Dead or Alive 5 Last Round/Marie Rose/Introduction

Introduction

Marie Rose is the servant of Helena Douglas. She was first introduced in Dead or Alive 5 Ultimate Arcade and has since then been present in every DOA game. Marie is an 18 years old girl from Sweden who uses the military martial art Systema, and is Honoka's best friend.

Marie is a defense oriented character, armed with three offensive holds, special holds for all 8 strike attributes and a unique stance that doubles as a mid/high punch sabaki, she can make her opponents hesitate on offense if the player's reads are on point. Unfortunately, Marie struggles due to below average neutral game, weak, gimmicky pressure and committal options. Anyone who wants to play Marie will need a lot of experience and good reads to make her work at higher levels.

Strengths

Weaknesses

Strong defense: While her defensive options by themselves aren't very scary, often not guaranteeing much in terms of reward, the sheer amount of these options itself can make your opponents second-guess themselves on offense.

Unique movement: Even though her default movement options are generally average, Marie has access to multiple unique movement tools, such as a high crushing forward roll in 3P+K, a low crushing command sidestep in 8/2P+K and a rondo stance, which doubles as a sabaki and from which she can enter backturn by inputting 4P+K4.

No lows: Marie has only a few lows and none of them are noteworthy, her fastest options being usually unsafe on hit and her advantageous options being slow and easy to react to.

Weak neutral: Marie struggles in neutral due to her fast moves lacking in range, while her long-range moves are usually too committal due to a slow startup, long recovery, lack of safety or a combination of these.

Gimmicky pressure: Due to lacking good low options and her moves being usually quite bad on block, Marie has to structure her pressure around freecanceling her strings or canceling her moves into the rondo stance to catch opponents trying to challenge her with high or mid punches. Unfortunately, because at high levels people will instead look for low punches or throw punishes, this kind of pressure is gimmicky in nature and works against Marie.