The latest iteration of Dead or Alive is functionally the same as all of its predecessors, but it’s excruciatingly worse in so many other, more important ways.
I’m going to get this part out first because I feel like it will get lost if I try to drop it in later: Dead or Alive is a good fighting game franchise and Dead or Alive 6 Last Round is a good game. The quality of the game is not the issue here. It’s what this game IS that’s the issue. And what the game is, is unnecessary.
I’m assured through press emails that this game is optimized for modern platforms. In my case the code I got was for the PS5 so this version should be taking advantage of what a system coming up on 6 years old has to offer. I still have the PS4 version of the game, I can put that disc in the drive and play it. And I did. And I still can’t tell you what’s different. They have not updated the online, so still no rollback netcode, and yet all of the hundreds of pieces of DLC are here. Kinda.
The two King of Fighters DLCs are back and available but not included in this “definitive edition,” and must be repurchased even if we already own them from the previous release — oh, and they are now 3 dollars more. On top of that the cosmetic DLC we may have purchased are here as long as we bought them in the previous release, but there is no way of getting them for the first time in this version. But there’s an asterisk here; the developers have delisted that previous version.
It’s all a complete mess, and at the end of the day they’ve ruined a decent enough game with every level of disgusting cash grab they could think of, all while trying to sell it as a definitive edition. It’s really pathetic stuff.
This review is based on a PlayStation 5 code sent to SideQuesting by the publisher. This video first appeared on The SideQuest Live for July 01, 2026.
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