Even at the point of its PS5 release, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls feels like something of a fever dream. If you would have told me five years ago that Guilty Gear Strive developer Arc System Works (and not Capcom) would be developing a Marvel tag team fighter, I’d have quite rightly accused you of snorting rocks and yet here are – not only with a shiny new Marvel fighter in tow, but quite possibly one of the best new fighting games to come along in a good while, too.
Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls PS5 Review
For anyone who has been previously initiated with the myriad delights of Arc System Works superb Guilty Gear and BlazBlue titles, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls will feel warmly familiar superficially speaking as it boasts the same opulent and energetic visual spectacle. This means you can expect to be confronted by the layered, sugary energy of vibrantly colourful menu screens backed by a dramatic sounding narration, larger than life characters, mid-fight cinematic vignettes and the sort of commitment to brash arcade spectacles that arguably defined the coin operated scene for so many years in its halcyon days.
Structurally speaking, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls sets out its stall straightforwardly enough. Upon installing the game and nabbing the latest patch, you’re treated to the usual slew of training modes, local versus and offline versus play modes, while the expected online match types (casual, ranked etc.) and a navigable open lobby all feel par for the course in a time when other brawlers are doing this too. There is also, equally predictably, an episodic story mode which puts some narrative meat on the bones of what is otherwise a somewhat dressed-up, though admittedly cinematic way to get to grips with Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls various mechanics.
There are five different episodes within the story campaign to tackle – Fighting Avengers, Unbreakable X-Men, The Amazing Guardians, Samurai Outriders and Knights of Doom – with each episode containing a unique stable of superheroes and villains for players to get to grips with. Each episode has a proper written pedigree too, having been penned by long-time Marvel Comics scribe Kieron Gillen, you essentially get to see a conflict between each of the five factions as they attempt to ward off an intergalactic threat – The Champion – before he destroys Earth. It’s not exactly super duper stuff, but for a brawler like this, Gillen’s succinct scenarios and brisk style work perfectly, not least because each episode is permeated with some gorgeously animated anime style cutscenes and motion comic book style panels, too.
The story missions, though enjoyable and well presented, are mainly there to help with training the player in each character’s unique abilities and unlocking various bits of art, music and lore, and it’s really in the online side of the things that Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls truly flourishes, but more on that in a bit. It has to be said that Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is an audiovisual treat that comfortably sits at the zenith of Arc System Works output to date. Massive, vibrantly detailed and colourful character models which look appropriately jaw dropping on a 55 inch or bigger TV form the ranks of Marvel Tokon’s decently sized roster and are not only easy on the eyes, but dutifully adherent to their comic book origins. Certainly, from the screen-filling Hulk to the chiseled-jaw and patriotic garb of Captain America through to the screen-searing laser attacks of Iron Man, every single character feels like they’ve leapt straight from the page and onto the screen.
Though each character does feel like a true labour of love, such is the vast amount of care that has been poured into them, none feel quite so involved as Deadpool. Fully embracing the fourth-wall breaking that is arguably a cornerstone of his character, you get the idea that Arc System Works had a riot bringing the ‘merc with the mouth’ to life, as pretty much the entirety of his move set is a series of pop culture riffs and deep cuts that rarely fail to elicit a cheeky grin. Whether he’s mocking the obscure Street Fighter – The Movie: The Game, mimicking Tekken’s Yoshimitsu’s cross-legged healing move, or Mortal Kombat’s Scorpion ‘get over here’ spear pull attack, Deadpool is horrendously fun to play for fighting game aficionados.
Perhaps more than anything, one of the greatest successes of Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is how it makes the player truly feel like they can master a character that has their own idiosyncrasies and specific traits. To be clear, there are no palette swaps or lazily cloned fighter templates here, instead each of the twenty-one characters at launch feels as thoroughly unique as the comic book source material which birthed them.
A rather big element of that uniqueness which is baked into each of Marvel Tokon’s characters are the distinctive mechanics that help to meaningfully set them apart from one another. Taking our friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man for example, he can thwip his way across the speed, attach to invisible web-anchors and use his spider-sense to cancel out enemy attacks. Storm meanwhile, can leverage her unique mutation to conjure all manner of mini-hurricanes and tornadoes that can be used to disrupt the jumping arcs of her foes and push them into unfavourable situations where she can optimally capitalise.
Beyond the distinctive nature of each combatant, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is a 4v4 tag fighter first and foremost, but it introduces some neat wrinkles to that shopworn formula to keep things fresh. Firstly, though you can fill a team with a quartet of fighters, each match begins with just one fighter (the Leader) and an assist fighter, while the third and fourth fighters will only join the action as and when specific conditions in each fight, such as landing a particular combo, losing a round or causing one of Marvel Tokon’s many spectacular looking wall break stage transitions. This means that when you pick out your fighters to start with, you’ll need to carefully choose the ones you’ll want to start the fight with while pacing the fight overall with the sort of fighters that would round out the rest of the team later on in the contest. It’s a neat little element of strategy that makes planning for each fight a little more thoughtful than it would otherwise have been.
Another wrinkle to the formula is that not only is the health bar is shared across all four fighters, but there is no health regeneration either, lending Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls something of a rapid-fire, almost punishing quality that really forces you to be on the top of your game as fights can end really rather quickly to say the least. At its core, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls wraps its tag team brawler shenanigans around a solid clutch of mechanics that lend itself to extraordinarily sophisticated play. As you might well guess, these mechanics are intrinsically tied to the tag team bedrock upon which Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls sets out its stall and allow players to call in other members of their team, to provide horizontal assists, vertical assists, aerial assists and active tags depending on the momentum of the battle and how you wish to counter an opponent or press the attack.
Complementing this design is a skill meter of sorts which can be consumed in chunks of a third to perform various actions of both an offensive and a defensive nature according to the ebb and flow of the fight, and can be replenished by hitting your enemies really hard in the face, over and over. Linking attacks together for instance is easily done via the auto combo system which not only blitzes the enemy for various amounts of damage, but also means that at a basic level, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is exceptionally welcoming to newcomers in so far as they can button mash their way to some pretty cool looking combinations.
As with every other aspect of Marvel Tokon’s design, there is an element of strategy and nuance baked into it which invites mastery. Every auto combo or series of link attacks can be executed across light, medium and heavy variations, with each having their own use case of sorts during battle. A light series of link attacks can trigger a series of special attacks, bring in other team members for tandem team attacks and even kick off one of those fancy looking stage transitions. The medium path of doing these link attacks meanwhile causes the combination to chain directly into a powerful Super Skill, sucking a third of your skill meter in the process. The heavy route of link attacks meanwhile, causes a hugely damaging Ultimate Skill to be triggered at the end of the combo, hugely damaging your enemy but snatching away two thirds of your skill meter as a result.
Finally, should you find yourself a round down but with a full skill meter you can unleash the Tokon Assemble attack, an outrageously cinematic attack which brings all of your team members together to execute their signature moves on your hapless adversary before the Leader finishes them off with a final devastating attack. It’s super satisfying stuff that clearly shows Arc System Works penchant for dramatic direction in its in-game cutscenes remains undimmed since its BlazBlue and Guilty Gear days.
As well as a veritable swathe of offensive opportunities, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls also offers up a bounty of defensive possibilities as well. The Crossover move for example summons a teammate to disrupt the combo flow of an attacking enemy, while the Crossover ability can be turned back on an unsuspecting fighter thanks to the Crossover Reflect which if successful can neutralise it in turn. Elsewhere, Assemble Counters prove to be super useful as when executed results in the chosen fighter taking a defensive backstep that will automatically counterattack if an enemy attack lands. The kicker? It’ll snatch a third of your skill meter as a tax for being used.
This is just one more example of how Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls impresses upon the player the need to take constant stock of their skill meter and tactical position in every battle and apply the correct link combo which will yield the best results. It’s a system simultaneously built for learning and longer term mastery. And ultimately that is perhaps Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls biggest appeal. Though Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls has clearly been designed with high-end play in mind and certainly has some fairly sprawling esports ambitions on the horizon, it’s also abundantly and brilliantly clear that Arc System Works latest effort is substantially accommodating and obliging to newcomers as well.
Indeed, though the layered mechanics might seem a little daunting at first, the in-depth training mode, in-built character guides and generally broad level of customisation mean that the barriers for less experienced folk that want to get stuck into Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls are pleasingly few. Beyond the online and story campaign side of things, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls also offers up a range of other neat modes as well. Whether it’s the roguelike styled All-Star Arena which has you picking a team and fighting through a route of fighters to unlock additional badges, to the Arcadia Rumble and Battle Arcadia modes which provide a plethora of mini games and party modes to play, it all adds up to the fact that Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls quickly reveals itself to be a surprisingly muscular prospect.
Technically speaking, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls excels unreservedly. With pin-sharp 4K visuals backed by a rigid 60 frames per second and Rollback Netcode, together with what seems to be at this early juncture, some roundly robust server infrastructure which hasn’t resulted in myself experiencing a dropped game yet, it’s also clear that Arc System Works has refined things under the hood to their usual heady standard.
The latest in a long string of hits for Arc System Works, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls isn’t just the next must-have tournament fighter for esports pros, but also an essential offering for Marvel and fighting game newbies alike. Put simply, this is the finest brawler featuring Marvel characters to date, period. Your turn, Capcom.
Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is out now on PS5.
Review code kindly provided by PR.