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Fighting games usually force you to pick a lane. They’re either approachable enough for newbies to button mash their way through an evening with mates, or they’re so mechanically dense people start seeing trig and algebra equations manifest around your head. After spending 45 minutes going hands-on with Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls at PlayStation AU’s HQ, I’m convinced Arc System Works has found the sweet spot.
I was happily flinging Magneto’s magnetic debris around and raining lasers from the sky as Iron Man within minutes, yet every match hinted at another layer of strategy I’d barely begun to uncover. It’s stylish, immediately satisfying and, beneath all the comic book chaos, looks like it could become an absolute sinkhole for fighting game diehards or even some very lost genre wanderer who’s been lured over from Marvel Rivals.
That accessibility reveals itself almost immediately. Within a few rounds I was comfortably stringing together flashy combos, calling in assists and throwing out Ultimate Skills without feeling like I’d accidentally enrolled in a university course on quarter-circle inputs. Arc System Works has clearly designed Marvel Tokon so newcomers can experience the fantasy of looking competent before they’ve memorised this phone directory of a command list, and it works brilliantly.
If you’re also a fellow mid-tier or higher fisticuffer, don’t fret yet. The simplified controls never feel like they’re playing the game for you, but they remove enough of the initial friction that you’re free to concentrate on positioning, timing and generally trying not to get spear-tackled through three walls by Wolverine.
The clever part is that this welcoming first impression quickly starts unravelling. Every time I thought I’d wrapped my head around a character, another mechanic surfaced that completely reframed how they should be played. Assists weren’t just combo extenders. Wall breaks weren’t simply flashy transitions. Character-specific abilities kept opening fresh tactical possibilities that I’d barely begun to understand before the session ended.
That feeling of greater tactical depths became even stronger once I started fiddling with the CPU difficulty. Because science demanded it, I cranked the difficulty straight to Level 5. My decades of Marvel vs. Capcom muscle memory, respectable spacing, projectile spam and the occasional cheeky throw suddenly stopped carrying me. The AI happily demonstrated that “quarter circle plus hope” isn’t advanced technique, and I spent several rounds airborne on the wrong end of 20-hit combos.
After swallowing my pride and dropping things back to Level 3, I took a few minutes to study the command sheets, learned enough new tricks to stop embarrassing myself and managed to stay undefeated for the remainder of my session. More importantly, it confirmed exactly what I suspected. You can absolutely have fun fumbling around on day one, but genuine mastery is going to demand homework.
I spent most of my session gravitating towards Magneto, partly because he’s one of Marvel’s most compelling characters and partly because, thanks to recent events elsewhere in the Marvel universe, he felt especially topical. Thankfully, Arc System Works has given him a moveset worthy of all that charisma. At first glance he resembles the classic keep-away archetype, peppering opponents with magnetic projectiles fired at multiple angles while comfortably dictating the pace of neutral play. Spend a few matches with him, though, and you realise those fireballs are only laying the groundwork for something far more devious.
Magneto’s entire kit revolves around manipulating floating chunks of metallic debris that gradually accumulate across the battlefield as he attacks. Those scraps aren’t just visual flair. They’re resources. The more debris hanging around the arena, the stronger his supers become, while another ability allows him to absorb that floating junk and wrap himself in metallic armour capable of shrugging off projectiles and assist attacks. Suddenly, every decision has a layer of resource management attached to it. Do you keep littering the screen with hazards to power future offence, cash them in for defence or continue building towards something even nastier? It’s wonderfully elegant design because the mechanic grows naturally out of the fantasy of playing Magneto instead of feeling bolted on for complexity’s sake.
The part I enjoyed most, however, was how willingly he abandons that patient zoning game once the opportunity presents itself. Several attacks literally yank opponents across the screen using magnetism, dragging them straight into his waiting fists and creating opportunities for nasty strike and throw mix-ups. One moment you’re carefully controlling space, the next you’ve become an aggressive grappler forcing split-second guesses at point blank range. I barely scratched the surface during my hands-on, but Magneto already feels destined to become one of those characters players spend hundreds of hours mastering simply because every mechanic feeds beautifully into the next.
If Mags became my comfort pick, Iron Man quickly established himself as the character I’d probably spend the next few months trying, and failing, to properly learn. His kit couldn’t feel more different. Rather than patiently controlling space from the ground, Tones spends half the match buzzing around the screen like a billionaire mosquito armed with military-grade weaponry. Repulsor blasts, chest beams and delayed Smart Missiles constantly force your victims to think about multiple threats at once, while his Free Flight ability lets him cancel movement and reposition in ways that make defending feel like trying to predict a fly inside a kitchen.
