So, what's the consensus on DOA5¿

[TRI Mike]

It's already been more than three years since DOA5 and I'd like to know what's the general consensus from a competitive/gameplay point of view. I haven't been as active in the forums since @Tulkas left the country and the local community went to shit, but I still lurk from time to time and I've seen that FSD went from a site more focused on competitive play to something more open to general discussion, which is perfectly fine but because of this, it's been hard for me to know what is the opinion on the game's mechanics.

Personally, I believe DOA5 was at it's best during vanilla because I think there were more guaranteed set-ups, HP was shorter (we've discussed this before) and I really liked the insane focus on forced techs; especially with Tina and Helena which were my characters at the time. Nevertheless, I believe that the new stages and characters that came in Ultimate and Last Round have managed to make the game feel fresh.

So, while I think the game in general is MUCH better than DOA4, is it better than DOA3¿

 

[UncleKitchener]

Definitely better than 3 in a lot of aspects, namely some of the really crazy and broken stuff you could do in that game, but that doesn't make doa3 a bad game at all. I fact, DOA3 is probably one of the most fun Doas out there and everyone should try it.

My personal opinion regarding the different versions of DOA5 is this:

DOA5: looking back at this version, it's starting to look pretty terrible, especially in terms of content and character and strategic variety. The game was even until it's final version always laden with bugs and infinite that weren't discovered or sometimes kept secret until later in the game's life span.

Through its life span, a lot of questionable design decisions were made and some characters had their style changed drastically. Apparently the team were still trying to figure out their own system and roster so they really weren't sure. New characters and the VF crew were especially in a very strange place. Akira is secretly one the best characters in the game and went under the radar and not fully discovered until later 5U, early LR.

This was also a time where Japan had minimal interest the game and that was an issue regarding the legitimacy of the game. It was fine if US played the game as much as they liked, but if Japan wasn't playing their own game, then there wouldn't have been enough interest in the game as we have now.

While force techs were good for some styles of play, it also made the game boring to watch and play. I remember when I had pretty much stopped playing the game altogether for a few months by the end of the vanilla life span. It may have been a decent tool for consistency, but it was also not a good visual for new players coming in. I can tell that I managed to interest way more people in the game after 5U was released compared to th zero number or new players brought into the scene back in 5Vanilla days.

Personally, the visual aspect of the stage design and the music were pretty terrible and it wasn't until 5U that we got some nice stuff t look at.

DOA5U: this was where a lot of effort was being made into making the game a more fast paced 3D fighter and I have to say it was a good start. However, it did have its issues in terms of balance especially the new cast. Rachel 's vortex was something that showed the shallow side of the community of people playing this game; they overreact and give nothing constructive in return. The result of their complaints on social media made Rachel lose something unique and the worst part is that seems didn't get anything to replace the hole in her limited number of moves. On the other hand, the return of the old characters freshened up the cast and made thing interesting again. Momiji and Jacky were probably the best additions to the roster and changed the game entirely.
Marie Rose was a good addition to bring in some more money as they've since been marketing her like crazy.

One very good approach to balance the team adopted was to leave significant periods of time between updated and let people sink their teeth into things before making changes. This was the best thing they did as the constant patching and the initial balancing during early 5U was not helping.

New power launchers also made things interesting but justified the health bar changes to compensate for the high dage you could do with said tools. Now everyone had a way to get damage with ceilings too.

If the health bar was kept at 270, some characters could legitimately kill with 0ne combo and death combos do tend to upset a lot of people. Problem was that the cast was still not entirely be lanced to compensate for this health bar change. Grapplers didn't get damage boosts on all their throws and not all strikes were properly given enough tweaking. This could've meant that characters had to rely on making another guess before being able to put an opponent down.

This was still not a major issue and people were still figuring out new things and finding new tactics to use.

New stages also helped the game out a lot by adding some colour and contrast to stages.

DOA5LR: this is currently the most balanced version of the game and the roster got some final tweaking to make them complete to hold their ground and have tools against all match ups.

The addition of Raidou and Honoka helped pretty much complete the roster and the new stages added some new toys for people to play with. Then again, us pre-gen and PC players were kinda left out and I don't thing anyone would want to but a new console just to play one game with could new stages and an exclusive character coming March 2016.

Overall, this is cleanest version of the game and I personally am happy we finally got a good version. While Honoka and MR are very cringe worthy characters, they were understandably made to print this money.

What does piss me off however is that it took this team three whole iterations of the same game to finally make this game complete and fully playable.

I did have a lot of fun with Doa5 and 5U when I was finding new things all the time, but I'm glad those days are over and I can finally have fun with something I'd consider to be a good DOA.

