Dead or Alive 6 Last Round - PlayStation 5 Review

Dead or Alive 6 Last Round by developer and publisher Koei Tecmo Games Co., LTD.—Sony PlayStation 5 review written by Nick with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

When it first released seven years ago, Dead or Alive 6 was met with a mixed response. Its predecessor had been so, so good that the bar of expectations had been raised quite high. It also came with a ton of purchasable DLC that some people want, but many others were annoyed with. The thing is, the core game was a good one that offered fast, flowing combat that was an interesting mix of deep combat mechanics and accessibility. So how is this latest iteration in the series? Enjoyable, and a welcome addition to my PlayStation 5 catalog, but it may not be worth the price of admission for those who have already experienced the original game.

We enjoyed the original game (PY reviewed it to an 8.75 on PlayStation 4, you can read it here) a great deal. Dead or Alive 6 Last Round feels like it is being used to set up a future Dead or Alive 7 on the current generation of consoles. Note that when we reviewed DoA6 back in 2019, it was on PlayStation 4. This release is for PlayStation 5 (and Steam and Xbox Series X, etc), and there are some notable improvements to load times and smoother visual fidelity during combat due to the newer hardware. That being said, this release is pretty much a clone of the original on the prior consoles. The art style is still bright and colorful, and characters are appealing to look at, but there’s little to no discernible improvements to character models. Maybe it’s just been too many years since I played the original release, but most of the stages don’t seem all that much improved upon either. The exception is arguably my favorite stage from the original game, Lost Paradise, has seen some nice improvements, especially in lighting. 

This is essentially the same game on the same engine on new hardware. Perhaps the one really notable exception is the photo mode has quite a few more options. This is something Tecmo Koei has put a fair amount of focus on in their other games and doesn’t come as a surprise here. It’s a welcome addition, but not one that I personally put a lot of time into outside of some testing of its features.

Let me be clear – there’s nothing wrong with that. As someone who spent a ton of hours on DoA6 several years ago, I was more than happy to fire up Dead or Alive 6 Last Round and re-experience it again. However, fans of the prior release who had purchased some / all of the DLC that released for it may not feel the need to spring for this latest iteration of the series. Mechanically,  it is the same game in terms of modes and gameplay. Also, one would expect that a ‘Last Round’ like this would contain 100% of the previous DLC given that the original game is several years old, but it’s fair to criticize that there are microtransactions in this title as well if you want to acquire Mai or Kula for example. It seems odd to me that save data can be ported over and used, but purchased DLC can’t be? 

The majority of my time was spent in single player modes, such as the story mode that picks up right after the events of Dead or Alive 5. It’s crazy, over the top stuff that is a hallmark of the series. There’s many hours of single player content to be had here, though online seemed to work fine for me. That being said, since I feel like this release is paving the way for Dead or Alive 7, why didn’t they offer up rollback netcode or crossplay? I would hope those features would find themselves in the next release, and this feels like it would have been a great way to get those features onto the PlayStation 5 in a live environment.

Dead or Alive 6 Last Round is a slightly shinier version of the same game that came out several years ago, for better and for worse. I've always found it to have one of the more enjoyable combat systems, and there is a large cast of characters and appealing environments with enough modes to keep fighting fans entertained. I enjoyed my time with it – but acknowledge that for those who already own the game on last generation’s consoles, there’s probably not enough new here to justify repurchasing it again. It is however, a great pickup for fighting fans who missed out on the original Dead or Alive 6, and is an easy recommend from me for those folks. For the rest? Dead or Alive 6 Last Round feels like it’s meant more to pave the way for Dead or Alive 7 than anything else.

Score: 7 / 10