reward system is generous enough to make getting to them a challenge without it feeling too stingy, and you’re probably going to enjoy that more than fighting online if you ask me.
That brings me to Photo Mode, which lets you pick two characters and a stage, and then set up shots with the option to set poses via a frame-by-frame selector for each character, set expressions, and generally set up the shot you want quite well. It’s going to keep you entertained for a while if that’s something you like to do in your games, but it isn’t anything special either.
“If you’re a DOA fan who skipped the original DOA6 release, Last Round should still entertain you despite the online mode needing improvements.”
With all that’s been said, it’s time to answer the all-important question: should you buy this one? If you’re a DOA fan who skipped the original DOA6 release, Last Round should still entertain you despite the online mode needing improvements. If you’re an existing owner, the lack of a cheaper upgrade option is a bummer, and I wouldn’t recommend paying full price for this one. If you just like fighting games in general and want something that lets you dive into some well-tuned animations and comes with a fair bit of mechanical depth, this one is worth picking up on sale.
Last Round’s good, but not good enough to be a must-have day-one purchase. You’re going to want to try out Core Fighters, the free-to-play variant, first to see if it’s something that interests you.
I’m probably going to spend the weekend trying to learn my favorite fighters and perhaps have an evening of local matches with my buddies, but this one doesn’t have enough meat on it to remain a title that I’d keep going back to, and that’s a damn shame given its combat system’s depth.
It’s still a good enough way to cope while you wait for whatever comes next for Dead or Alive, though, so that’s something.
This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.