By the looks of it, TN seem to have been done with this project and have moved on to other things, but I do hope the next time they make a fighting game, they learn from the mistakes they made and make use of their experience developing the DOA5 series.

 

[TRI Mike]

I see. It's just that I've never really had the opportunity to play LR on a good level to make a solid statement. I honestly like both Honoka and Marie to be honest and find both to be quite deep gameplay-wise regardless of their designs (which I also like). One of the many reasons I also loved vanilla was that Tina in that version had too much guaranteed stuff and the forced tech mechanics only made her better. She lost all that in Ultimate and didn't gain anything to make up for it, which pissed me off.

But you're right about LR feeling much more complete. The design of the stages in vanilla was very weak and taking out Ein and Leon was a grave mistake.

 

[UncleKitchener]

I had no problem with the system changes from vanilla to 5U but I did take issue with characters not gaining enough to make up for the toolsets lost.

Another major issue my local scene had with the game was how Ein was now a Tekken character in a DOA engine where he had to play a spacing and punishment game for a character that used to be very fun and fast. His general design just isn't very exciting for this game even though he's decent.

Another character that really got hit and changed drastically was Tina though the most surprising thing was the number of people that abandoned the character and stopped looking for new meta games or approaches. That really dissapointed me because at the same time Rachel players had started looking for new ways of using their character while Tina players almost entirely ceased discussions.

Eliot also did have some issues before he got a decent tracking moves and tweaks. General perception was that he was the weakest character in the game but he's still pretty decent and just a bit awkward.

One thing that was definitely needed with the grapple characters was the damage boost to their tier 2 & 3 throws which were very much needed after the health bar change from 5vanilla to 5U. This actually put them above some striker characters that could get close to the same damage on high counter and this change made them unique again.

Not a whole lot of nerfs were put on anyone except for Helena with her throw damage and stun changes which were justified because she had gotten too cheap and brain dead and no character in this game can have their cake and eat it too. Even if this might appear to be the case with the top characters, they have been researched and they all have the holes in their offense which can be exploited.

Overall, I see the cast in a pretty good position. It's just that there's still plenty of different approaches people can take with their characters and a lot of things are still left undiscovered.

Let's just hope the final patch coming March doesn't screw things up.

 

[TRI Mike]

I did my research with Tina and I did find useful stuff on her LR version, but overall she's weaker than her 5vanilla self, which in my opinion is the best Tina in the series, even better than in DOA3. I disagree with Ein, I've never seen him as fast past DOA3 because Hitomi was there and they were kinda similar before DOA5. If you wanted fast karate, go with Hitomi, and if you wanted hard-hitting karate, go for Ein. The footsies/ranged approach Ein uses is fascinating to me.

I don't think we're gonna see many drastic changes in March. Honoka will probably get some stuff because she's still very new and her mechanics lack coherence but other than that. I think the general gameplay of DOA5 is already set in stone.

 

[Tulkas]

Another major issue my local scene had with the game was how Ein was now a Tekken character in a DOA engine where he had to play a spacing and punishment game for a character that used to be very fun and fast. His general design just isn't very exciting for this game even though he's decent.

I have not noticed that Tekken similarity... The 2nd best French player uses Ein, when I faced him in the pools last year he was playing basicaly in that footsies-wiff-punish approach... It was -btw- one of my best fights in that tournament...

If you wanted fast karate, go with Hitomi, and if you wanted hard-hitting karate, go for Ein. The footsies/ranged approach Ein uses is fascinating to me.

Fascinating??? LOL! I definitively find Ein to be the most plain boring char in the cast along with Gen... It's a shame because I loved him at DOA2.

Anyway guys, coming back to the topic,
if I had to choose one edition, I would definitevely choose LR basicaly due to the mechanics of the system, the overall quality of its cast and the new art design of the character faces introduced introduced in 5. Its PS4/ONE version is the winner for me because the beautifull skins and additional stages.

I like the basics of current system quite more than DOA2/3/4 as defense got a new level with the SS introduced in 5. The stun game that I have liked the most is also the one introduced in 5 with the unholdables, CB and PB... and later polished further in LR. I like a lot the fact that OHs again were turned character specific in 5. Also I like a lot that in LR the 5's FTs are more character specific tool and are even harder to be successfully landed.

I find the cast to be the biggest so far, to be acceptablely balanced (enough to keep my interest on compete using Brad). This cast also have the variety of strategies and tactics across the chars that I have liked the most since 2.

