REVIEW: ‘Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls’ Absolutely Rips In Every Way

Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls, the new fighting game collaboration between PlayStation and ArcSystem Works, feels like a perfect match. Marvel has a rich history with fighting games, but it’s been a while since the last one. Arc System Works has become one of the most celebrated developers in the space, with some of the best fighters in recent memory coming from them.

Assembling the two together brings us Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls, an absolutely fantastic and gorgeous fighting game. A creative character roster, tons of content, and awesome stylized designs make Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls a must-play for both pros and casual fans. 

Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls brings together 21 fighters from across the Marvel universe. It’s a cool collection of participants, a good blend of crowd favorites and characters who haven’t had their time to shine in a fighting game before.

Captain America, Iron Man, and Spider-Man are common faces to attract Marvel fans at large, while Magik, Peni, and Danger are deeper cuts that shine alongside the bigger names. This collection of characters has a good mix of faces that each feel viable and hit hard. 

Whether it’s from the comics, the MCU, or somewhere in between, Marvel Tōkon can meet any fan.

One of the best parts of Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is how varied each fighter feels, even in the same basic skeleton. You can throw light, medium, and heavy attacks in combination, while also using assemble team-ups, specials, and unique moves.

With that basic foundation, every character feels totally distinct. Spider-Man is a menace that can thwip around the field quickly, closing distance at an instant while also shooting webs for ranged moves. Magik has portals that can manipulate the entire field, Star Lord has elemental weapons, and so on, where every character feels like their comic counterpart come to life. 

Rather than just being a solo affair, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is a 4v4 team fighter. At the top of every fight, players pick four characters to bring in, sharing a health bar over the course of the fight.

You can swap characters in and out at will, while also calling them in for support attacks called Assemble attacks. If things really go awry over the course of the fight and you’re at risk of losing, an ultimate team-up can swing a round back in your favor. 

Even though it’s a team brawler, Tokon actually feels like both a single fighter as much as it is a team experience. Spider-Man ended up being my go-to fighter, using the rest of the team as supports more than full-fledged fighters.

Since the entire team shares the health bar, there isn’t much focus on preserving health across units, letting the player go all in on one character or swap back and forth depending on the situation. This play style also encourages the player to try new characters more often, so I’d consistently bring in a couple of characters I hadn’t played yet just to experiment. It lets players have their favorites or experiment, but keep potential counters in the back if a matchup isn’t going well. 

There is a ton of depth and skill expression in these fights, but Marvel Tokon is also entirely accessible. Those looking to really get into the weeds of their characters, learn every combo and attack pattern, can do just that.

More casual or novice players can still do incredible-looking attacks with simple combos, many of the special and ultimate attacks being just a few repeated button inputs. It makes it approachable for everyone without sacrificing complexity, walking the line between the two types of players. 

Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls offers a variety of characters for every skill level. 

There’s plenty of content packed in here as well. Episode mode is divided into five arcs, each focused on a different team. Even if these are formulaic, with each one following the exact same flow of fight teammates, then other teams, the final boss, the varied artwork and comic-like presentation does a lot to make each one feel fresh.

Every arc is drawn by a different comics artist or mangaka. Fighting Avengers is illustrated by Hiro Mashima, creator of Fairy Tale, while The Amazing Guardians brings in My Hero Academia: Vigilantes‘ Betten Court. They only take about an hour each to complete, but they’re fun ways to learn the game, each with a fresh look.

There’s even more for solo players, with Startup Battle offering different tutorials, All-Star Arena packing in tons of challenges that change depending on the team, and Survival has tough gauntlets of 100 fights. There are also versus modes for couch fights against friends, and training modes that can help hone your skills. There are actually some really tough combo challenges in here for each character that help you learn their more intricate techniques.

For those looking to throw down online, there are plenty of ways to do so. There are both casual and ranked matches depending on what the player is looking for. There’s also a wonderfully cute lobby, where you load in with chibi characters.

The lobby is massive, with locales from around Marvel, including the X-Mansion and Wakanda, with plenty of NPC characters loitering around. Arcade cabinets are placed all over, where you can see other players and meet them at a cabinet to go into a fight. There are even mini-games, like a simple basketball game, to kill time between matches.

The lobby is honestly one of my favorite implementations of an online play space. Seeing everyone’s chibi characters running around and jumping at each other in hopes of someone following them to an arcade cabinet is just really cute.

This ultimately brings a sense of community and shared space that arcades once did. It’s become my default way to find matches online, sometimes just running around to see how other people have customized their avatars. 

Who knew that chibi fighters could be so much fun?

The biggest additional mode, though, has to be Arcadia Rumble. It takes the chibi versions of the characters that you use in the lobbies and pits them against each other in frantic dashes around the hub area.

Here, you run around and collect power-ups before competing in fights, with each progressive round shrinking the area, until one winner gets crowned for having the most points. It’s a fun mode with chaotic elements that feels like a throwback to 3D platform fighters from the PS1/PS2 era. 

Each character starts with a handful of skins, but plenty more are waiting in the wings to be unlocked. Some you get for episode mode, others for playing online, while some are hidden behind other modes. It’s so nice to see a game actually give you reasons to play, with some of the colorways truly awesome.

Some are comic references, for sure, but others straight up become new characters. Green Goblin has a skin that makes him look like the Hobgoblin, Hulk can become the Red Hulk, and Danger has a color combination that makes her look like Viv Vision. They look fantastic, but for Marvel fans, there is some really cool use of color here.

Technically sound and visually stunning, Marvel Tōkon is also just plain fun.

The art style and graphics are another clear highlight. Character designs are entirely on point, with some of these new suits being all-timers. They’re angular and stylized, perfectly blending Western comics and manga.

The environments follow the same design philosophy, each new area intensely detailed in the background, but never distracting. Sending players crashing and exploding from one map to another makes me smile every time, and these super moves are always a joy to watch. 

On PS5 Pro, there are absolutely no technical issues whatsoever. While I haven’t played the PC version, reports from players who do have been far less kind during the launch weekend. There was an update dropped at the beginning of the week that seems to have cleared things up for many, but not all. PC players should definitely wade in cautiously, but for console players, it’s technically sound. 

Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is everything it needed to be. The character designs and roster are fantastic, with deep skill expression for those willing to put in the time while being approachable to new players. It’s stuffed with content that actually rewards you with different colorways for playing.

It nails the one-more-match feeling that’s integral to a fighting game, with the lobby being a fun social experience that brought me back to my younger days in arcades. To put it simply, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is so much fun and is a must-play.

Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls is available now on PlayStation 5 and PC.