Free Step Dodge

I have to disagree. I think the best storyline for fighters was Soul Edge/Calibur, even though 5 f-ed up the series but that was the BtS issues. DOA has some good stuff, even the premise shown in 2U but as a whole, ever since Dimensions, characters' personalities and executions were all over the place in order to make some sense for the plot.

I would agree that Soul Blade is a close second, but it never got any better after that. DOAD was a bit all over the place but they covered a shit ton of ground. Even that was better than everything else coming to the market.

Calibur overall has the best story for me. I think DOA has a decent enough FG story, but the Itagaki era did it better than modern Team Ninja by a mile. Less is more, here.

Not to mention people can say what they want about DOAD DOA5 and DOA6 (which is post Itagaki) but I loved these stories. They did a good job with them and were 3D. Not a book to read.

@Rikuto, yes Itagaki did it better, despite how ambiguous the scenes and conflicts were. I felt for Modern Team Ninja's attempts, 5 was good, followed by Dimensions and then 6 was their worst.

I feel like 6 is a scapegoat. I keep meaning to do a write up opinion post about DOA6 story. Maybe I’ll work on that. It has some flaws but it’s not without merit.

@deathofaninja Tbh a book tends to be better for anyone that takes the time to appreciate it. Nobody ever says "man, the movie smoked the book".

That said, peak calibur storytelling is SC3 where you had a mix of text narrative and interactive 3D choose-your-own-adventure cutscenes with branching paths. Nothing has ever come close to that for single player in a FG.

I would personally take the cgi endings in DOA4 over a choose your adventure schematic, but that’s me.

@Rikuto I did go back to check that out, and I mean it is pretty good, but there are definitely some characters that don't interest me much or just flat out disturb me within the universe. I think Seigfried had the most interesting storyline of them all, but I don't think any of the characters top Ayane, Kasumi, Hayate or Helena's narrative.