Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls review: has Marvel finally got its great fighting game?

When a Marvel fighting game lands on the market, it's hard not to think of Capcom, given how much the Japanese studio shaped the history of super-hero VS Fighting. But as you know, all good things come to an end, even the best partnerships (RIP Jeuxactu), and that's the case for Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls too. Exit Capcom, welcome Arc System Works, who after years spent on licences like Guilty Gear, BlazBlue and Dragon Ball FighterZ, now take on one of the most iconic universes in popular culture. And rather than simply copying the Marvel vs. Capcom formula, the Japanese studio tries something different, with 4-on-4 bouts that are spectacular and, on the face of it, accessible. But behind its very mainstream exterior, Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls has some lovely surprises in store, especially if you grew up with an arcade stick in your hands.

4v4, not 4x4

The first pleasant surprise is seeing that Marvel Tōkon Fighting Souls isn't simply out to reproduce what has already been done in the field. You could easily have imagined Arc System Works taking the broad strokes of the Marvel vs. Capcom games, adding its trademark animations and simply swapping out the characters, and that would no doubt have shifted copies without much difficulty. Instead, the Japanese studio set out to answer a fairly simple question: how do you get four characters to coexist and work as a tight-knit team? Part of the answer lies in that shared health bar. Because in Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls, you pick four fighters, but you aren't juggling four separate health pools. The whole team shares the same gauge, which immediately changes the game's philosophy. So you don't necessarily need to play all four members of your team perfectly. There's nothing stopping you, for instance, from building your strategy around one main character and using the other three as assists.

It's a rather clever decision, because it removes part of the psychological barrier that usually comes with tag fighters. When you're asked to master three or four characters in a game like Dragon Ball FighterZ, the mountain quickly looks unclimbable, especially for a mainstream audience. Here, you can start by learning to play Spider-Man, then gradually discover what the other three — Wolverine, Hulk, Magneto, or whoever else is on your team — can bring to the table. Better still, if you fancy investing more seriously, the system is rich enough to let you. Because yes, behind its mainstream approach, Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls carries that Arc System Works aura, with the kind of depth that lets the diehards go further. The proof: the four characters haven't simply been stacked one behind the other — their position in the team also influences the assists they can offer. They double as assists, with attacks that vary depending on where they sit in the line-up. Some fighters are particularly effective in a support role, while others are far more interesting as your point character. This mechanic gives the game real personality, because you can perfectly well build your team around a single fighter and use the other three purely to back them up. But you can also learn to juggle several characters to multiply your offensive options and throw your opponent off balance. So it pays to think carefully about your quartet before you even start a match. 

Less is more. More or less.

One of the most welcome qualities of Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls is that it was built so you can have fun straight away, before you've even worked out what it is you're doing. The modern controls, in particular, let you pull off special moves without having to go through the traditional quarter-circles every time. It's an excellent way in for players who have never really dabbled in the genre, and even veterans can find something in it when they just want a quick game. But again, make no mistake: Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls isn't a simple game, nor a simplistic one. That's probably where a good chunk of its appeal lies, because the more you play, the more you realise the mechanics stack on top of one another. Assists let you extend combos or keep up the pressure, character switches open up new possibilities, and the game has a genuine defensive system, far more interesting than those first few matches might suggest.

The crossover lets you bring in a partner to break your opponent's pressure, but that mechanic can be read in advance with the crossover reflect, which flips the situation and leaves the opponent exposed. On top of that there's another mechanic, the parry, which can absorb certain attacks before opening up a counter-attack. I can feel I've already lost some of you, but honestly, if you're used to fighting games, all of this is fairly easy to grasp on paper. Mastering it mid-fight, though, is another story entirely. And that's exactly what I like about Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls, because the game doesn't demand you know all its subtleties right away, yet it gives you enough to make you want to dig them out.

It's clear that Arc System Works was constantly hunting for the sweet spot between spectacle and readability, and it hasn't always found it.

There is, however, one problem that crops up regularly in Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls, especially during the first few hours: the assists, which aren't always as intuitive as they ought to be. The timing for calling in a partner, for instance, is pretty strict, and some situations give the impression that the game is flat-out refusing your input. You press, nothing happens, then a few seconds later you realise you had to wait for a precise window, or that the situation simply didn't allow the intervention. It's rather frustrating, it has to be said, especially while you're still learning. Thinking about it, that rigidity was probably designed to stop fights becoming completely uncontrollable, but it sometimes has the opposite effect. Because once all eight characters are on screen, assists can chain together at a mad pace and it becomes frankly difficult to work out who just did what. Yes, the spectacle is explosive, but the readability of the fight takes a clear hit. And really, that's quite telling about Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls as a whole. It's clear that Arc System Works was constantly hunting for the sweet spot between spectacle and readability, and it hasn't always found it. All the more of a shame given that Arc System Works seems to have put enormous effort into making its game accessible.