Also I like the current interactivity of stages the most. I loved the new stage specific danger zones including the ones that extend the PB. But I definitevely would put more effort in the beauty of stages for the next DOA... I miss the elegance of some old ones such as Aerial Gardens and the dinamic visuals of DOAU Miyama or that stormy one where thunders trully lighted the arena (an effect that I was expecting in the new Fireworks stage).

The training mode is clearly the best in the series. I don't care about tag and online modes as I mostly care on competition. LR is also my choice regarding the music as it gather plently of old tunes and allows to set them quite customizedly.

The learning curve is what I find much more friendly in older DOAs such as 3. Seriously, getting a competitive level in LR seems that requires more time than getting an university degree... But I accepted the challenge, and I am enjoying this experience a lot.

 

[Rikuto]

DOA 3 to me feels like how Soul Calibur 2 does to that community. Lots of "broken" stuff that happens to make the game very competitive, and also fast as hell. DOA 3 is our super fast game, and its magical for that reason. Its just too different to compare to DOA 5 in terms of good or bad. I am, more or less pleased with DOA 5. It's different, and its functional. It would be better with a proper throw break system, but that's about it.

 

[bluebanana]

It's good for the most part. Thankfully no one or few characters dominating the rest of the cast.

 

[Lulu]

Well I have zero experience with Previous DoA games besides the DoA4 demo so I can only judge 5 by its own merits.

The Game is perfect..... however I have 3 Primary Issues:
1) Stagger Escaping Mechanic is unintuitive and in my personal oppinion.... unnecessary. Might aswell just adjust the game to auto stagger escape everything. Its just busy work.

2) I can't mention Stagger Escaping without the very thing it was designed for.... Unholdable Stuns. If it were up to me.... there would be no such thing (and to compensate for that I would adjust the stun duration for low strikes and readjust the Critical Hold penalty). But thats an exteme change and people don't like change. So a more reasonable suggestion is to readjust the stuns to guarantee anything but a Critical Burst, With the exception of Ceiling Power Launchers and Stage Props.... Fair Enough ?

3) Execution Execution Execution. Let me see if I can use an Example to summarise my point because if you let me... I will bitch and moan about this until the cow come home. So..... Alpha has no or any throw using some of the expected motions you expected to encounter in a Fighting Game like or
And yet for some asinine reason she has and Command Throws....

Is being reserved for something else ? DLC Moves Maybe ? Theres nothing I hate more than Complexity just for Complexities sake. It adds nothing to.... well anything. If I wanted to deal with this shit I'd just play Street Fighter (Oh no he didn't )

Other than that.... I love DoA5. LoL when I first played the game I was like "For Real ?... Combos don't equal to Guaranteed Damage... THATS AMAZING !!!" And the reason for that is I come from a long history of getting my ass kicked by my big brother in combos so excrutiatingly long it would make you wonder why does he even need me for ? I only get like 4 seconds of actual interaction in each fight.... *cough cough Tekken*....

Remind me to pick up Killer Instinct.

 

[Argentus]

Well I have zero experience with Previous DoA games besides the DoA4 demo so I can only judge 5 by its own merits.

The Game is perfect..... however I have 3 Primary Issues:
1) Stagger Escaping Mechanic is unintuitive and in my personal oppinion.... unnecessary. Might aswell just adjust the game to auto stagger escape everything. Its just busy work.

2) I can't mention Stagger Escaping without the very thing it was designed for.... Unholdable Stuns. If it were up to me.... there would be no such thing (and to compensate for that I would adjust the stun duration for low strikes and readjust the Critical Hold penalty). But thats an exteme change and people don't like change. So a more reasonable suggestion is to readjust the stuns to guarantee anything but a Critical Burst, With the exception of Ceiling Power Launchers and Stage Props.... Fair Enough ?

3) Execution Execution Execution. Let me see if I can use an Example to summarise my point because if you let me... I will bitch and moan about this until the cow come home. So..... Alpha has no or any throw using some of the expected motions you expected to encounter in a Fighting Game like or
And yet for some asinine reason she has and Command Throws....

Is being reserved for something else ? DLC Moves Maybe ? Theres nothing I hate more than Complexity just for Complexities sake. It adds nothing to.... well anything. If I wanted to deal with this shit I'd just play Street Fighter (Oh no he didn't )

Other than that.... I love DoA5. LoL when I first played the game I was like "For Real ?... Combos don't equal to Guaranteed Damage... THATS AMAZING !!!" And the reason for that is I come from a long history of getting my ass kicked by my big brother in combos so excrutiatingly long it would make you wonder why does he even need me for ? I only get like 4 seconds of actual interaction in each fight.... *cough cough Tekken*....

Remind me to pick up Killer Instinct.

Couldn't agree more on stagger escape and unholdable stuns.