Dead or Alive: Dimensions’ Combat Is Based On Dead or Alive 4 And 3

With Dead or Alive: Dimensions — the first DOA in five years — scheduled to launch alongside (or soon after) the Nintendo 3DS, we figured it was time to find out just what’s going on under the hood of the game, which, as reported previously, chronicles the events of the first four Dead or Alive titles.

For this, we reached out to Team Ninja leader, Yosuke Hayashi, who revealed to us that the game’s combat is largely based on Dead or Alive 4 on the Xbox 360, with some heavy modifications under the surface, including elements from Dead or Alive 3.

“We used the Dead or Alive 4 engine as the base for Dimensions and created the graphic engine from scratch for this game,” Hayashi revealed to Siliconera. “We are confident of the fact that players will be able to recognize that Dimensions is the latest Dead or Alive game.”

Pick Up and Play:

“The game’s fighting system is based on Dead or Alive 4 but it has been tweaked so
that it is easier to pick up and play,” according to Hayashi. “The basic gameplay is the same but each character has brand new techniques at their disposal.”

“Pick up and play” should come as a welcome announcement to many. The Counter system, which is what sets the Dead or Alive series apart from other fighting games, has a reputation for being notoriously hard to grasp in DOA4. Hayashi assured us the issue was being addressed in Dead or Alive: Dimensions by using the Counter system from DOA3, which was simpler to get the hang of.

“There was quite a bit of feedback given to us by players saying that the general game system in Dead or Alive 4 was extremely difficult. Using this feedback, we reviewed
the entire game system from scratch,” Hayashi told us.

The Counter System:

“The most important aspect of this review was the Counter system,” Hayashi related. “So we spent several hours of trial and error revising this. In the end, we felt that the Counter system which was most intuitive and easy to pick up and play was the system from Dead or Alive 3, so we decided to go ahead and use that as the basis.”

But Dead or Alive 3 had problems of its own — namely that it was the polar opposite of DOA4. As a result, the Counter system needed to be tweaked even further.

“Even still, Dead or Alive 3 felt really good to play but it was not well balanced because the counters were too easy to pull off,” Hayashi stated. “Taking this into account, we rebalanced the High, Mid, Low counters and their effects according to [the fans’] conditions.”

“We are so proud of this system that we can say that you’ll have a blast with this, to all you guys from the press who complained that Dead or Alive 4 was difficult,” Hayashi assured in conclusion.