DOA 2017 - still on fire

The Dead or Alive 5 series is turning 5 in September 2017 and still gets tons of support from the Design- and Developers-Team! Team Ninja recently released the “New Costume Pass 6” which contains more than 100 new costumes that will come out until June 2017 (or in 6 separate packs). As Season Pass specials, you are going to get “Pop Idols” Outfits for Honoka and Marie Rose, the new poster girls of the brand.

Within the lifespan of DOA5, we got 12 new characters like Momiji and Rachel from the Ninja Gaiden series, the returning characters Leon and Ein, Jacky, a guest character from Sega's Fighting Game series “Virtua Fighter”, new original DOA characters like Marie Rose, Phase 4, Nyotengu, another returning character Raidou, the new original DOA female character Honoka, the Samurai Warriors guest character Naotora li and the newest addition May Shiranui from SNK's The King of Fighters.

We also got a nice amount of new stages – classic and completely new ones. Creative Director Tom Lee left some hints at the end of 2016, that fans of Team Ninja can expect some exciting news in the future. If it belongs to DOA, or is a Ninja Gaiden Sequel, a new IP or simply further DLC, you can expects some announcements at this years tournaments.

It is not known yet, if Team Ninja is going to hold a new Dead or Alive Designer Challenge in 2017 but be prepared, if you have a new chance to participate.

My personal view:

I am a DOA fan since the first installment and a lover since DOA2. I'm still thankful, that Team Ninja is able to have it's 3D-Fighting Game established on the current market which is a hard job. I love, how DoA5 turned out in many ways. It was a wise move to include old fan favorite stages and costumes and also important characters from the past series. Also, the possibility to be actually a part of the game is amazing. Giving the fans the power, to create their own costumes for their loving characters is fantastic. This is the best job, a company did to their fans in my opinion. Also, I like the communication between the fans and the company on Social Media (Twitter, Facebook). Is it suggestions from the fans, problems with the service or anything else – Team Ninja answers professionally. The featuring of fan-arts on their websites and gifts of the team to the fans is an example for good communication.

Thank you.

Also, the former Koei-Tecmo Community Manager “Chin Soon Sun” did an amazing job for the community. He was the guy who helped you out with any problems, inspired many people with his daily tweets. He takes the gamers- and business-heart on the right side.

Thank you Chin. You did a wonderful job. Me and the community wish you all the best.

My hopes and wishes:

I still love DOA5 the way it is and I don't know, which direction it is going to take in the future. I would love to see at least one new returning character like “GENRA”, the father of Ayane. He was playable in Dead or Alive Dimensions on Nintendo 3DS and has a unique moveset in my option. I would also pay for a Stage-DLC-Pack. There are so many stages, they still could add. I would love to see “Koku-An”, Winter Version (DOA2U), “Demon Church” (DoA2U), “Freedom Survivor” (DOAD), “Seaside Market” (DOA4), “Aerial Garden” (DOA2U / DOA2 HARDCORE) and “Miyama” (DOAD-Version).

GUEST-CHARACTERS When I played “Tekken 2” for the first time, I played it's demo version on PS1. The playable female character was “Jun Kazama” and I was like – wow, this lady plays so “DOA”-like. She was one of the few characters, who could actually use “counter moves”. As a fan of both series, I would still love to see her joining the DOA-roster. In my heart, she's a DoA-babe and could easily enter the fighting-arena of Team Ninja's blockbuster.

Since Team Ninja is helping out Square Enix with animations and more on “Dissidia Final Fantasy” (ARCADE), I can see a Final Fantasy character (most likely Tifa Lockhart - Final Fantasy VII) + stage coming to DOA5 Last Round. When the time has come for a console release date of Dissida. I would really welcome that. Keep it coming.

DLC-Outfits

DoA5 has the biggest amount of outfits of the series if not of the complete genre. But as a hardcore fan, I'm still missing some of the classic outfits, I requested over the years. Outfits from DOA2 and DOAD are my target. Hopefully, we are going to see a few more.

Ending

Everything can be saved for Dead or Alive 6 – I am totally fine with it. What makes me really happy is, that Hayashi – the producer of the current game stated back in 2014, that the they will focus on using the full power of the consoles (Xbox One / PS4), maybe Xbox Scorpio and PS4 Pro like back in the old days, when they released games for older systems with “up-to-date-graphics”.

I do look forward to it.

Thank you for reading. Bye Tobi

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