Move over Capcom, there's a new money grubbing fighting game publisher/developer in town. From Tecmo, the same company that brought us gems such as the remarkable Ninja Gaiden and Fatal Frame series', comes Dead or Alive 5: Last Round. After a whole lot of confusion when Square Enix butted in during 2008, Tecmo and Koei both dissolved as separate entities and then merged together in 2011.
Oh man, where to start with Dead or Alive 5: Last Round. There's just so many negative things to say about this game, but I guess I'll start by bringing up this horrid Free to Play, Pay to Unlock model that the game has undertaken. It's almost the same as Killer Instinct for the Xbox One, with the difference being that Microsoft Studios actually did that right. If you don't know what's going on, the simple version is that the game is now free to play, but you can only use 4 characters from the beginning; the rest you have to pay to unlock. You also have to pay to unlock the story mode now as well. The good news is that you can still buy Dead or Alive 5 as a full game for $43.99 CAD, but if you want to go the route of unlocking all characters individually you're looking at $140 CAD. Tack on $16.99 CAD for the story mode to boot. That's absolutely outrageous, why not price the items in a manner so they'll add up to the $43.99 CAD price tag? What's the point? To trick people who aren't paying attention in to spending a ton of money? For shame, Tecmo.
While we're on the topic of discussing cost, what in the absolute HELL is up with the costume DLC prices? At first I thought they were a joke, and that they were put on the store wrong; $82.99 CAD, $71.99 CAD, $60.99 CAD? Are you people serious? This is the worst priced DLC I've ever seen in my entire life, and for what? Costumes! In-game costumes that don't even really matter because guess what, online is completely dead. I crap you not, the entire cost to add all of the DLC to cart from the store page is $1,166.70. What. The. EFF. Tecmo! You've gone insane.
Alright, so money siphoning aside, to put it bluntly Dead or Alive 5: Last Round blows chunks. There are bugs and glitches galore, and when I was playing through Arcade mode my game crashed out of nowhere. When I attempted to play online, I could only choose to play a Ranked Match or view the Leaderboards, if there were more options I didn't see them. The menus are a bit cryptic and end up hiding a lot of options and settings. I'm also going to tack on here that the character models are okay, but the maps easily look like they're from 5-7 years ago.
Out of all the abhorrent things about this game, the worst are probably the bulky controls. Every single character (out of the 4 I could play... I'm not paying for this game) feel weighted. You can't even jump, and they feel heavier than a brick outhouse. The controls are outright clunky and slow, the entire game feels so slow. Especially in comparison to good fighting games such as Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter. It's an arena fighter, so all of the fighting is done on a 3D plane, which greatly contributes to the problems at hand. However, other 3D arena fighters such as Tekken have fared fine over the years.
I've been playing fighting games for over two decades, and I have to say that Dead or Alive 5: Last Round is the worst in every conceivable way; that's even taking in to account Samurai Shodown: Sen, which is now second on my list. A rundown of everything shows that there really is no positive side to this title; bad graphics, boring gameplay, bulky controls, slow gameplay, uninspired moves, crashes, no multiplayer community, and quite possibly the worlds worst Free to Play, Pay to Unlock model. It wants so bad to be Street Fighter, even in the way you unlock new titles and costumes, but it burns before it can even utter the word "Shoryuken". The only possible reason I could ever recommend for you to play this is to snag 50% of the achievements in a couple of hours, but that's literally it. Let's really hope that this is the last round.
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