1. Introduction

When you first step into the world of DOA5, at its surface the game doesn’t look too intimidating. It appears like you can just mash punch & kick buttons like you’re daft and fancy attacks will come out. But once you start to look past the surface of DOA5 and its related iterations, you quickly start to see how much depth and complexity there is to the system. Against a competent opponent, mashing punch & kick furiously won’t get you very far beyond inevitably getting your face pounded into the ground. Things such as blocking, holding, spacing, punishment, applying mix-ups, maximizing stuns and so on and so forth, are all occurring during a higher level match. Once you see what is really going on beyond just mashing attack buttons, then DOA5’s depth starts to become a lot more intimidating!

So you want to be a skilled player overnight? Not very likely to happen unfortunately. Most experts would say to learn to read Frame Data, also known as the “speed of your moves” and the amount of advantage or disadvantage you have in any given situation, along with studying your character’s frames like a Bible. As you can imagine, that’s a pretty tall order. A very tall order in fact! To top it off, mechanical things such as frames aren’t the only thing that will assure your victory, you have to be more clever than your opponent. Baby steps are the key to improving one’s skill in DOA5 and we’re here to assist you on that road to victory! This is mostly a guide to help people gain an appreciation for the game’s depth, but still tries to keep things somewhat general without getting too complex.

Before we go on, here’s the notation that explains controller input in DOA5. The numbers correspond to the numbers on your keyboards keypad (note that all input notations assuming the player is facing right):


P = Punch
K = Kick
H = Hold (Also the “Guard” button)
T = Throw (Also can be inputted as H+P)
x_ = Underscore represents a “held input”

GB = Guard Break
DH = Defensive Hold
SDS = Sit-down Stun
NH = Normal Hit
CH = Counter Hit
OH = Offensive Holds
BT = Back-Turned
SE = Stagger Escape
CB = Critical Burst
PB = Power Blow
PL = Power Launcher
SS = Side-Step
OKI = Okizeme
WUK = Wake-Up Kick

The numbers are generally paired with either P, K, H, T, or any combination such as P+K, H+K, H+P or H+P+K. For example: 6P = Forward+Punch, and 4K = Back+Kick

Numbers can be combined too:
66P = Forward+Forward+Punch
46K = Back+Forward+Kick

It can even be as complex as:
41236T = Back+Down-Back+Down+Down+Forward+Forward+Throw

Getting the notation down helps a lot when learning different combinations of techniques such as describing a combo sequence like: 3PP~33P~33P~6PPP

Alright, now let’s get to the good stuff. We will try to keep this short and sweet, though unfortunately that’s not as easy to do as it sounds with regards to this very complex game.