Helena And La Mariposa Square Off In A Dead or Alive 5 Pro Match

We already knew that La Mariposa and Helena would be returning in Dead or Alive 5, but this morning, Tecmo Koei shared in-game footage of a fight between the two characters, once again controlled by professional players helping out with game balance testing.

Along with the videos, Dead or Alive 5 director, Yohei Shimbori, says that Team Ninja are in the final stages of balancing the game, and also provides some commentary on Mariposa and Helena’s strengths. You can watch both rounds of the fight below:

Round 1:

Shimbori: Lisa’s tricky moves set her apart. She doesn’t simply come straight at you, so if you’re not used to her actions, you have no idea what to expect. She also has a lot of strikes with long reach, making her good at mid-range offense, but now she has moves that come from runs and runs that comes from other moves, so she is way more active this time around. Of course you can launch attacks straight from the run, but you can also do things like stop in the middle of the run, trying to bring out a sidestep or hold from your opponent, and then follow up the attack. Her real strength shines when used by a player who is good with this kind of psychological game or has good fighting technique.

Round 2:

Helena is an extremely technical character. We’re trying to balance her to please the technical fighters who can appreciate the skill it takes to bring out the “real Helena.” First off, we got rid of simple moves like PP2KP, changing her style to one focused on mastering a rich variety of moves. From there, we removed crouching status from P+K because I wanted to make her style more about evading highs by using Bokuho stance. And by working on the moves from Bokuho and from her back-turned stance and making a faster transition from Bokuho to back-turned stance, you will really see a difference in her strength between players who just pick her up and players who train hard with her. I also took another look at Pi Gua Quan itself, and sprinkled a few special moves from that style into her repetoire. She’s really strong.

Dead or Alive 5 will be released on September 25th in North America.