Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls was already a great concept. Give arguably the best fighting game developers, Arc System Works, a big ol’ box of Marvel characters and just let them do whatever they want. The game’s initial announcement was visually striking, with some great Japanese reinterpretations of classic characters like Iron Man and Captain America, but when I finally got my hands on the closed beta a while back, I was… whelmed. It was still fun, but lacked something when put up against ArcSys’ other fighters like BlazBlue, Guilty Gear, and Granblue Fantasy Versus. With the open beta, however, whatever issues I had with the game have completely disappeared, resulting in a game that I could hardly put down for the beta’s duration.
The open beta was available on both PlayStation 5 and PC, and the latter is where I played. I prefer online-focused games on PC as you don’t have to pay for PS Plus or another such service. Despite hearing about some performance issues with the game on that platform, the game ran perfectly on the Blade 16 2026 laptop, looking stunning at 4k and 60fps. It ran so well and looked so good that I didn’t actually explore the options menu here, preferring instead to get right into matches.
For a quick rundown on how the game plays, it’s similar to Marvel vs. Capcom in that you have multiple characters you can swap between at any time on your team, though here they all share a single health bar. You can pick a team of four characters you like to play, or just stick with one, calling in the others as assists when needed. I initially started with Ms. Marvel as I like the character and have read a few of her comics, but eventually discovered I loved playing as Magik. Magik ended up as my first slot, with Ms. Marvel in the second, then Black Panther because she’s just cool, and my fourth swapped between Starlord and Danger. I tried all the available characters in the beta out, and those are the ones that stuck with me
ArcSys has landed on a great middle ground between casual-friendly auto-combos and more traditional setups here. You can perform a basic, versatile combo just by mashing Square, but at any time you can transition out of that combo into other moves. It gives those less familiar with fighting games something to fall back on, while still encouraging them to vary things up and explore their full kit. Specials follow the same principle, functioning similarly to how they do in Granblue. You simply press R2 to perform a special, with left, right, and down on the D-Pad or analogue stick changing what move you do. Each character also has a unique ability on R1, like Ms. Marvel’s stage-wide grab, which can throw an opponent or just zip her across the arena. It feels really good to play and makes it easy to get the gist of any character once you know the basic controls.
The beta had three available modes: Casual Matches, Ranked Matches, and Episode Mode. Casual and Ranked are what they say on the tin, pitting you against opponents online for fun or glory (though I found Casual matched me with people of my skill level much more frequently than Ranked). Episode is essentially the story here, following multiple teams of characters as they try to save the Marvel universe from a mysterious new threat. We got to play through the first chapter of Spider-Man, Ms. Marvel, Starlord, and Penni Parker’s team, and it reminds me a lot of BlazBlue’s story mode. It’s mostly dialogue with a few fights sprinkled here and there, but after Guilty Gear Strive’s literal movie, I don’t mind this. The presentation is stylish, like a motion comic, and there’s full voice acting.
The voice acting is actually my biggest problem with the game so far, as it wildly ranges in quality. Spider-Man’s VA is doing a great job, while whoever’s playing Ms. Marvel is… less than stellar. She’s got a voice that fits the character, but her delivery is often awkward and stilted. I considered swapping to Japanese just to fit the game’s general vibe, but I do find story modes like this easier to digest in English. Thankfully, I can get the best of both worlds with one of ArcSys’ best features: per-character language options. You can pick and choose between a surprising amount of dubs here for every single character, so Green Goblin can be in German while Iron Man is in Japanese and Captain America in English. I do hope the full game has a way to sample these voices within the options menu rather than needing to hop into a match to test, but it’s a great feature. Voice acting in Episode mode will always go with your system’s language, so Ms. Marvel can say her important lines in English then immediately swap to Japanese at the start of a fight.
Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls is shaping up to be another go-to fighting game for me, and I’m more excited than ever to play it. The game launches on August 6th for PlayStation 5 and PC, so there’s not long to wait.
