MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls feels like a spiritual successor to the Marvel vs. Capcom fighting games of old — just without the Capcom bit, obviously.

That comparison isn’t just because it features a roster of Marvel heroes and villains throwing hands at each other. Tōkon captures that same feeling of putting together a team of characters you love, watching them bounce off one another, and slowly figuring out how to make them work together.

I’ve always been a casual fighting game player. I can play a little bit, but I’m a benchwarmer at best. I do watch tournament matches every now and again, though, and I can tell when real skill is involved.

It’s kind of like basketball to me. I may not be particularly good at it, but I know a good play when I see one.

After spending some time with Tōkon, I can see the appeal.

It’s welcoming enough for someone like me to jump in and have fun, but there’s enough depth underneath the simple controls to reward players who want to take the time to master it.

The tutorial is important

I handled the tutorial portion during the demo, so when I got the full game I jumped straight into Story Mode.

That said, the tutorial is very important.

The button presses seemed easy enough to follow at first. But the deeper the tutorial went, the more complex it started to feel.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it does a good job of gradually guiding you through the game’s mechanics instead of throwing everything at you at once.

Anyone who’s ever played a fighting game at any capacity will have an understanding of how the general mechanics work.

But Tōkon layers its own systems on top of those familiar fundamentals.

The tutorial essentially takes you through the Training Mode. It’s great for getting a feel for how to execute the unique moves per character.

I’m a firm believer that you should just throw yourself at a match and only go back to training if you hit a wall and can’t advance or seem unable to overcome your opponent.

That’s how I prefer to learn.

And Tōkon makes that approach viable because the fundamentals don’t feel intimidating.

The game’s official materials also emphasize this balance. It offers adjustable controls, traditional and quick inputs, easy chain combos, character guides, training, and other ways to learn the game’s systems.

There’s more than enough here that the game should feel welcoming to both casual and hardcore fighting game fans.

Four characters, one fight

The biggest thing to wrap your head around is probably the game’s 4v4 structure.

You pick four characters: one main fighter and three assists. But you don’t immediately have access to your entire team.

You only get access to the first assist initially. You unlock the other two after a Stage Break happens in a match. A Stage Break is when you finish a combo with the opposing character flying through an extended area of the fighting stage.

So it’s entirely possible to go an entire match without unlocking all your assist characters.

Now that I’ve spent more time with it, though, getting to a Stage Break is actually fairly easy. Landing and chaining combos doesn’t feel too complicated to pull off, so you can get access to the rest of your team without having to perform some impossibly technical sequence.

The assists are great.

You simply hit X or Cross (or the bottom-most face button) for a generic assist, but combining right + X or down + X gives you long-range and air-launch assists.

These are great for opening up your opponents to combos or countering their moves.

Once you have all your assists available and fill the gauge all the way up to 150, you can execute a Super Attack with every single one of your characters joining the assault.

It’s a fantastic payoff for building up your team.

This is also where Tōkon starts feeling like more than a simple fighter.

The controls are easy enough to understand, but the deeper you get into a fight, the more you start thinking about when to call an assist, how to extend a combo, when to counter, and when to save your resources.

It’s the same kind of satisfaction I get from Dragon Ball FighterZ or Guilty Gear Strive.

Simple controls can get you started.

The complexity comes from figuring out what you can actually do with them.

Spider-Man is my guy

I spent most of my play time using my favorite character of all time: Spider-Man.

Honestly, he feels a little trickier to play than most.

His special move involves him shooting a web, and you can either follow it up with a combo or use it to swing away from attacks.

That little bit of flexibility makes him feel very Spider-Man.

You’re constantly darting around the fight, looking for an opening while also having a way to get yourself out of trouble.

I initially played him with his teammates set by the game: Ms. Marvel, Peni Parker, and Star-Lord.

But outside of the story, I usually always have Wolverine up next.

He’s an aggressive damage dealer and a button masher’s delight.

That’s part of what makes Tōkon’s roster work.

Going through Story Mode gives you a chance to get a feel for how each character handles and who fits your style the most.

With 20 characters available at launch, there’s enough here to mix and match, and you’re bound to find a set that you feel at home using.

And sometimes the character you expect to like isn’t the one you end up enjoying the most.

The characters change how you play

The character I wasn’t particularly interested in but was surprisingly fun for me to use was Blade.

It probably has to do with the types of movement I associate with each character.

With Spidey, I’m always darting around.

With Wolverine, I’m always rushing the enemy.

But with Blade, I suddenly move with more measure.

Something about his stance and attacks makes me want to approach the fight a little more deliberately.

Ms. Marvel was also a character I didn’t care much for at first but ended up enjoying using.

Mostly also because she forces me to dial back a bit and be more deliberate with my movements.

That’s one of the more enjoyable things about Tōkon.

The roster doesn’t just give you different characters with different movesets. It encourages you to approach fights differently.

You’re not necessarily going to play the same way with every character. And that makes finding the right team more rewarding.

Deadpool, meanwhile, has a lot of Easter egg references from other games and franchises.

I haven’t seen them in my own playthrough, though, so it’s frustrating me a bit.

 

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That probably says something about how much Marvel fan service Arc System Works has packed into the game.

Even when I’m not finding the references myself, I know I’m probably missing something.

Losing doesn’t feel cheap

This might be one of the biggest compliments I can give Tōkon.

