Eh, I'd only agree that Itagaki was overrated to the extent pretty much any celebrity game director is, in the sense that it's often the unseen members of a team that are responsible for the small variables that often determine how well a game actually plays. Like, Yu Suzuki is a legend (and for good reason), but I'm certainly not about to assume that the depth and balance of the movesets and movement options in Virtua Fighter 4 Evo comes from his knowledge and expertise at actually playing fighters. There's almost certainly someone (or a number of people) on that team who are practically walking fighting game encyclopedias, who are intimately in tune with the effects and consequences that all the small changes have on the overall game's balance and feel. We've seen Itagaki play DoA4, and it's very fucking clear that what DoA3.1 does right didn't come from him having a clue about how to play fighters lol.
On the other hand though, there is a
lot that I feel Itagaki does deserve credit for when it comes to the higher-level concepts the series is built around. Stuff like the Hold button and the stage dynamics compared to what competing fighters had been doing at the time.
When I first came across the original Dead or Alive in the arcades as a kid, it immediately grabbed my attention and became the game I'd immediately head to on every visit. Not because it had the bouncing breasts, but because it just came across as being flat out cooler than any other fighter there. I feel that from a presentation aspect this held up right up to and through Dead or Alive 4, before magically falling off a cliff with Dead or Alive 5, where the overall presentation feels comparatively corny and soulless... like a Twin Snakes version of itself. It hasn't affected the game on a gameplay level, where it's arguably as strong mechanically as its ever been... but that makes sense to me, as whoever is actually responsible for that element is likely still there doing what they always did... it's the overall direction that's seemingly suffered... which I guess would be explained by a change of director. I felt similar about Virtua Fighter 5 after Virtua Fighter 4, which also happened to be the last of the series Yu Suzuki directed. The gameplay is all there... but from
this to
this? Yeesh.
Even when talking about something like the DoAX games, it now seems comparatively half-assed. Gravure wallpaper votes to determine which 9 characters don't get shitcanned to save a few bucks (and make tons off the voters), background music not working, hair and clothing clipping in ways that were handled better of hardware two generations older, Owner mode basically punishing you for actually playing the game, animations lifted wholesale from the previous games, less activities overall, girls not having interaction scenes with their partner, etc. Sure, DoA4 was unbalanced... but there was a sense of pride for the product that feels absent today in favour of just seeing how much cash they can get from the fanbase for the minimal actual work put in. For that reason alone I can't view Itagaki as overrated, as I honestly miss the era of Team Ninja that he led.
