MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls review

Marvel has been absent from the fighting game scene for a while now. Aside from the amazing re-releases, we haven’t had a new Marvel vs. Capcom in almost a decade. Arc System Works is here to pick up the slack, sans crossover, with MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls. It represents both a fantastic entry point for newcomers to fighting games, and a fighter with enough depth to satisfy any veteran. 

Right off the bat, I noticed that Tōkon plays a lot like Granblue Fantasy Versus. You’ve got your light, medium, and heavy buttons which successively chain into each other or can be singularly mashed for an auto-combo. You’ve got your Unique Skill button which is different for each character, and a Special button that lets you easily unleash special moves when combined with a directional input. There’s a reason ArcSys has been sticking with this simplified control style for their games and that’s because it puts everyone on a level playing field, at least to start. It focuses on the fundamentals of fighting games instead of learning complex inputs, so anyone can jump in and get to scrappin’. This is especially important in a licensed game, as you’re going to have a lot of people unfamiliar with fighting games who just like the property or characters.

Tōkon’s claim to fame is that it’s a 4v4 affair. Teams share a health bar here though, so there’s no swapping out to heal for a bit, in exchange freeing you up to focus on just one character if you’d prefer. If you do want to play all four characters, the order you choose them in matters a lot, as only your leader and second slot are available at the start of a match. You unlock the rest of your team by either losing a round or performing a Wall Break by, as the name implies, slamming your opponent against the wall of the stage so hard they break through it. Winning rounds doesn’t get you anything, however, except closer to ultimate victory. 

Why would you want to unlock the rest of your team, you may ask? Tōkon is a six button fighter, and we’ve only talked about five so far. The last is called the Assemble button, and it’s used to summon your allies for a quick attack (which depends on what slot they’re in). For example, Ms. Marvel in the Shooter position will do her standing neutral Special, which is a big stretchy punch that reaches across most of the stage, while Magik will use her fireball Special. After an ally uses their move, you can swap to them by pressing L2 (or by pressing the same button and a direction without having used an Assemble). If you take full advantage of this, it allows you to perform lengthy combos you couldn’t do if only playing as one character. It feels really good to pull one off, but not so much on the other end since, as far as I can tell – there’s no break out mechanic so someone good enough can easily combo your full health bar while you just have to sit there and take it. 

The best way to avoid that is to not get hit in the first place, and you do have a good option for that with good timing. By pressing Assemble and Light attack at the same time, you can either dash forward with armor, or hold block and set up a counter attack, appropriately called an Assemble Counter. If an opponent doesn’t hit you while you’re in the counter state, you’ll be left vulnerable, but if they do you and an ally will automatically counter their move, and leave them vulnerable for a combo. It’s a great risk/reward mechanic that makes for some tense split second decisions. 

A fighting game is only as good as its roster, and Tōkon has a really solid one. You’ve got the obvious picks like Spider-Man and Captain America, but also lesser used characters such as Blade and Danger. My favorite Marvel character, Squirrel Girl, also makes a quick appearance in the game’s story mode, which I hope means she’ll be DLC down the road. Tōkon’s roster is also really well balanced. While tier lists have emerged, in my experience there’s no dominating characters nor characters who simply aren’t viable. Everyone can compete, so just pick who you like.

I really like Ms. Marvel, so I knew I wanted her somewhere on my team, but I actually found myself really loving Magik’s moveset, so she ended up as my lead character. To round things out, I picked Blade because he’s just cool as hell and Danger for her versatility (and general cuteness). After learning the basics, I wasted no time getting online in Casual Matches, and had a blast kicking ass or getting my own ass kicked. Online feels smooth thanks to rollback netcode and there’s no noticeable amount of delay in your inputs. I only got disconnected twice, and one was due to my opponent rage quitting and the other the match just never started, I assume because their connection was bad. 

Playing in Ranked or Lobbies is a similar experience, whereas the Arcadia Rumble mode is one of the most rubberbanding, laggy things I’ve ever seen. This mode is… weird, as it uses the Lobby Avatars in a sort of 3D free-for-all brawler. You want to take out opponents with normal attacks and Mario Kart-style items to earn points, then… earn more points in actual matches. It’s very confusing and honestly not very fun.

Other than that, Tōkon really doesn’t have many modes. Episode Mode is your story mode equivalent, with the Challenge of the Champion being presented as their own one-shot motion comic. Each team has different writers and artists, which is a cool touch. It plays a lot like a truncated BlazBlue story mode, with lots of cutscenes occasionally punctuated by battles. These are all a lot of fun, well written, and mostly well acted. I especially love the Promoter and hope she gets added as a proper playable character. 

You’ve also got Survival, which pits you against successively stronger NPC teams to see how long you can last on a single health bar, and Arena which is sort of a choose your own path, generic arcade mode. Both of these are nice to have, but I really would have preferred a proper Arcade mode with small stories for every character. It wouldn’t have to be complex, just something like Guilty Gear Strive’s Arcade mode with some dialogue before and after matches. 

Speaking of, I was also disappointed there’s not much character interaction before or after matches. There are a few special lines you get with certain matchups, like Magik vs. Wolverine, but other than that you’ll be hearing the same intro and outro lines over and over. A little more variety in those generics would have been nice as well, because every character only has like two total.

Still, I don’t often skip the intros and outros (other than the Team intro because that’s way too long) because the game is just gorgeous to look at. The art style is amazing, from the anime character designs to the work-in-progress comic style menus, and represents some of ArcSys’ best work yet in my opinion. The music I could unfortunately take or leave, but the game looks great and runs pretty well, at least on my PC. There have been a lot of people saying the game runs poorly on their PC, so your results may vary there, but I had no issues and it’s a constant 60 fps. I am a bit disappointed that the game won’t run on Linux at all, so no Steam Deck or Steam Machine gameplay for you. It’s a shame, because portable fighting game goodness is always the dream for me. 

Tōkon is a lot of fun and I definitely think it has the legs to be a competitive and casual mainstay in the fighting game space, but it does end up feeling a little light on single-player and overall personality. Fighting games live or die on being able to play matches against other people online over and over, so repetition is an integral part of the genre, but the trimmings around the repetition shouldn’t also feel repetitive after like an hour of play.