I just bought it and after playing it the entire day trying to find out what' s so great about I realised that it sucks. The characters are stupid, the controls are clunky, the graphics aren' t that great, the online play lags as hell and the production values are low.
I have played and enjoyed Tekken, Soul Calibur, Virtua Fighter, Street Fighter, Mortal kombat, Guilty Gear, King of Fighter, Battle Arena Toshinden and many other fighting games without any problems at all. I got into them really quick. It just took a couple of rounds and I was loving them.
DoA4 on the other hand... shit. I really, really, really tried to enjoy it, I tried every character in the game and the different modes but I just didn' t find the game enjoyable.
I can' t wait for Virtua Fighter 5 and if Tekken hits the 360 I' ll be very, very happy.
Right now, I' m thinking of selling DoA4 and stick with Tekken Dark Resurrection on the PSP until the 360 gets something better.
If anyone here enjoys DoA4, can you tell me what exactly is so great about it? I' m really curious. It is outdone in every single thing in other fighting games.

I agree DOA is shit. I' ve been saying it for years.

Never liked the series either, aside from the bouncing breasts but now there is DOAX for that... DOA is redundant.

I mentioned Battle Arena Toshinden above...
Just for the record, I didn' t love it. It was fun because it was weird. But I did NOT love it.
Ok...

Unless you' re into polygonal masturbatory material...You can' t like it. I have always said the game was crap ever since I played the first one and realized that the point wasn' t to kill your opponent but count the amount of times you could see panties. I' m okay with the Xtreme Beach Volleball games though. The extras are awesome...Ah, those pole dances.

Along with the accessible Soul Calibur, I actually regard the game as one of the best fighting games, possibly because its one of the few that i can actually play to any decent extent (I' m useless at fighting games you see). I also enjoy the fast and fluid gameplay and environmental interaction.

the online play lags as hell

...what even when you play opponents in the same world zone as yourself?.... ...i was always under the impression that lag was infrequent, even with players on opposite sides of the planet...

All my games lagged horribly. There' s a reason you don' t see that under my XBL played games list. Played it once at a friend' s house, & never touched it again.

DOA > Soul Calibur

DOA does have quite a technical play nature to it like VF, but you won' t really find it in depth in one day of playtime.

Of course, VF > all.

I really like DOA3 but dislike DOA4. Can' t really put my finger on it. I don' t really like the juggle mechanics that seem to dominate DOA4. Some opponents I can continuously dribble like a basketball, which to me is really stupid. They also pretty much nerfed many of the grappling characters and made the ninja' s overpowered.

DOA3 felt much more balanced and enjoyable to play.

DOA > Soul Calibur

I think that is an extremely untrue statement. Soul Caliber 1 easily kills DOA 1. I will say though that DOA and Soul Caliber are both equal in the fact they rarely change anything in the next installments and take the " madden" approach most of the time.

I only ever played Doa2 on the Dreamcast and liked it. One Fighting game I could allways beat my brother at.

I got really good at that game at one stage, I remember I countered all of his Attacks, which isnt easy.

I hate DOA serie,thats why i never bothered to get DOA4.

Itagaki makes crap games,Ninja gaiden was good but.
Seriously 90% of the people shouldnt have to quit the game cause its to hard,and before someone accuse me,i finished the game on HARD,not very hard but hard so not for me,but not fun telling friends to get NG and then they get stuck on the first boss and quit it after 3 days,seriously thats is fucked up.

I think the DOA series does what it does really well.

It' s not as great a series as VF, but it beats Mortal Kombat at the very least. THAT series has the most non-intuitive control schemes and worst timing EVER. I actually do better at MK games when I don' t watch the screen and just dial in the combos.

The thing I like about the DOA series is that I can get anybody to play, and they can at least feel like they have a chance. It' s not very complicated, and it' s easy to pull off impressive looking moves right from the start. It' s a button masher for sure, but there' s some strategy in there too. Weird thing is, it' s the only fighting game I' ve played that doesn' t seem to give me an unfair advantage because I' ve played it a lot before. Even if I slaughter someone when we start, pretty soon they get the hang of it and the matches become interesting. The lack of depth is actually a plus in that situation.

