Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is about as perfect as a fighter can be. Arc System Works has managed to get almost everything right to make a beat-em-up that’s fun for everyone to enjoy. For the hardcore fighters, there are systems to dive into. For casuals, you can almost get away with button bashing. But it’s in the layered combat where it works the best. With tons of fighter combinations and modes to choose from, there’s plenty to make sure nobody comes away from playing with a bad word to say.
At its core, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is a 4v4 tag fighter where everybody on your team shares the same health bar. By hitting certain requirements during a fight, a new fighter becomes available to use. As chaotic as these battles can be, you never feel out of control or lost. When you first dive in, many fighters feel the same in how attacks work. Each has a light, medium, and heavy attack. There are unique skills and abilities that can be woven in too. It’s all about getting used to fighting and vetting for your favourite.
Once you start to gain an interest in who you want to play as, the joy of utilising a team and finding the best combinations is amazing. Assists can be used to have someone fly in and shoot from range or fight up close. Tag them in and take over as a teammate. Working out how assists work fully is where Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is at its best. You can do a lot of damage as a team if you get it right. However, combo breakers can interrupt these, giving defending teams a chance to turn the tide.
You’ve got a bar that fills up gradually to 150 which is fundamentally your pool for pulling off big moves. Fights can’t continuously have everyone pulling off fancy moves and impressive assists. There’s an art to the chaos, and learning beyond what makes a good individual combo is where the skill comes in. Still, those that might not be as good as others will still get a lot from matches because they’re simpler ways to pull off moves. Experimenting regardless is what will draw you in and keep you playing.
For those who prefer single-player modes in a fighter, they’re episodic stories. Each one takes around an hour to complete and is told through comic book panel cut scenes with full voice acting. I enjoyed the stories a lot, but there’s seldom actual fighting to do until the final few chapters. That said, a lot of work has gone into authenticity. With Arc System Works going for a beautiful anime-inspired look to characters, locations, and more, it’s easily the best looking fighter I have ever seen.
There are other modes like a vs100 where you can take on 100 fights while getting incremental buffs as you play. Arcadia Rumble is a mode which takes place in two phases. The first one sees you take your little avatar around a small map trying to power up your fighters before duking it out in proper fights in the second phase. It’s okay, and I like the idea of it, I just didn’t spend a lot of time with it. The main road many players are going to go down is online, and ArcSys has got it so right when it comes to finding matches.
It doesn’t help that I’m pretty terrible when it comes to playing others. That’s my issue, though. The lobbies where other fighters are standing by arcade cabinets waiting for a fight is pretty cool. Avatars of all these marvel characters are chilling in the lobby, and it looks great. You can find casual and ranked matches relatively easy, making these online brawls run great for those willing to learn past playing alone and dive into a huge online multiplayer world.
Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is a stunning fighter. Not only does it look gorgeous, the fighting is so tight and so engaging. The learning curve can be as steep as you want, but it’s not long before you’re pulling off lengthy combos with a full team of fighters. The single player modes are cool, but the online is easy to jump into and I didn’t encounter issues during matchmaking at all. I’m excited to see who gets added after Cyclops. The future is looking bright, but the present is more than enough right now.
