The Fight of Your Life! ‘Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls’ Review

I often tell people that there are video games, and there are fighting games. While, yes, fighting games are a genre of video games, there is such a gap between playing them and truly knowing them that it is like learning a whole new language. 

Some examples: cross-up, footsies, happy birthday, merry Christmas, poke. These phrases and terms all mean something but are altogether different in the context of fighting games. 

I say all this to say – Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls is a Fighting Game. It is pretty. It is bright. It is, as my (now fiancée!) says, “Delightfully over the top”. And it is not for the faint of heart.

The Basics

Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls is the latest project by Arc System Works, famous for creating capital-F-capital-G Fighting Games such as Dragon Ball FighterZ, BlazBlue, and Guilty Gear. The game sees the player assembling a team of four characters and fighting an opposing team of four in a tag-team system, with assists and changing of characters being core mechanics. 

One of the unique mechanics of this game is that teammates must be unlocked through a “crash” mechanic; in practice, stage transitions unlock characters until a team is full up.

The system is very combo-heavy rather than move-heavy, and rewards strong execution while still being fun to pick up and mash a few buttons. The game has a user-friendly auto-combo system and advanced tricks for those who want to put more work in to learn them. In short, it is easy to learn and very difficult to master.

There are a multitude of modes. There’s an episode mode to walk you through the story from the perspective of five “teams” representing, in short: The Avengers, the X-Men, the Spider-Verse, the Midnight Sons, and the villains. This mode also allows you to unlock the Champion, a somewhat deep-cut character from the Marvel universe that serves as a final boss.

There are arcade modes, including a battle royale-style shooter with matches in between each round, a practice and tutorial mode, an arcade mode, and an online and offline versus mode. There’s plenty to do out of the box and lots of practicing to dig into.

The Characters and Story

There are five broad archetypes of characters based on popular Marvel IPs. The Avengers squad has the mainstays of Captain America, Iron Man, and the Hulk, but does throw in a bit of a curveball by having Shuri’s Black Panther as the fourth member. The X-Men include Storm, Wolverine, Magik (probably spurred by her popularity in Marvel Rivals, another breakout Marvel gaming hit) and, in another somewhat deep cut, Danger, the X-mansion’s danger room turned sentient by its Shi’ar tech.

The Amazing Guardians consist of Peter Parker, his alternate-universe sibling Peni Parker, Inhuman/Mutant superfan-turned-hero Ms. Marvel, and Star-Lord. The Samurai Outriders (almost the Midnight Sons before being cut off by Deadpool in a hilarious fourth wall break) consist of Blade, Robbie Reyes’s Ghost Rider, Loki, and the aforementioned Deadpool. Finally, the Knights of Doom are comprised of Doctor Doom, Magneto, Carnage, and the Green Goblin.

These various heroes and villains are brought together by a challenge from the Champion, one of the Elders of the Universe (the same subset of beings as the Grandmaster and the Collector). His singular goal is to prove he is the mightiest combatant in the universe. To this end, he’s been going from planet to planet, challenging its inhabitants to battle, and snuffing out the worlds that are not worthy. He decides based on the power of the world how many people at a time can face him, with him always approaching alone. For Earth, he has decided teams of 4 are a fair challenge, but that only one team will face him.

This sets off a tournament arc, the results of which depend, of course, on the actions of the player.

The Game

This game is, in a word, frenetic. Everything moves quickly, and both reflexes and execution will be tested early and often. The 4v4 gameplay is chaotic and leaves the matches feeling full and unique, never playing out the same way twice. This holds at even the highest level, with different playstyles never leading to the exact same result, and the margin between a close match and a shellacking being razor-thin.

The tutorial mode will give guidance on each character’s unique attributes, as well as the basic buttons, chains, and gives a place to practice timing. There is also a combo trial mode to teach about the unique ways characters come together or work with assists to yield some dazzling results.

The online matchmaking is solid, so you won’t be immediately blown out of the water, but it will reward skill building and commitment to learning the game.

Who Should Buy This Game? Who Shouldn’t?

This game is for anyone who loves a good tag fighter. If you liked Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Tekken Tag Tournament, or especially Dragon Ball FighterZ, you will have a great time with this. If you enjoyed ArcSys in their other outings, this one will feel right at home and is worth a play, as well. If you like FromSoftware’s style of game that rewards repetition and the grind of learning your way through to the other side, this one will be right at home in your collection.

If you don’t do well with frustration, if you’ve ever yelled at your TV “I definitely hit that button!”, or if you are easily distracted by noise or bright lights, this may not be the one for you. This game comes with a fairly high skill floor in addition to a high skill ceiling, and while it is beginner-accessible, a good deal of practice will be needed to play anywhere but on the couch with a couple of friends.

For a fighting game, the trophy hunting for this one is surprisingly reasonable. Like Street Fighter 6, this game’s trophies are not ranking-based, and are therefore attainable, even if you don’t want to spend hundreds of hours on the “git gud” grind.

Is It Worth It?

If you enjoy Marvel, especially the comics, you will love this game. It is such a fun romp through an anime-inspired world, and it pays homage to and references its source material in ways that show care and pride. The voice acting is top-tier (shoutout ProZD as Doctor Doom), and the animations are crisp and fluid. The game is unapologetically for Fighting Gamers, but it also has plenty of shine and production value to appeal to more casual audiences as well.

This game will challenge you, and it may be one you put down after not too long due to its learning curve, which is fair. I’d keep that in mind before buying.

With all that said, I highly recommend Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls. It’s available now for PlayStation 5 and Windows.

Cover image via Epic Games

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