This has been a massive week for video games: the release of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is the headliner. However, two different fighting games are getting spotlighted this weekend, too, with a beta test and an alpha test: Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls and Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game.
I have not had a chance to test Avatar, but I participated in the first beta test for Marvel Tokon, and also put over a dozen hours into it again this weekend for the second beta test. As a long-time fighting game fan, I see what developer Arc System Works is going for with Marvel Tokon, but the game, as it stands, is a little rough around the edges in most ways, except for its gorgeous art style.
Beautiful All The Way Around
Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is a 2D fighter with 3D characters and backgrounds. The visuals are striking, the colors pop, and the comic book-style presentation gives Marvel Tokon its soul (pun unintended). Visually, this game is a Marvel fan’s dream, and it’s Arc System Works’ best-looking game to date.
Seeing Spider-Man web-zip across the stages with grace to then launch into an overhead attack is smooth, flashy, and exciting. The character models themselves feature modern designs, and they fit well within the game, giving iconic characters like Storm and Captain America some of the best designs they’ve ever had in any entertainment medium. There are still some rough animations, like Storm’s hair during her back walk (this is just a beta, after all), but the game’s presentation is top-notch. A little more polish, and it may very well be one of the more gorgeous fighting games ever made.
4v4 Tag Team Madness
Marvel Tokon, like a lot of recent fighters, is a tag team game, with players selecting four of the game’s currently announced eight characters to form their teams. The final number of characters at launch has not been revealed, but it’s worth noting the game has not had a character reveal since the game’s initial announcement, possibly indicating the game’s starting roster may not be that large. There likely will be at least one character announcement and maybe a trailer at next week’s The Game Awards on December 11.
Currently, the eight playable characters in the beta are:
- Captain America
- Ms. Marvel
- Doctor Doom
- Storm
- Star Lord
- Iron Man
- Ghost Rider (newly playable for this beta)
- Spider-Man (newly playable for this beta)
Fighting games are notoriously hard to get into for newer players, and it may seem intimidating to have a team of four characters to control, but the game seems to be designed (for better or worse) as a 1v1 game at its core. The game’s auto combo system (of which there are three different types) is performed by mashing one button. Pressing one button over and over will let new players see all their characters team up and even lead to a super attack at the end. This approach allows Marvel Tokon to be pick-up-and-play fun for people who want to see their favorite Marvel characters do really cool-looking attacks.
Special moves have also been streamlined. All characters share the same inputs for their special moves: a direction and a button. Players can use traditional fighting game motion inputs, like quarter-circle and dragon punch motions as well, which do more damage than using the simplified control. That same rule also applies to the auto combos, which do less damage than traditional combo linking. Both options are viable to a degree. I won matches mass-mashing auto combos, and I won matches playing more traditionally. However, if players want to take the game seriously, there are much better options for every character than the auto combos.
That brings me to a big point of contention with the game as it stands: the utility of the auto combos. Auto combo damage is way too high, even after being nerfed a little bit from the first beta. Performing a lot of the game’s cool multi-tagging combos is fun, but it’s much riskier than just mashing the auto combo buttons. Yes, they do less damage, but there’s virtually a zero percent chance of dropping the combo. This dynamic would normally create a sense of choice, but the issue is that it’s much easier and often safer to punish an opponent’s block string with an auto combo, which can be frustrating for players who want to learn the ins and outs of all the game’s mechanics.
I’m not saying the game shouldn’t have auto combos, as almost all modern fighting games do, like Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8, but they simply need some tuning to decrease the reward, increase the risk, and incentivize players to engage with the game’s deeper mechanics. An option to turn off auto-combos as a menu option for each individual player couldn’t hurt either.
A Tag Fighter With An Identity Crisis
There have been some improvements from the first beta. Players who do not want auto combos to come out can hold away from the opponent. Assists and tagging to the rest of your team has been made slightly easier with a Quick Swap option. However, the game, most of the time, feels like it’s at odds with itself.
Marvel Tokon is appealing to casual fighting game players (as it should). However, for those players looking for deep combo routes and strategies, it’s currently difficult to tell if those elements exist in the game. The beta does not have a training mode, so players have been forced to play against the A.I. or just do their best against others online and figure the game out in real-time. The three assists (which are assigned to the other characters on your team) all fulfill the same purpose, regardless of which character is in the slot. For example, if Star Lord is in the Shooter slot, he will shoot out a beam of energy. Iron Man does the same thing if he is in that slot instead. There are some different properties that are character-dependent, but this assist system, much like the combos and special moves, has been noticeably streamlined when compared to other popular tag fighters like Dragon Ball FighterZ or Marvel vs Capcom 3.
The simplification of the systems can make the game feel same-y pretty fast. It’s not uncommon for combos to consist of light, medium, heavy attacks, into an assist, into light, medium, heavy attacks again, in that order, and then end with a super.
That being said, this is a beta, and we currently do not have a release date for Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls outside of a 2026 window. Anything could change between now and release.
As it stands, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is a fun game, but it may not be for everyone. It remains to be seen how the final product will turn out, as there were some big changes from the first beta to this second one. It’s a beautiful game with solid netcode and foundations, and without a training mode, players can only skim the surface of this iceberg. Hopefully, there is still quite a lot to discover under the ocean.