When I lose matches, it never feels like it’s because the opponent got some sort of buff or something.

I can clearly see where I mistimed a block or a counter, and that led to a devastating string of combos that led to my demise. I don’t mind losing when I understand why I lost.

There’s a difference between getting beaten and feeling like the game simply decided that you were going to lose. Tōkon generally makes me feel like the former.

I’m not suddenly going to pretend I’m good at fighting games. I’m still a casual player. But I can recognize when I made a mistake.

And when I watch a really good player put together a sequence, I can appreciate the skill involved even if I have absolutely no idea how to replicate it.

That’s where I think Tōkon strikes a good balance.

The game lets me enjoy fighting games at my level while leaving the door open for players who want to take things much, much further.

It’s anime as hell

The anime-coded art style has been telegraphed since the game was first announced, so there shouldn’t be any surprises here.

There are plenty of character costume color combinations to choose from, while the animations are truly eye-popping without feeling extremely overwhelming.

The characters move with the kind of exaggerated energy you’d expect from an Arc System Works fighter, but it still feels distinctly Marvel.

Every fight feels like a comic book panel suddenly came to life.

The presentation is particularly good at making the big moments feel big without turning every attack into visual noise.

And then there’s the opening sequence. It is so anime intro-coded and I NEVER skip it. It’s so hype!

Don’t expect a deep Marvel story

You don’t have to play through each character for Story Mode.

The characters are divided into teams of four, giving each group its own story. The presentation is a mix of anime cutscenes and comic-book-panel-style storytelling.

It’s… alright.

If you’re after any real deep storytelling here, you’re not playing the right game.

There’s enough to keep you mildly entertained, but halfway through your third team you’d probably be over it and would want to just jump straight into fighting — which is the core of the game anyway.

The story gives you an excuse to spend time with different teams and characters.

It lets you learn how they play while giving you a little context for why they’re fighting together.

But Tōkon’s real appeal isn’t its story. It’s what happens when the fight starts.

The fighting is the story

The more time I spend with Tōkon, the more I think this is where the Marvel vs. Capcom comparison makes the most sense.

You pick characters you love, put them together, and figure out how they work.

Then you discover that the character you weren’t interested in is suddenly the one you can’t stop playing.

That’s the loop. And it’s a good one.

Tōkon feels like it understands that a fighting game doesn’t need an elaborate narrative to make you care about its characters.

Sometimes all you need is a character you like, a team that feels good, and a fight that makes you want to hit rematch.

The sound of a good fight

I have to be honest — and a bit embarrassed — I love listening to music, but audio is almost always the last thing I notice when I review games.

I want to say the audio here perfectly complements the visuals.

Nothing feels jarring or out of place.

The music feels appropriate for every stage of the fight, while the in-fight dialogue matches the reactions to what’s happening on screen.

(My setup is an LG C2 TV with a Samsung soundbar. Suffice it to say, I FEEL every hit adequately).

Arc System Works also specifically called out music and sound as areas of focus for Tōkon. After playing it, I can see why.

It runs excellently on PS5

On PS5, MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls runs excellently.

My runs were mostly PvE, and I encountered no issues whatsoever.

Any input lag is just me having stubby fingers — nothing to do with the game’s performance.

The game also benefits from the PS5’s presentation, with its colorful effects and huge character animations looking particularly good on a big screen.

I played on a 55-inch TV and it made those big super attacks especially satisfying to watch.

The PC version, however, had a much rougher launch.

It was only recently that a patch was released, and we also had challenges redeeming the PC version.

So if you’re deciding between platforms, the PS5 version is the one I can comfortably speak for based on my experience.

Online is where I struggle

I don’t like talking about this. I get my ass handed to me too much. But if you’re talking about getting into matches, it does get challenging.

I wait a good five to seven minutes before I can hop into online matches.

And once I do get into a fight, let’s just say my win rate isn’t exactly something I’m going to frame on the wall.

The game’s online offering includes Casual and Ranked matches, along with online lobbies and Room Matches.

The real question for more competitive players will be whether the online community can sustain quick matchmaking as the player base settles after launch.

For a casual player like me, though, the bigger hurdle is simply finding someone willing to beat me up.

A cute little detour

There’s also Arcadia Rumble, a bit of a platformer-type game with the characters rendered in chibi form. 

It’s nothing groundbreaking. But I particularly enjoyed the chibi looks as a chibi enjoyer.

The chibi version is an Arc System Works staple, and it’s a cute little change of pace from the much more intense main game.

You don’t need to play it to appreciate Tōkon. But I like that it’s here.

I’m already looking forward to more

The launch roster is already substantial, but I’m particularly excited about the first DLC character: Phoenix Cyclops.

Scott Summers is my guy. And we’re getting the cosmic version? I am waiting with bated breath.

That’s probably the best place to leave Tōkon. 

I came into this expecting a fun Marvel fighting game.

What I got was a fighter that is easy enough for a casual player like me to pick up, while constantly reminding me that there is a much deeper game waiting underneath.

It’s not that Tōkon is simple.

It’s that it does a good job of making complexity feel approachable.

You can mash buttons with Wolverine and have a great time. You can swing around with Spider-Man and look for openings. And you can slow things down with Blade or Ms. Marvel and learn to be more deliberate.

If you want to go deeper, the systems are there waiting for you.

Now pickup a controller and take on MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls