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- Опубліковано 7 лют 2025
- A playthrough of the boss version of Ayane in the PC port of Tecmo/Team Ninja’s Dead or Alive 5 Last Round.
A huge thanks to the user 0Harakiry, who made a great video on how to access any character in this game freely. Here’s the link for said video: • Dead or Alive 5 Last R...
Ah, Dead or Alive 5. It’s…pretty good, really. The original vanilla game was decent if a bit plain, with its most notable inclusions being a number of characters I’ll soon be covering. However, it definitely seemed a bit lacking in general. Notable inclusions for the game were the first appearances of guest characters (and pretty damn good ones at that), as well as an attempt at a story mode. Said story mode was…fine, I guess. It was about as good as you’d expect of a Dead or Alive story mode, with a lot of pointless subplots and an overall plot which was never really fleshed out properly. I find it very difficult to judge DOA seriously as a series, simply because it can never really decide what it actually wants to be.
Given that fans had waited seven years for a new DOA game by DOA5’s release, Team Ninja eventually decided to update it with two expansions; Ultimate, and finally Last Round. To say Last Round is better than vanilla would be something of an understatement; the game plays so much better (just faster and more fluid in general), the general roster grows from a respectable 24 to a whopping 36, and the sheer number of classic stages brought back and updated turns a decent game into one which finally stands up there with the greats. Of course, part of the reason for having such a large roster is that no less than eight characters in Last Round are guest characters. Luckily, 7 out of 8 of these are absolutely brilliant guest characters, and perfect inclusions. The other one…well, that’s a rant for her own video.
Something to also note about DOA5 is its stylistic change. Character models have been changed considerably from their anime-esque origins, and now attempt to look a lot more realistic. I think it’s okay, personally, but I understand why some find it a bit too uncanny valley. There are also a few noteworthy gameplay changes such as Power Blows, which are basically desperation attacks which can be used once a character is low on health, as well as greater stage interactivity, such as wall hits causing a cutscene and additional damage against the character to play as, as well as more extensive stage transitions.
The original DOA5 contained a respectable 5 hidden characters. Last Round has everyone innately playable (well, not since Core Fighters came out, but I’ll talk about that in Naotora’s video), but I’ll still end up covering four of those five characters anyway. The one I won’t cover, Gen Fu, isn’t particularly noteworthy given that as with DOA4 he’s here to be a bonus character, as canonically he stopped attending tournaments after winning DOA3 and buying the medicine he needed for his granddaughter.
In terms of hidden elements, DOA5 is a bit out there. There is no boss for arcade mode, but the story mode features a number of unplayable bosses, as well as Alpha-152 who can be unlocked this time and has also been considerably toned down. Instead, Story mode sees the player fighting four, unplayable versions of the cast’s main four; Ayane, Hayate, Kasumi and Hayabusa. The all have similar traits, such as unlimited power blows, although Kasumi in particular is quite interesting, for reasons I’ll get into in her video. They all have this dark aura around them which darkens in colour as they take damage, and most notable is the fact that they have a special tag animation where they instantly switch, which I’ll show off in a bonus video. This not only allows for some hilariously cheap tag combos, but what’s more if it’s spammed quick enough the opponent will be literally unplayable to hit them and will instead accidentally pass through them when launching an attack.
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Thankfully I get to cover Best Girl one last time, but as bosses go these are pretty lazy on the whole, and I can fully see why they’ve been left unplayable. They were created simply to have a climax in story mode, and rather understandably they probably didn’t want to waste further resources on characters who were going to be left unplayable. Which is something I wish they’d kept in mind for DOA3 and 4, but whatever. Seriously; I can finally manually hack a boss in a DOA game again, and these are what I’m left with.
Indeed, DOA5 definitely feels like it has a bit of an identity crisis. A bit like SoulCalibur V, it feels like a game made for the sake of it than anything else, and in areas feels like it lacks direction, although it’s much, much less worse than SoulCalibur V was. You definitely get the sense that time and effort was put into the title, but it still ends up as a title where they’re making it up as they go along rather than one which had a vision behind it. Is that really a problem? For what is essentially a dream match title and a way to cap off the series, no. There’s nothing inherently wrong with anything of it. But it is difficult to feel engaged by it, as is usually the case with dream match titles. The actual gameplay itself is great; a much more refined version of the stun combo/aerial combo mix which Team Ninja were developing since DOA3. It’s still not something I’ll ever dramatically like, but it is pretty decent.
As a result, there’s very little to say about Boss Ayane on the whole. She’s a boss whose sole purpose is simply to be a nuisance to the player, and she only really effectively works as part of a tag-team. Playing as her individually has its advantages, but on the whole, you really don’t miss anything by not playing her. She’s simply supposed to be a one-off boss character to give the story some kind of climax, which is fair enough I suppose. It’s just nice to cover Ayane again, especially considering she’s come such a long way since DOA1.
Next up, it’s Boss Hayate.
I gotta admit tho, sound effects make this game so satisfying. I love it when you feel the impact of your attack, like you're actually dealing damage. Fights themselves are pretty darn spectacular too. It's a lot of fun to watch. Great coverage as always!
Thanks! Glad you're enjoying it. They really did hit a stride with Last Round, and even a naysayer like myself had a fair bit of fun with it at the end; it has that really fluid control we're getting more and more of in 3D fighting games nowadays, with Tekken Tag 2 and Tekken 7 being two other good examples, and it just feels innately fun to play.
Love this game,played a hell out of it. Story Mode kind sucks,though
It's...alright, I suppose. They kind of tried to do what the MK9 story mode did, with trying out tons of different characters while feeling a narrative, but it really didn't end up as cohesive as it should have done. Weird, too, considering the overarching plot for the DOA series for 1 to 4 was actually pretty good on the whole.
I don't know if it's a coincidence but in easy difficult the final match isn't against Tina (in my personal case I fought Hayabusa). In other difficulty level I only fought against her. And in sometimes I made a course that I fought her twice.
It's very strange.
I have the core fighters version, I didn't feel the motivation to upgrade this game. It has cool characters but I felt dissapointed. I feel that I play a recycled dream match.
Man this game I had a Love/Hate relationship, Loved the game because of how fun it was as well as the variety of characters alongside the VF Guests but the hate part was the stupid amount of DLC in this game and not just that most of these DLC costume packs didn't even focus on everyone, the worst case for me was when they revealed the Blazblue/Guilty Gear costumes and yes I know that the females are one of the main selling points of the game but come on, Chipp Hayabusa wouldn't have gone amiss, or maybe PotemkinBayman or even Kliff Fu, or what about Ky Elliot or Elliot Kisaragi? I just felt that was just wasted potential there.
i fail to see any difference with the normal ayane and this boss ayane other than the damage output.
She can use her desperation move (or whatever it's called in this game) freely, like the other bosses, but that's about it. Apart from a few move quirks, there isn't that much to distinguish her from her playable counterpart. The other bosses are pretty similar. Indeed, the whole point of them isn't so much their movesets but how they function in tag team mode, which as I mentioned here I'll show in a bonus vid.
What I really hate about DoA5: LR is the DLC costumes practices. I mean over 1000 $/€ seriously Tecmo?
Lmao, yes, I always bring that up when people mention this game; the £1000+ amount of DLC costumes, as if the DOA series wasn't exploitative enough. Tecmo/Koei are exploitative as shit though as a company; just look at all the Warriors games they've made by this point, it's absurd.