General Strategies

These are some general tips to help get you started on learning Dead or Alive 4. If you're unfamiliar with the Dead or Alive series of games, or fighting games in general, then hopefully these will get you up to speed.

Sparring for Practice

One of the remarkable changes in the fighting games that have been released in the past few years has been the standardization of the practice modes included with them. If you recall playing games like Street Fighter II or the original Virtua Fighter back when they first hit home consoles, then you'll probably recall scant or nonexistant practice options, which would force you to find move lists in mlagazines or websites and attempt to figure them out while fighting the computer.

Luckily, though, most fighting games now have extensive practice options, and Dead or Alive 4 is no exception. If you want to put a fighter through the paces, it's best to enter into Sparring mode and fiddle with the options that are available to you. Unfortunately, the Sparring mode is almost unexplained in the manual, so here are a few pointers on what you can use the options here to do.

Com 1st Action: This sets the action that the computer player will perform. When you tell the computer to perform a specific action, it will repeat that action until you tell it do something else.

The Normal settings control movement, allowing you to set the computer to stand, crouch, or move back and forth. The Guard settings let you tell the computer to constantly guard, which can help you figure out which combos to perform to penetrate a guard. Blow will tell the computer to repeatedly perform a specific kind of attack. Hold will let the computer attempt to hold and counter your attacks. Throw will tell the computer to throw you in a variety of ways. Combo will let you instruct the computer player to perform a variety of short combination attacks. COM Level will let you flip over the computer into AI mode, resulting in an infinite-health fight between you and the computer. There are different difficulty settings for the AI, ranging from one to eight, with eight being the most difficult.

Com 2nd Action: The Com 2nd Action setting will tell the computer what you want it to do immediately after you attack it, which can be useful for practicing quickly shifting from attack to holding or throw-countering. Most of the options here are the same as those listed above.

Counter: When you set the Counter option to either Counter or High Counter, every blow you land on your opponent will result in a counter, allowing you to gauge their responses to your attacks. Normally counters are only performed when you react to your opponent, or when you perform especially damaging blows, but these settings will let you stagger your opponent with every hit.

With a little help from the Exercise mode, you'll be pulling off Izuma Drops in no time. But maybe not Raijins....

Exercise: Each character has their own Exercise setting, which will run you through the bulk of their moves one after another, giving you prompts on how to complete them. If you click the right analog stick during this session, you'll be able to get a preview of how the move should look. Completing the Exercise for each character will unlock their system voice, but will also give you a good idea of how versatile your character is, and will show you combos that won't appear if you just try to button mash. Performing all of the moves in the list can be difficult, but you can always click the right analog stick to get a preview of what you're supposed to be doing. Combo throws are generally going to be the most difficult maneuvers to pull off in sparring, especially combos with half or full-circle analog stick movements incorporated in them, like Hayate's complicated Raijin throw.

Command List: Selecting this option will pop up a list of all of the combos and moves that your character possesses, sorted into different categories for ease of browsing. Unfortunately you can't get a demonstration of the move from the command list; you'll have to try it yourself or in exercise mode to see what it is.

Log Display: You have two varieties of command logs to choose from. The first, Command Input, will show you what buttons you're pressing in real-time, which can be helpful if you're trying to compare what you're doing with what the move you're trying to perform is like. Attack Attribute is probably going to be a better choice for most of your practicing, as it'll let you know whether you're striking high, medium, or low. Try to learn the combos that have a good distribution of height and use those more often than combos that rely on a bunch of strikes at the same level.

Reset Position: If you want to get your characters back on even ground, this command will instantly warp them back to where they started in the arena. If you're in sparring mode (as opposed to Exercise), you can click the right analog stick to do this at any time.