DOA4 - Level up our game!

I wont lie: I am not a hardcore player of DOA games... yet

My skillz with DOA4 are stuck at a casual level, random games vs my friends or cousins whenever we get together.
But nothing like our Tekken sessions though, because we are all generally highlevel players and have intense matches

I want to up my game in DOA4 and I also want my family and friends to realise that is actually possible, that DOA is not a shallow fighter.

Right now, we're all button-mashing scrubs:
we can do combos and high/low mixups, with the occasional grapple and strategic movement to knock opponents into stage obstacles or off cliffs, but that's it

I've seen highlevel tournament gameplay videos of pro DOA4 players and I noticed they do lots of holds, and combos are usually interrupted after a couple of hits, sometimes after just a single hit.


Lets say there are people like me out there that wont be able to play online on their 360, ever.
But they still want to try level up their DOA4 skillz by practicing 1P or playing 2P matches

Are there any tips, guides or advice out there that can help casual DOA4 players reach higher level of play?


The best guide I've found so far is official GameSpot DOA4 guide which looks very useful as a starting point:
uk.gamespot.com/features/dead-or-alive-4-walkthrough-6142341

Seems like I just need to understand the Hold system better and smash the timing to get Counter holds more often than Normal holds.

But is there more to it than that?

What do you folks think?
Any tips or advice, or anymore guides you know which we scrubs like me could use to level up our game?

Post your thoughts here and help us out!

In my opinion, the best way for you to level up in DOA is to firstly, pick a character that you generally really like the look of and stick to that character only. If you try to learn with more than 1 character, then you won't progress that fast or you won't become better faster, than if you only stick to one character.

Once you are happy with the character that you really like, go into Sparring mode and try out the character. See how that character plays like. Do their Exercise and see what kind of moves do they have. Try the character out for like 15 - 20 mins.

Try and hold like an offline DOA session. Seriously, Online is NOT (I repeat, NOT) a good way for you to get better at DOA. Infact, Online is really not that good AT ALL. The best way for you to get better at the game is to have like your friends playing DOA with you and do something like a first to 20 wins or 30 or 50. Doing stuffs like this will make you become better at the gamem if you do this often.

Also, you should watch some high level matches of your character playing. Check out what kind of things to they do, how do they fight a certain character and how do they deal with a situation. You need to know how can you relate, all the new things that you've learnt, into your game.


I hope that this is helpful.

Yeah thanks for the advice

Glad to hear online isn't a good tool for training, we have that covered.

I've been spending time in practice (sparring) mode a lot recently, running through all the moves in Exercise to see which characters have the best moves for my playstyle

The results are surprising, I'll create a new topic for it so this one doesn't get diverted.

I'm still having difficulties getting the hold system down
I guess I just need to keep playing until I learn to react properly to the type of attack

Nitro wrote:

Yeah thanks for the advice

Glad to hear online isn't a good tool for training, we have that covered.

I've been spending time in practice (sparring) mode a lot recently, running through all the moves in Exercise to see which characters have the best moves for my playstyle

The results are surprising, I'll create a new topic for it so this one doesn't get diverted.

I'm still having difficulties getting the hold system down
I guess I just need to keep playing until I learn to react properly to the type of attack

If you are having trouble with the timing of the holds, then I would say you should go on to sparring mode and make the computer to only punch (High, Medium or Low) and try to get a feel on countering someone.

Yeah I've been doing that a lot too
Same kind of deal as drilling parrys in Tekken, just a matter of breaking the habit and doing something different whenever the opponent attacks


What do you guys feel about matchups?
I know in some games like Street Fighter, particular characters can be very weak or strong against specific characters, so I was wondering how DOA does in that department?

For example, would a grappler like Bass or Bayman be a good choice to shut down fast rapid attackers like Ayane?
Theoretically it sounds like it would, but I dont know how well it works in practice.


But I am sure of one thing:
it helps to know all the characters movelists, not just your mains.

Because then it makes it possible to better predict when to hold and outguess the opponent