A huge disappointment...
Not Recommend---People who are expecting a lot of content and who can't stand bad controls
Dead of Alive 3 is the first and only Dead or Alive game I have ever played. Judging by people's reactions and reviews for the other games in the series, this one seems to be the worst. The only thing in the game that is remarkably well done is the graphics. Even 6 years after its release, it still looks amazing. That's about where all the astonishing things end. There is at least one thing wrong with everything else. First off, this whole game is barely translated. The menus are in English, but EVERY SINGLE THING characters say are in Japanese (with English subtitles). This is stupid. I probably wouldn't even mind that much if the Asian characters in the game spoke it, but there are American, European, and African characters in the game that have Japanese voices. This doesn't even match at all, and sounds like a terrible voice-over or something. I don't know why they couldn't translate it, especially since every character says the same thing every match anyway. It wouldn't have taken long at all. Second of all, there is no support for the analog stick outside of the main fighting. You have to use the Xbox's crappy D-Pad when you're in the menus and selecting a character/stage, etc. You even have to fight using the D-Pad at first, until you switch it in the option menu (which is hard to find). The sounds, as I said before, are repetitive. They're good at first, but get annoying real quick. Finally, the gameplay is where my views are mixed. The fighting can be really fun at times, but so boring, hard, or frustrating at others. You have to be really good at combos and stuff, kind of like the Mortal Kombat games. Most of the time it's fun, though. But even if the fighting is fun, there's not much you can do. There's a story mode, which is really just an arcade mode that adds repetitive dialogue, and then there's a bunch of smaller stuff that really isn't all that fun or important. Multiplayer can be fun if you're playing someone who is skilled at it, but otherwise it's boring. I don't even think this game saves anything onto the Xbox Hard Drive because there's nothing to unlock besides the boss character, but that takes a while, and I'm not sure if that saves because I myself haven't unlocked him. So basically it's just an arcade game that's made it's way onto the console, and not much has changed in the conversion.
Conclusion---I was expecting a lot more from this games, mostly because I always heard the Dead or Alive series was really fun to play. I bought this game and I was really disappointed by it. You can't really complain, though, since you can get this game for $6 now. The only thing saving this game from going below the average rating of 7 is the amazing graphics, the decent but questionable gameplay, and the price of it nowadays. If I had to pay full price, no way. I wouldn't get it.