Tokyo Game Show 2018 (TGS) took place between the dates of September 20th to September 23rd in the Chiba prefecture outside Tokyo, Japan. It was my first time attending the event, and I had the fortune to visit it during the press-exclusive days of the 20th and 21st in addition to the public days that followed. I came to the event with one goal: To play as much
Dead or Alive 6 that I could at the Koei-Tecmo booth. I had previously had the chance to try an earlier demo during the Evolution 2018 (Evo) championships event this past summer, and was looking forward to seeing what had been updated.
I focused primarily on the new character to the series, Diego, at the Evo event since my preferred character (Bass) was not available. I had heard murmurs from the other players that they found Diego to be
too strong in such an early build, and wanted to see how he might have been changed. While it's too early to say whether a character is over or under powered, I would have to say that Diego isn't an over-powered character. Based on my experiences with the character at both events, and granted some "character bias" may be in effect here, I would say the character certainly has good throw damage, a good 1PP, and a nice 1K poke. However, he doesn't have much of a good critical game. That is to say, outside of a good Fatal Rush string, he doesn't have any real way to guarantee launchers or extend critical.
Evo was a more hectic and fast-paced event due to the demonstration booths being set up in a way to promote playing the demo with another player. Players would be escorted to stations in a two-man group. This is in contrast to the experience I had at TGS where people were being escorted on a single player basis. A lot of that design is most likely due to a combination of the atmosphere and the culture surrounding the event, especially on the Press-exclusive days. What this meant for me as a fan of the series since I first played
Dead or Alive++ was that I would spend most of my time alone with the build. Trust me when I say trying to manage two controllers or arcade sticks to test frame specific timings is a difficult task. Furthermore, the TGS build did not offer an option to see Move Details, even though the option had been announced in the months prior to the event. This limited what I was able to figure out about the build.
The public days didn't fare much better, as the language barrier made it difficult to express desire to test or show things of the system. I had to also keep reminding myself that this was the first time 99.9% of those in attendance were even getting a chance to experience
Dead or Alive 6 in any form. The players weren't afforded the opportunities I was by having not only the three days at Evo to get a baseline feel, but the two additional Press days I had with the TGS build. That being said, I was able to get a few matches in with other players like
Miyabin and
Demekun (Links are to recorded match videos), and it was certainly nice to experience playing
Dead or Alive 6 with my preferred controller style of an arcade stick.
The first thing I wanted to test out was the idea of free cancelling the Break Blow cinematic. This was actually a feature from all the way back in the E3 announcement, but it was never announced or shown off properly. I didn't get any time to practice this feature during Evo because I did not find out about it until the stations had already closed. The Break Blow Cancel is done by pressing the Hold button during a small window after the Break Blow lands but before the cinematic kicks off. This effectively uses your full gauge to reset the Critical system and leave the opponent in a Fatal Stun, instead of using it for one hard knock back hit. This also means that since you can juggle an opponent with a Fatal Rush that automatically blends into a Break Blow should you have 100% Break Gauge, you can do a short juggle and re-stand your opponent to launch them again provided your opponent does not Break Hold with 50% of their gauge. Interestingly, if you mash on the Hold button while either in start up of the Break Blow or after the hit has landed, the game seems to ignore the cancel. So the cancel is something that has to be timed specifically with care.
Now, testing out the Break Blow Cancel I had many ideas and strategies come to my mind on possibilities of combo extensions, utilizing danger zones, and taking further advantage on an opponent who either had no meter to Break Hold or wasted it by whiffing one. However, while there certainly are long guaranteed combos that are possible, I began to notice that damage revision picks up rather fast once you have launched the opponent. Since Move Details were not available, it's quite difficult to guess at the percentage of revision. I was verified later by Team NINJA community manager Emmanuel "Master" Rodriguez that there is some heavy revision after a few juggle hits have occurred. Additionally, knocking an opponent into a danger zone, while giving them a possible opportunity to hold in some danger zones, doesn't appear to fully reset the Critical system as some combos in the initial Critical state wouldn't appear to work in these "reset" situations as it only allowed fewer hits. Eventually, I began to find combos where doing the Break Blow Cancel, extending the Critical stuns, and relaunching into a Danger Zone seemed to provide more damage than had I not cancelled to begin with. However, that is at the risk of an opponent holding out of the stuns should they gain meter and want to use them.
Additionally, the Critical state itself seemed to have been lessened. Overall, I got a feeling that while stuns were longer due to the removal of Stagger Escape and of long Fatal Stuns, the game seemed to have more focus on the Neutral game. That is, similar to
Dead or Alive 2 and
Dead or Alive 3, the first hit is the most important. Couple all that with the removal of the Critical Threshold Launch system introduced in
Dead or Alive 4 where the closer to full Critical meant a higher launch, and the game feels like a return to the Stun-Launch system of old. This means that you are no longer
required to play the Critical game. Your launch height is the same regardless of whether the opponent was early or late in the Critical Threshold system. The lack of Stagger Escape then also makes a lot of critical stuns be "Must Hold" situations.
On top of that, I was able to verify that the Critical System's Damage limits also have had a reduction. By testing with Hayabusa's jab (it's always been 10 damage in every
Dead or Alive game) I was able to verify that
Dead or Alive 6, at least at the time of the TGS build, has a smaller Critical System. It still plays off the core change introduced in
Dead or Alive 4 where the attack putting the opponent into Critical won't count towards the damage threshold. Specifically, I was able to verify that the new damage limits are at 25/30/35 for normal, counter, and hi-counter blow. This is different from
Dead or Alive 5 where the limits were 28/35/42. This further leads to the idea that
Dead or Alive 6appears to be having a more focused effort to strengthen the neutral meta-game and lower the amount of time during a match that the game is spent playing the Critical meta-game.
Another area I tested out was the side step system. It practically was unchanged from the Evo demo where the neutral side step felt exactly the same as
Dead or Alive 5 and the side step attack felt extremely evasive. However, one instance while playing a pro player in the game stands out to me. I was demonstrating a lot of the system changes to the player, and during our casual matches I was abusing his very linear Hitomi with the side step attack. He exclaimed in shock, "I feel like I have to be careful with how and when I attack!". Instantly, we both felt that strengthening of the neutral game the system now has. To actually have the experience where the game wasn't
allabout the Critical system was very relieving for me as a player. I had other areas of the game I could focus my strategies on. I'm unsure if I can completely put into words my feelings at that moment, but I just remember me growing a smile.
I like that the Fatal Rush is a high attack, this makes high and low holding stronger, which in turn makes mid-hitting launchers more powerful. Keep in mind that launchers are scarier now as you don't have to play that stun game to get a good launch. While low holding might seem more powerful than a high hold, it's good to keep in mind that a launching attack will launch an opponent higher if they are in crouch state or holding low when hit. One good hit and you can find yourself on the receiving end of a danger zone, especially if your stage positioning and character match-up knowledge is poor. I feel that having the Fatal Rush as a high helps the balance of the attacks, the critical meta, and the game - at least in my view.
That being said, from my experiences at both Evo and TGS, I can say you
can still play the game similarly to the style of
Dead or Alive 5. It's just that the style
may not be the optimal style to play this game, though it currently is the most popular due to players having seven years to practice the
Dead or Alive 5 style. Of course, players haven't been given a lot of time with the game due to limited demos and the game is still changing as development continues. It excites me to think of what could be discovered once the game releases in February.
