Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls Review. The Best Fighting Game of the Year?

Marvel and fighting games — a union that has lasted three decades now. From X-Men: Children of the Atom to the legendary Marvel vs. Capcom series, superheroes have always looked great in a genre built around spectacle and dynamism: it couldn't really have been any other way. But in recent years, Marvel's video game universes have been devoted to just about everything except fighting games. Arc System Works, the studio famous for Guilty Gear and Dragon Ball FighterZ, decided to fix that — with backing from PlayStation Studios and Marvel Games. The result of their labor is Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls, which launched in August 2026 on PC and PlayStation 5. Let's talk about the strengths and weaknesses of what is arguably the fighting game of the year.

Story is a secondary concern in fighting games, and yet the developers of Marvel Tōkon decided to make an effort anyway. The setup is as follows: a powerful being known as the Champion travels from planet to planet, forcing the best warriors of each world to fight him. If the warriors fail to hold their own and can't surprise him, the planet is destroyed. Now it's Earth's turn — the Champion sends his herald, Impresario, who announces the rules: this time, only the four greatest fighters on the planet may face the villain. So a selection tournament is held among the best of the best.

Five squads of four fighters each take part in the tournament:

The overall shape of the story stays the same regardless of your choice, but the details differ depending on which team you pick. The story is presented in comic-book-page form and, somewhat less often, through full animated cutscenes.

Arc System Works is known for its signature anime style, and Tōkon is no exception. The game looks like watching an anime series about superheroes: vivid colors, dynamic effects, detailed character models. At the same time, the design keeps the classic Marvel heroes recognizable while adding a Japanese flavor.

The same goes for the battle arenas — the game is done in a 2.5D style packed with detail and animated elements in the backgrounds. And there's a catch here: in the thick of battle, when up to 8 heroes can flash across the screen at once (more on that later) and the focus keeps shifting, it's very easy to lose track of things amid the visual noise.

The project's soundtrack also deserves praise — heavy rock riffs play in the background during fights most of the time, doing a great job of reflecting the intensity of the confrontation.

The basic mechanics are shared by every character: light, medium, and heavy attacks, several skills, and special moves that can be activated once the synergy gauge fills up. Many attacks can be triggered with just one or two button presses — the game calls this system Quick Skill.

Marvel Tōkon has a fairly low barrier to entry — there's even a dedicated menu section devoted to training and starter combos. And yet it's still full of depth: combos require precise timing, and the interactions between characters open up new tactical options. You can dodge and counterattack to break the opponent's attack chains, and you can also knock an opponent to a different part of the arena using the Break mechanic.

On top of that, every hero has unique traits. For example, Ghost Rider has a separate gauge that fills up from fire-based moves — and if you get carried away and fill it completely, he gets briefly stunned (though if you keep it balanced right at the edge, it actually boosts the damage of his moves instead). Blade marks opponents, powering up his next skill for a single use. And Deadpool can even injure himself to gain special "healing energy," which lets him use alternate versions of his skills.

All in all, Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls is one of the best embodiments of the phrase "easy to learn, hard to master": it's extremely approachable for newcomers, while still letting experienced players hone their skill by drilling complex combo chains and competing on raw mechanical ability.

Several difficulty levels are available for matches against the AI, and learning to hold your own against the hardest one is fantastic practice before heading into online play.

Tōkon is a team tag fighter (a fighting-game subgenre where the player controls not one character, but a whole team — ed.) in a 4-vs-4 format. But eight fighters on screen at once sounds chaotic and complicated, and the developers clearly know it. So they made a smart move: a match doesn't start with all four characters — only two. The rest of the team's members "unlock" over the course of the fight — for landing successful combos, cornering the opponent, or losing a round. This gradual introduction of characters keeps the game approachable for newcomers while also adding strategic depth.

All characters on a team share one common health bar — an unusual choice for a tag fighter. Instead of swapping tired fighters for fresh ones, as in Marvel vs. Capcom, the player has to manage a single shared resource. This simplifies the interface, speeds up matches, and removes the main barrier of traditional tag fighters — the need to learn every character on the team. Knowing just one fighter well enough is enough to stay competitive.

That said, team synergy still matters. Assists can cover a retreat, extend a combo, bail you out, or give a character options they wouldn't otherwise have. Simply swapping which character is active can make the whole team play completely differently.

Team interaction is governed by the aforementioned synergy gauge, which fills up from both landing attacks and taking damage. And that's where the downside lies: once key thresholds are filled, special moves (including the strongest one, involving the whole team) start getting "folded" into basic attack chains. As a result, the player ends up with a bit less control than they would if these moves were triggered by their own separate button combinations.

Tōkon has everything you'd expect from a modern fighting game: a story mode, a training mode with tutorials, and a handful of special options with unique conditions. But for a fighting game, the most important thing is still the multiplayer.

And that's where a few problems start to show up.

The biggest sticking point: online modes require a PSN account, even on the PC version of the game.

But even if you make it past those initial "defenses" — that's not the end of it. Now players are met with pretty uneven matchmaking, occasional network connection issues, input lag, and sometimes long waits for an opponent to be found in the lobby.

And then there are the technical issues. While the PS5 Pro version runs great, the PC version launched with serious problems. A major optimization patch has since come out, but the developers still haven't managed to fix everything: some especially demanding scenes still suffer from frame drops, stutters, and brief "hitches," which badly disrupts the flow of a match — especially when playing online.

Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls is one of the most interesting fighting games to come out in years. Arc System Works did what it does best: it created a battle system that's spectacular, deep, and accessible all at once. The 4-vs-4 format with its gradual character introduction is a smart solution that lowers the barrier to entry while still leaving room for mastery. The visuals are impressive and polished. The launch roster of twenty-one characters is solid, and it will almost certainly grow over time.

That said, the technical issues described above, along with the difficulties accessing online modes, are an automatic mark against it. Fighting games are a fairly niche genre compared to other multiplayer games, and it's hard to say whether the newcomer will manage to carve out a place for itself alongside the "big three" (Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Tekken). And honestly, the price is a bit steep too — they're asking for it as if it were a full-fledged AAA game.

If you're a fan of Marvel and fighting games — it's worth a try. Especially if you also happen to own a Sony console. But "PC purists," as I see it, should probably wait for a few more patches with fixes. And who knows — maybe the online access issue will get resolved eventually too; there's precedent for that kind of thing. But no promises.