Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is perhaps one of the most creative uses of the Marvel IP and how it’s characters are represented in game. It has visual style to spare, a great soundtrack and good representation of how many of the characters actually fight in comics. While it’s a tag fighter at it’s core, it doesn’t follow a lot of the conventions typically seen in those games. At times it seems to feel closer to a 1v1 fighter and combining these elements mostly works, although it does falter in a couple areas.
Pros
So it’s not a stretch to say that Marvel Tokon may be the best looking fighter on the market currently and that’s no surprise given what Arc Sys typically does. The game’s colors really pop out in both the stages and the models on the characters themselves. Speaking of the characters, the game takes characters everyone knows and loves but puts a more anime style twist on them. It looks like a cross between a Marvel comic and something like My Hero Academia. The characters, and the stages as well are all well crafted.
The visuals are also backed by great sound design overall. Particularly with the themes of each character. They fit the characters well from Penni Parker having a theme that sounds like a shogo anime intro, to Hulk’s theme being fast paced and aggressive. Tokon’s presentation is just great overall. Similar to Marvel Vs Capcom 3 many years back, Tokon leans heavily into the comic book roots of Marvel but, with a Japanese twist.
Gameplay wise, Tokon has a good amount to offer. The game is a tag fighter but it’s the first to go 4v4 and it somehow does a decent job of containing that kind of madness. The game also features elements of a 1v1 game such as only sharing 1 health bar. Its combo system is one I really enjoyed as it encourages a lot of experimentation. While every fighter has combo trials to learn the best damage routes, Arc Sys actually went a step further and challenged players to find the best routes themselves while only giving a small guideline once you learn the standards. When you really learn how Tokon’s systems work you can pull off some really wild stuff.
Its combo system, as well as its tag system a bit different than other fighters due to sort of being a mix of traditional assists and active tag. For those unaware, traditional tag games features tags where the character quickly snaps in and assists just sees them doing an attack and then quickly leaving. Active tag is where the character comes in during the current characters attacks or block strings and you control what they do after. Tokon allows you to tag in raw like old games but it also allows you to call an assist and then you can tag another character in either immediately or after a delay. This creates some very sneaky openings as you tag another character in at the last second. This is especially powerful when you have all 4 characters and start calling in multiple assists.
As a Marvel fan since childhood, I love how each character is represented in Tokon in terms of their playstyle. It feels like Arc Sys tried to make each character fight very lore accurate. During my play time I mostly played the Hulk, Penni Parker and Star Lord while experimenting with Deadpool, Carnage and a couple others for the 4th slot. True to one of his most famous lines, the madder Hulk gets, the stronger he gets. He manually builds up rage and once he does it 3 times he becomes borderline unstoppable as he just armors through everything. Penni is also a heavyweight but unlike Hulk, she’s a zoning and set up character rather than a massive tank. She uses various drones from her mech and commands space quite well. Star Lord uses his element gun for different status effects as well as using his space gadgets and jet boots to constantly throw the opponents off. From Spider-Man flipping around and being all over the place to Magneto turning the stage itself into a weapon, Marvel’s lore accuracy was shown a great deal of respect by Arc Sys.
Like many fighting games in current times, Tokon has done a better job of upping it’s content for casual players. This is done in the form of a solid, and actually decently lengthy single player story. The game adapts an older comic storyline where the Champion of the Universe is going from planet to planet to challenge the best fighters, destroying the planet if they lose. He then sets his sights on earth and starts a tournament where multiple teams of heroes, villains and in-betweens fight for the right to face him. The story is fun to go through as it’s told in the form of a visual novel and playing through every character’s story can take up a decent amount of time, probably around 5-7 hours which is a lot more than most fighting games.
On top of the story mode, the game also features a side game called Arcadia rumble. This mode, which some players compare to Fall Guys, sees you take control of your custom avatar and take part in a large scale race to the finish. I didn’t really get to in depth with this mode myself but, similar to Street Fighter 6 and the success it found with its world tour and avatar content, this could be something for people who don’t like PVP in fighting games quite as much to have a lot of fun with.
Cons
So there are a few things I didn’t like with Tokon in regards to it’s combat. One thing is that the games movement really doesn’t feel too good. Ground movement feels rather stiff in particular, with standard dashes not feeling great in favor of a mostly universal run. While air movement can feel fine, it only counts if the character has specific options for that and not just the universal air dash. This is an unfortunate part of where combining the elements of a 1v1 fighter with a tag game doesn’t quite work as well as the game feels like it was more designed for a 1v1 game in that regard.
The game can also feel mash friendly as well. I’m not against things like auto combos in fighting games but, I feel like in Tokon’s case they may perhaps do more damage than they should. Typically in fighting games the trade off for auto combos or simplified input options is you do significantly less damage or lose access to certain tools. While damage is lower on these options, I feel it’s not quite enough and this can actually lead to newer players being overwhelmed even quicker.
Also, while I played the game on PS5, the games bad performance on PC did also have an impact. Matches with PC players were often extremely laggy to the point where I turned the cross play off. While the connection was good with other PS5 players, it also took far longer to find matches as a result since I was started in a somewhat higher rank and many better fighting game players prefer playing on PC.
Also while the game does a decent job handling the chaos of a 4v4, this does change when you get multiple characters who put more than one thing on the screen at once. This can make the game difficult to follow at times.
Final Thoughts
Overall Marvel Tokon is a blast to play as a fighter. The game looks fantastic, its combo system is fun and it pays great respect to the rich lore of Marvel with how the characters are designed to fight. While a couple things do hold it back from perhaps standing with Arc Sys all time great fighters, it’s another good game in the current line up of fighting games that doesn’t seem to stop growing.
Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls was reviewed on PlayStation 5. Thank you to Arc System Works and PlayStation for providing a code for the game.
