Platforms: PS5, PC
For players of a certain… vintage, let’s say… the pinnacle of Marvel fighting games was Marvel vs. Capcom 2, originally released back in 2000 for arcades and Sega Dreamcast. Other superhero brawlers from the House of Ideas since then have mostly fallen flat – the likes of Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects or the mobile Contest of Champions are best forgotten, and even later MvC entries never quite replicated the majesty of its second outing. Now though, after more than a quarter century, a new challenger has appeared – and it might finally take MvC 2’s crown as king of 2D fighters.
Developed by Arc System Works – the studio behind the fantastic anime-styled fighting series Guilty Gear and BlazBlue – Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls brings together a host of Marvel heroes and villains for a tag-team battle with the fate of the world at stake. When cosmic big bad The Champion sets his sights on Earth, hoping to finally find a worthwhile challenger to test his own skills against, he models the competition around the first heroes of the Age of Marvels, gathering groups of four to fight it out for a shot at his curious brand of glory. The only catch? If they underperform, our blue marble goes kablooey.
The five quartets of fighters make for quite the varied roster. The Fighting Avengers teams up Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, and Black Panther (Shuri); Unbreakable X-Men features Storm, Wolverine, Magik, and Danger; The Amazing Guardians consists of Spider-Man, Ms. Marvel, Star-Lord, and multiversal spider-hero Peni Parker and her SP//DR robot; Blade, Ghost Rider, Loki, and Deadpool make up the Samurai Outriders (meant to be the Midnight Suns, but Deadpool overrode the decision); while the Knights of Doom comprise some of Marvel’s deadliest villains – Doctor Doom, Magneto, Green Goblin, and Carnage. Oddly, given the set up, the iconic Fantastic Four themselves are absent bar a glaringly lampshaded mention – surely a contender for future DLC.
Tōkon offers a surprisingly robust single-player story mode, tapping long-time Marvel writer Kieron Gillen to pen a storyline for each team, and pairing him with an assortment of artists from the worlds of American and Japanese comics to produce cutscenes that play out a living comics. These are all fairly short, eleven chapters each with a battle interspersed in each chapter, but allow Gillen space enough to establish the characters and play with some of the stranger character grouping – the Amazing Guardians is a standout here.
However, Tōkon truly excels as a 4-on-4 tag fighter thanks to its exceptional mechanics. You’ll control each team as one unit, with a shared health bar for all four members. Starting as the leader for each team, you can call on your allies to either deliver additional strikes at pivotal moments, or to tag out entirely, allowing you to take advantage of another member’s unique moves. Each fighter feels unique, from Spidey’s speedy, agile moveset – Arc has even incorporated his spider-sense, allowing players to react to and dodge attacks – to Hulk’s lumbering brute strength or Green Goblin’s suite of aerial moves on his glider. You’ll also need to build an “Assemble” gauge over the course of each fight before being able to let loose with an all-powerful full team attack.
Tōkon hits that sweet spot between immediate accessibility, thanks to a combo system that at its simplest mixes light, medium, and heavy attacks, and the complexity fighting fans crave, with a high skill ceiling. While casual players can get by on button bashing – and will have a fun time doing so, thanks to the exquisitely animated visuals and dynamically destructible stages – more competitive players will be challenged to master exactly when to switch between characters to take control of the or unleash their most powerful team moves. Already, online multiplayer is filled with some extremely competent players.
It’s crammed with niche characters and deep cut references to the source material
Marvel Tōkon also features an odd little extra mode called Arcadia Rumble, which swaps the detailed anime visuals of the main 2D fighter mode for chibi versions of the characters running around 3D maps, gathering stat-boosting power-ups in one round, before swapping back to the familiar fighting interface for the next. It’s an interesting experiment, with the 3D rounds feeling inspired by Power Stone, another classic Capcom game, though it might need a few post-launch updates to evolve into a robust experience in its own right.
What really cements Marvel Tōkon as the long-delayed successor to Marvel vs Capcom 2 though is how much respect it shows to the original comics. Like its predecessor, it’s crammed with niche characters and deep cut references to the source material, and while it never feels like it’s snubbing anyone who doesn’t have strong opinions on which version of Ghost Rider should be featured (it’s the modern Robbie Reyes incarnation, for those who do), there’s something really special in this not feeling like a soulless project forced out the door for maximum MCU #synergy. A blazingly brilliant brawler only slightly let down by its half-formed party game mode, Marvel Tōkon is a worthy rival to the best of the genre.