More than once I’d launch a wave of missiles, watch my opponent freeze for a split second wondering which problem to solve first, then swoop in from an entirely different angle while they were still dealing with the original one. It felt gloriously unfair, which probably means Iron Man players are going to become deeply unpopular online.
What impressed me most wasn’t necessarily the damage output, but how naturally his kit encouraged team play. Beam assists create space, projectile assists extend pressure and his movement opens up all sorts of opportunities for the rest of your squad to capitalise. Even in my relatively clumsy hands, it was obvious Iron Man isn’t just designed to be a great character. He’s designed to make everyone else around him better as well.
That’s something I kept noticing across the roster. Every fighter had a clear identity that went beyond flashy animations and recognisable powers. Ghost Rider’s enormous chain normals threaten huge chunks of the screen, Ms. Marvel stretches herself into awkward angles that are going to frustrate countless defenders, while Storm, Doctor Doom and Magik all appeared to bring their own brand of controlled chaos. Fourteen characters isn’t enough time to develop meaningful opinions on everyone, but it was enough to appreciate that Arc System Works hasn’t fallen into the trap of making everyone play variations of the same template wearing different costumes.
That’s especially encouraging because Marvel Tokon has a lot riding on its four-character format. The obvious comparison is Marvel vs. Capcom, but after playing them back-to-back in my head, the similarities become surprisingly superficial. This isn’t about frantically cycling through four health bars while filling the screen with absolute nonsense. Your chosen squad feels more like a carefully assembled toolkit, with assists, Ultimate Skills and team composition becoming as important as individual execution.
I’m sure the competitive community will spend the next few years discovering combinations that make everyone else collectively sigh, but even at this early stage I found myself mentally building teams based on synergy rather than simply picking my four favourite Marvel characters. That’s a good sign. It means the game is already encouraging strategy before anyone has even had the chance to break it.
Arc System Works has rarely struggled when it comes to presentation, and Marvel Tokon continues that tradition with an art style that somehow feels both unmistakably Marvel and unmistakably Arc. Rather than chasing the increasingly familiar MCU aesthetic, every character has been filtered through the studio’s anime sensibilities, resulting in a cast that looks like it’s leapt straight off the pages of an impossibly expensive comic book.
What really won me over, though, were the smaller touches. Before every match your chosen squad doesn’t simply appear as static portraits while dramatic music swells in the background. They stride onto the battlefield together, exchange bits of banter and pose as an overenthusiastic announcer belts out your team’s introduction like you’ve just entered the world’s nerdiest prize fight. It’s simple, stylish and injects a surprising amount of personality before anyone has even thrown the opening knuckle sandwich.
I’m also irrationally fond of the dynamic team naming system. Depending on the combination of heroes and villains you’ve assembled, the game attempts to slap an appropriate nickname on your squad. Nine times out of ten it absolutely nailed it. Then there was the occasion my Doctor Doom-led collection of world-ending intellectuals was introduced as the “Wild Mutants”.
Er…what? Victor Von Doom didn’t cultivate intense willpower, master sorcery and graduate from Evil Medical School just to be lumped in with your misbegotten children of the atom. Give better props.
The only real presentation blemish I noticed came during dialogue scenes. Character models themselves look terrific, but lip sync is strangely undercooked. Conversations often resemble highly detailed action figures taking turns opening and closing their mouths while the rest of their faces remain almost perfectly still. It’s hardly a deal-breaker in a fighting game, but after so much polish elsewhere, it sticks out more than it probably should.
Be that as it may, I walked out of PlayStation HQ considerably more excited about Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls than I was walking in. Arc System Works appears to have threaded an incredibly difficult needle by creating a fighter that’s welcoming enough for complete newcomers to immediately feel cool, while quietly hiding the sort of mechanical rabbit hole that competitive players will gleefully disappear down for years.
I still wanna see how the story mode shapes up, whether the online experience can keep pace with the game’s blistering action, and how the complete roster ultimately fits together before pulling on my spandex for a full-price purchase. As first impressions go, though, this was one hell of an opening round, and I’m already looking forward to the rematch.
Marvel Tokken launches exclusively on PS5 on August 7th. It’s available for $99 with free shipping from Amazon HERE.