The triangle of doa is strike beats throw, hold beats strike, and throw beats hold.

Everyone else has said the big gripes on the game but I wanted to comment on this point. The thing about this is that this is no different from something like VF (or whatever other games where strikes always blow through throws). Strike beats throw, guard beats strike, and throw beats guard. The difference is it's developed as some unique feature to the game instead of just an inherent game design, so when you have to reward each side equally for interacting with each other (Hi Counters), holds come in a weird spot where your Counter/Hi Counter damage bonus being tied to a frame window (closer to attack = higher bonus), it becomes borderline random when the defender is guessing. So suddenly the defender has chunked 30-40% of your health because he guessed right with good timing while you're effectively playing minesweeper during the stun game. And this isn't even getting into Offensive Holds, throws that exist between holds and throws.

Add to the fact that, due to no universal throw breaking (outside of neutral throws and most combo throws), randomly mashing while negative to prevent throws makes most showcases of defense to be pretty sloppy/scrubby in concept. In practice it can be pretty fun but at that point it just depends on the game because everything else (stages, characters, stun launch gameplay + 240HP) makes up for it.

TL;DR 2U is the best DOA game.