Not like say, VF. If you' re going to play against someone in that you need to study first, or it won' t be any fun at all. The depth actually creates an imbalance between the dedicated and the casual that kind of cripples the social experience. You get so good after a while that no one wants to play with you.

DOA sucks but hell, thats ok with me, what really pisses me off its that it sells more than Virtua Fighter (i think) makes me angry and green

I thought DOA4 was okay, I liked DOA2 on DC and DOA2U on xbox more.
It usually doesn' t lag online, but when you play people with poor connections the game slows down instead of just adding a delay to your moves. It was really a smart way to do it, think if you had a 1/4th second delay on a punch. VF and SC don' t even have online play... kinda lame.

VF is too slow for me. I thought SC was good, but learning thousands of combos and whatnot isn' t really my thing.

A lot of people don' t like the DOA series because to them it is just a guessing game. Do I counter, bock, attack, grab, what is my opponent going to do. The thing is there are people that actually have reflexes fast enough it isn' t a big guessing game when they play. They see what move the opponent is making and are fast enough they can react accordingly. These are the kind of people that like the DOA. Freaks. And I' m kind of a freak.

I think DOA 4 is great, its enjoyable, i like the characters i like the fluent combat scenes and the varied moves. Tekken is chunkey compared to it, and VF looks slow. They might be more technical in the figthing style but whats the point if it looks boring?

I havent had trouble with DOA ionline, it works perfectly for me except when playing with people on poor conncetions!

I used to think Tekken was slow and boring. Until Tekken 5. Something happened, I don' t know what.
Anyway, I' m going to give DoA4 another chance. I' ll play the hell out of it the month to come and try to find the greatness of it. Maybe I' ll find the beauty after a while.
But it' s so weird because I liked DoA2. DoA 2 wasn' t as serious as DoA4 so it was a very enjoyble game. DoA4 tries more to be a serious fighter but it has too much crap to make it all the way so in the end it' s neither fun nor serious.
That' s why I like Mortal kombat despite the crappy gameplay, it' s so weird it' s fun

DoA has more depth than most believe. The tweaking that went into 4 made reversals much harder to pull off, but people still pen it at a button mashing game. If you actually take time to figure out which character works best for you and then learn their moves and get some serious practice in it' ll start to grow on you.

It' s not for everybody though. I prefer VF and Tekken but DoA is way underrated. Technically 4 is just a really polished version of DoAU with nowhere near as much content but it looks next-gen enough and runs at 60fps. As for the online, it depends on yours and your opponents connections. It' s probably best to play with people you know and lock the room so nobody else can join and fuck everything up. For example, the last time i fought Tiz we had super smooth battles until some idiot joined and killed everything. That one person joining on his 56K modem or whatever made the game unplayable.



What i will say is that DoA made female fighters badass. Most female fighters had been lame to use before DoA came along, ...Ayane is probably the greatest female character in a fighting game ever, ...and yes Terry she is better than Kokoro!

Nope, DOA didn' t make Female Characters look badass. More like Sex Symbols honestly, of course it' s nice to look at them, but I have Christie Monteiro for that and IMO the Characters Models in the DOA series look like....Rubber, or something like that, it' s not that they look bad, but the Models themselves don' t show any kind of Human flaws that you' d see in other Characters. For example: Kazuya. You' ll notice his body has scars and is not perfect, makes the Characters feel more Human, now look at the Characters from the DOA series, they' re all perfect no scratches, no scars, no nothing. Especially the females, they look like dolls.

Also, Soul Calibur > DOA any day of the week, even if SC was sick with some horrible disease. Not only is the combat system very welll done for a game that plays at such a high speed, but the Characters are interesting. Oh and...Those Intros kick everyone' s, except Tekken' s, ass.