Marvel is many things to the public. A comic book empire, a cinematic universe, and, surprisingly, a popular fighting game franchise. Like the stars aligning, an amazing IP combined with the best of the gaming industry. It started with your old-school arcade beat-em-ups; we eventually were given a Marvel fighting game. Which evolved into a crossover and its own genre-defining tag fighter series as early as the early 2000s came along. And try as they might, nothing quite caught up to the popularity of Marvel vs. Capcom, not even something promising sounding like Street Fighter x Tekken.
And ever since Marvel vs. Capcom 2, the idea of what tag fighters should be has been set in stone. The ones that followed, official or spiritual, pretty much took the same formula with some unique spin to it, but essentially felt familiar enough to see its influences. Skullgirls mixes in the ratio system, while making some pretty zany characters. Marvel Infinite and BlazBlue X Tag sought to refine the tagging mechanic itself and make the game more accessible to new players. Dragon Ball FighterZ is probably the best contender in terms of popularity, but I don’t think I’d say it had any real innovations compared to its contemporaries.
Now the story of how Tokon: Fighting Souls comes along is that Marvel approaches Arc System Works about making a game for them. Naturally, they would try to reproduce the same style and feel as the rest of Marvel’s legacy. However, the developers were suddenly told that they’d rather see what sort of Marvel game they could make in Arc System Works’ style. And what we have is a very fresh, different tag fighter with a lot of focus on freedom. Yet at the same time, it is strongly rooted in the ideas of its predecessors. They’ve also taken the lessons they’ve learned from the many fighters they’ve developed over the years to address the issues that have been known to this genre of fighting games.
In short, Tokon is a tag fighter that’s built with a lot of ambition, making it a game that anyone can play, master, and watch. A game that anyone with even a small interest in Marvel, Anime, or Tag Fighters can enjoy if they’re willing to sit with the game for a few sets. And let me tell you how all this comes together.
Great New Paint
It’s no secret that ArcSystem Works is at the forefront of making 2D aesthetics work with 3D models, and they decided to go unashamedly anime with the entire cast. Which I really enjoyed so far. Being a collector of plastic model robots, I was more than happy to try out the Iron Man that drew some inspiration from Gundam. But I was also satisfied with how well they translated the characters from their Western counterparts. While one of the clear fan favorites would be Magik, I gravitated towards Doom as he was changed to a heavier, more imposing figure than the nimble striker we’ve seen him to be in previous titles. They became characters of their own rather than a reflection of the Hollywood MCU versions we might have expected to see, giving them more room to express themselves naturally rather than trying to imitate how movie actors might act. So all you really need to do is, see which one is the coolest for you to try, and try them out.
All for One
One of the bigger issues when it comes to tag fighters is that when you lose one character, you already feel like you’re fighting a losing battle. You’ll go into the defensive once one of your members is threatened, and losing one feels like your strength is greatly reduced as you lose your options. ArcSys changes this up by making everybody share one lifebar instead. It does lose the dynamics of characters having different amounts of HP, but it does help you stay aggressive even at lower health. What’s more, landing hits is exactly how you recover HP instead of trying to avoid getting hit or keeping your assists out of the fight. The ultimate strategy to victory stays consistent, which is to beat the other guy up faster than he can beat you!
One or All
With how the life bar works in Tokon, it actually makes it viable for other people to play with knowing less, despite it being tagged as a 4v4 game. Having one life bar means I can play with as few or as many characters as I want. They all share the same life bar, so it doesn’t matter if one character takes all the damage or all of them do throughout the match. This means you only need to know the specials, combos, and particularities of one character to be able to play the game to a decent level instead of learning a full team. (I would recommend learning at least two characters if you want to be a bit more competitive)
Though things like getting several members caught in the same combo can still happen, and it definitely reflects in how much damage it deals to the team’s HP bar. So those fun interactions where you can catch an opponent with an assist out or maybe even their entire party exposed can definitely still happen.
Shortened Sandbagging
One of the most daunting parts of learning any fighting game, especially the ArcSys ones, is learning a combo. This is your basic weapon for doing anything meaningful in a match in terms of offense. That, along with the concepts of mixups, oki, and other strategies, can be overwhelming. Truth is, they’ve sort of solved this problem already with previous games like Dragon Ball FighterZ and Gran Blue Versus. Auto-combos have been becoming more of a staple with these titles, ideally helping players ease into the learning curve a bit better. Being able to put up a fight much earlier reduces the length of the sandbag experience; one may be more inviting for people who are just curious to try the game. Combine this with the idea that you ideally only need one active character, whilst treating your assists as extensions of said character, can make the onboarding experience that much smoother.