A 21-star cast

With 21 characters at launch, Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls isn't especially generous for a game built around teams of four. That's probably one of the few criticisms that's hard to dodge. Because, well, five teams of four works fine for showing off the concept, but it also means opposing line-ups are going to start repeating themselves pretty quickly. And yet I never felt the roster had been thrown together, because despite a few names that will be obscure to the average player, Arc System Works has favoured personality over quantity. Spider-Man doesn't play like Iron Man, who doesn't play like Magneto, who has nothing in common with Deadpool. The studio even went digging for some less obvious picks, which gives the cast a particular flavour. And yes, Ms. Marvel earns her moment in the spotlight, as do Magik and Danger, who stand out for their sheer aggression. Their inclusion is one of those choices that shows the studio didn't simply pick the most bankable faces in the licence. The work done on Deadpool is also particularly good fun, given the character can obviously break the fourth wall. But Arc System Works has pushed the idea quite far, packing his animations and attacks with references to the history of the VS fighting genre.

Otherwise, a few seconds in front of Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls is all it takes to realise you're not at Capcom. On the contrary, the Arc System Works signature is everywhere. The extremely detailed animations, the special attacks overflowing with effects, the characters who look like they've stepped straight out of a comic book in motion: it's hugely satisfying to watch. The studio had in fact explained that it first experimented with an approach more inspired by the American comic book (a tautology, I know) before ultimately pushing the game towards an anime aesthetic, far closer to its usual identity. And that was probably the right call, because the result is frankly gorgeous, particularly during the ultimate attacks and the scene transitions. The backdrops are also packed with little details that reward attentive fans.

Solo del mar

As with a lot of fighting games, you feared the worst for the single-player mode, with a token plot serving simply to justify a string of fights. And while the story of Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls obviously isn't going to revolutionise the genre, the Episodes at least have the merit of being well written enough to make you want to see what happens next. No doubt because Kieron Gillen penned the dialogue and used the format to make the interactions between the various characters land. It works particularly well with Deadpool, but also with Doctor Doom, whose ego and personality are exploited to perfection. Some unlikely pairings work far better than you might have imagined, too. And the presentation in comic panels adds to the identity of a mode that's really not uninteresting. Each team gets its own art direction, and the whole thing is polished enough to feel like reading a short Marvel story rather than mechanically grinding through fights.

In fact, the problem is more one of quantity, since the Episodes are relatively short and the single-player content generally lacks density for a game that could have turned this part into a genuine gateway to its mechanics. It's a shame, because there was room to do far more, but at least the learning side of things is particularly well thought out. Paradoxically, it's in the training tools that Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls perhaps best shows what it wants to become. The general tutorial is fairly indigestible at first, as it tries to explain a huge amount very quickly and doesn't always manage to prioritise the information. But once you're past that first stage, things get a lot more interesting. Each fighter has their own guide, with their moves and their quirks, but above all challenges that require you to understand how their gameplay works.

To be continued in the next Episode

The level missions are probably my favourite system. Rather than simply asking you to reproduce a button combination, they impose constraints: hit a certain damage threshold, start a combo in a particular way or work in several specific attacks. In other words, the game asks you to think and, above all, to analyse. It's an excellent way to learn a fighting game, because it pushes the player to understand why a combo works rather than just memorising a sequence.

Outside the Episodes, Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls offers several modes to extend the experience, notably Arcade and Survival, the latter of which can quickly turn into a genuine endurance test. There's also a more laid-back party-game mode, with chibi versions of the characters and lighter-hearted scraps. But let's be honest, Marvel Tōkon's real future lies in its online mode — we're not telling you anything new there. That's where the depth of the system comes into its own, and that's also where the game will be able to evolve across future seasons and the arrival of new characters. Arc System Works has already said it wants to expand the game's content after launch, which is all but essential with a roster of only 21 fighters. If the studio can keep up a decent pace of updates and, above all, listen to its community, Tokon could quickly become far richer than it is today.

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