Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls recently had a closed test where we attended and saw for ourselves that it is a title that could easily take the title of the best upcoming fighting game.
It’s no secret that the folks at Arc System Works are seasoned pros in the fighting game genre. And when their mastery is combined with a mega-popular name like Marvel, the result couldn’t be more different than a blockbuster in the making.
Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls in many ways resembles Dragon Ball FighterZ and Marvel vs. Capcom, which is a really great combination. Already at the first touches and double jumps, you can feel the exceptional smoothness with which the characters move around the screen. And just like FighterZ, here it is possible to have control over the entire arena in just a few moments, which is why the neutral positioning to start the attack is much different than in games like Tekken or Mortal Kombat.
Aside from the speed and smoothness, it’s immediately apparent that this is the type of fighting title that welcomes new players with open arms, which is a very smart move. Just like in Dragon Ball, here by simply pressing the same button you can do it auto-combo, and with just a little more effort and special attacks, which allows an extremely easy entry into the game.
Although I think so auto-combo it works in the current phase, it does too much damage and it’s too easy to control the space on the floor with it, its purpose and the point itself is still the same: you can flail around with the same attack for the first few matches, but the moment you run into a player who knows what he’s doing, he’ll crush you like Hulk Loki! Although Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls has a lot of aids and helper wheels, those players who understand concepts like neutral, okizemi or dragon punch they will not lose against newbies who endlessly pound the same button.
Of course, when you have such a popular IP like Marvel, it is clear to everyone that the game will be picked up by some players who are strangers to fighting titles, so it is necessary to provide them with as gentle an initial learning curve as possible. Fortunately, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls definitely wants to be a competitive title as well, so you can count on a diverse range of attack combos, combos with your supporting characters that extend your combo, learning optimal routes for each character, memorization frameova low, medium and high kicks and the like.
To put it simply, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is a modern martial arts title, which means that it has competitive, comfortable and completely new audiences in mind at the same time, and accordingly each part of the community can find their ideal combination. tablets.
The lobby itself before entering the match is classic ArcSys, which means that you run around a large area with tiny chibi figures and enter various game modes (once there are some), training and the fight itself. Many of you will be happy to hear that Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls will have both cross-platform play and rollback netcode, which are strong indications that Tokkon is indeed aiming to be “the” fighting game in 2026, if not longer.
What sets Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls apart from FighterZ, MvC and the like is the heavy emphasis on the team concept and the progression of your battlegrounds. After choosing your four characters, you start the fight with just one character and one helper, while the other two characters are unlocked by hitting your opponent so hard that they fly to another part of the arena. Of course, except that more supporting characters means longer and more devastating combo potential, gathering your team also gives you slightly higher health and a bonus to damage dealt, which is pretty cool.
If you think about it, this is a fairly new concept, because in fighting games we are used to the game to begin with all possible resources, only to gradually lose them during the match until the dramatic ending where we are barely holding on to the ropes. Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls did the reverse, which is certainly interesting and I have to admit that the mechanics are quite addictive and actually quite deep.
For example, I have two choices when I juggle an enemy in the air: I can send them into a heavy knockout, which will result in a lot of pressure and potentially another juggle, or I can make a move that will send them to another part of the map, thus securing another team member, but without the possibility of further pressure.
It should be emphasized here that all characters have common health, and it is important to mention that the entire fight can take place with only one character. In other words, to be at least seemingly good, you need to learn to play only one character, and you can use the other team members exclusively as combo tools. This decision is certainly another in a series of aids for new players, but equally, it could prove to be quite problematic in the future if the balance of the characters is not at a very high level.
Speaking of the characters, it should be said that they are made very faithful to the original material, they look and sound perfect, and at the same time exude a very recognizable ArcSys style. The superb presentation is also visible in the fighting arenas themselves, which are one of the liveliest I have ever visited. The backgrounds are a bit cartoonish, but still in the spirit of the comics, and because of their liveliness, I used to catch myself following the background more than my own match: who cares about Iron Man when T-Rex and Triceratops are fighting to the death in the rainforest, and skyscrapers are burning in the city because of wild Sentinels!
While the game is in beta, I can’t say anything about the choice of characters because it’s not nearly final, but it will certainly be interesting to see how ArcSys will do it, because competitive fighting games usually don’t have too many fighters due to easier balancing, and besides, ArcSys always has a relatively small number of characters, primarily because they invest a lot of time and effort into each individual fighter. If you add to this the future additional content, which there will inevitably be once the game is released, and the huge variety of favorite Marvel characters, it is clear why many are worried about whether their favorite character will be part of the starting line-up.
Our brief time with Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls was quite positive, but it should be noted that we tried the closed beta, so the final product could still in theory turn out to be something completely different. Either way, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is coming to PlayStation and PC next year.