You Need a Plan
This fighting game doesn’t let you play at your full strength from the start, locking half your team and a whole 2/3rds of your skill meter off. Meaning you can’t access those big combos you practiced off the bat, and you’ll have to make use of other strategies and make choices. Do you make that wall-break or splat, get some more skill gauge, unlock, and make an assist? Or do you want to maintain your position and pressure to close out the round? Both have their merits, and the player will have to ultimately decide what works best for them.
It’s true that pretty much the entire cast can close out a round with maybe 2 combos, but expending so many resources to win one round out of three might not be the wisest choice. This rewards showing some variety in your strategies and setups, and does make the game much more engaging to watch, as each round isn’t just going to be a repeat of the last one. The next round will have more assists, resources, and possibly a different character fronting the fight.
One Can Play This Game
Tokon is a game that is packaged with way more than the core components of fighting games paired with online play. It has training and tutorials that help you learn and master characters. It has a story mode that feels quite basic but at least makes good on its presentation, having fully voiced comics that capture the characters quite well. I went and played the story of The Knights of Doom just because Dr Doom is so over the top, and I enjoyed the story even with the easily winnable fights in between. The Champion is a fun character to watch as well, and he provides the excuse plot that the game needs to get everyone together and go through a tournament.
On top of that, there are mini game modes that are meant for more casual players and two single-player arcade modes for people to explore. I personally enjoy these modes since I’m the sort of player who hardly finds matches and isn’t comfortable finding a match online until I have a solid feel for how to use my characters in a real fight. This makes Arena and Survival ideal game modes for me to stretch my team’s legs until I know what I should be doing.
A New Universe
Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls becomes much easier to learn when you become ready to tackle it as a new game instead of thinking that it’s a sequel to another tag fighter. After all, even though most of the popular tag fighters came from Capcom, the one behind this title is Arc System Works. They have already made a few tag fighters of their own and have their own ideas on how they work. They have their own ways of adding complexity to the game. Which I’m sure would annoy some veterans since they can’t do the traditional mixups or tricks that made them so deadly. Though, given they decided to make very different takes on nearly every older character featured in the game should have been a clue.
Assists work differently, as ones that are used in combos run on something called an assemble gauge, but calling them from neutral states is completely free. These complexities are completely baked into the combo system that can only be maximized if you’re willing to spend assists or skill meter to extend them.
There are also trade-offs for using them actively and being conservative with them. There are universal armor moves and strong defensive options anyone can use. There’s even the choice of making the tag and assist functions completely separate from each other. This baffled a lot of players during the beta test. But as you might know, not everyone knows everything you can do in a fighting game when it launches. Techniques on sneaking overheads, masking mixups through assists, and combo routes are still being discovered, and the depth of the gameplay is slowly being unravelled as people make more findings.
Bumps And the Road Ahead
Even now we’re getting people to talk about the glaring port issues it has on the PC platform, which the development team has claimed they’re already working on. Sadly, it launched the way it did, and the reception is night and day when you compare it to the PS5 console experience. The silver lining is how many have been reporting a better experience in recent days, though not all. The PC platform houses so much variance in setups that covering all the issues in one fell swoop is unlikely. We can only hope that Sony and ArcSys can find a solution that works for everyone on PC, as creating a PSN account is already a pain point for some. Combining that with other telemetry services and an Anti-Cheat being required is likely going to give a lot of people CPU issues, as that happened with me.
What makes me confident that they will find that solution down the road is how much they have planned down the road. They’ve already announced Phoenix Cyclops as their first DLC character, hinting that there’s at least one more full team to be found down the road. So if they want more and more people to keep coming to the game, they’ll have to make it more accessible and less painful to try on other platforms.
If you guys made it to the end of this article, I’m sure you already recognize that I’m fond of this game. I recommend Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls for people who love fighters, tag fighters, or simply want to enjoy their favorite Marvel characters in a crazier, anime-style way. I’ve spent so much time just trying to master a few characters in training mode, which is where I really spend most of my time in fighting games. I enjoy pushing the limits of combo routes, seeing what sort of assist I can use to make an interesting setup with, or simply exploring the ideas behind every character. 20 characters doesn’t seem like a huge roster for a tag fighter, specifically given a 4v4 format. But each of them feels unique enough to bring their own identity to the team, and can really help you round yourself to be able to deal with many situations. So whether you’re the type to mash one button, or the type to see how much you can get away with on just one tag or assist, I think you should give this game a try.