Double Dragon V: The Shadow Falls is a fighting game that follows the 8-way directional pad/stick and 6-button layout common to most fighting games at the time (including Street Fighter II), consisting of weak, medium and strong punches and kicks. The Genesis version supports the standard 3-button controller (making use of the start button to toggle between punches and kicks), as well as the 6-button controller released the previous year, while the Jaguar version makes use of its 3-button controller for punches and the 3, 6 and 9 keypad buttons for kicks instead. Characters have several special moves, as well as finishing moves called "Overkills" where the losing character has their own unique death animation when defeated by a certain type of basic attack.[6]
The game features four game modes to choose from: Tournament, Vs. Battle, Quest, and Watch. Tournament is an arcade-style single player mode, where the player competes against a series of computer-controlled opponents, with each character having their own ending. Vs. Battle is a two-player mode where one player battles another. Quest is an alternate single player mode where one competes in a series of plot-based matches and the player can choose to play as one of the Lee brothers, who are on a mission to stop the Shadow Master from releasing a plague, or play as one of the Shadow Warriors, who must compete to become the Shadow Master's new second-in-command. In Quest Mode, the player can also adjust the attributes of their own character. Watch Mode allows the player to pit two computer-controlled characters against each other. There is also a Dossiers mode, where the player gets to view the game's character profiles, as well as an Options mode to adjust the difficulty setting, control configuration and other features.