Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls Review - Brilliant Fighter, Ugly Launch

I have been waiting for a proper Marvel fighting game for years, and Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is very nearly it. Developed by Arc System Works together with PlayStation Studios XDev and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment, it launched on 6 August 2026 for PS5 and PC (Steam and Epic Games Store). It is a 2.5D 4v4 tag-team fighter with 20 characters at launch, arranged into five teams of four, and more already confirmed as DLC.

The fighting is the best part by a mile

Arc System Works knows what it is doing, and it shows in the first ten minutes. Tokon looks like a comic panel that learned to move: bold outlines, absurd screen-filling supers, a camera that snaps in for the big hits. But the important thing is that it plays fast without playing loose. Four fighters per side sounds like chaos, and it can be, yet the assist and tag system is built so you always understand who is on screen and why. Spider-Man swinging in to break a corner sequence, Doctor Doom holding a wall of projectiles while your point character resets - it produces the kind of moments Marvel vs. Capcom fans have been chasing since 2011.

It also respects newcomers more than most anime fighters. There are simplified inputs, genuinely useful character guides, and a training mode that explains combo theory instead of just handing you a dummy. Episode Mode is thin story-wise, but Arcade, All-Star Arena and the Arcadia Rumble modes give you plenty of offline reasons to keep the game installed. Rollback netcode is here, cross-platform play works, and my online sets on PS5 were clean.

And then there is everything around the fighting

The PC version is the problem. Micro-stutters during matches are common, some players are getting launch failures outright, and the anti-cheat currently blocks Linux and Steam Deck users entirely. In a genre where a single dropped frame decides a punish, that is not a cosmetic complaint - it is a design failure. Steam users have made that clear: at the time of writing the game sits at Mixed with roughly 43 percent positive reviews, which is dangerously close to Negative territory.

The rest of the anger is about friction Sony chose to add. A PlayStation account is required for online lobbies, ranked, casual and private rooms on PC. And the pricing is genuinely hard to defend: 69.99 euro for the standard edition, 94.99 for Digital Deluxe, 109.99 for Ultimate, on top of a 20-character roster with paid characters already lined up. That is a lot of money for people in this region, and a lot of money for a fighting game that still needs patches.

Verdict

Underneath the mess, this is a superb fighter - the most exciting tag game since Dragon Ball FighterZ, and the only Marvel game in a decade that respects the source material mechanically. But I review what shipped, not what will ship in November. On PS5 it is an easy recommendation. On PC, wait for two patches and a sale. Great game, careless launch.

Score: 7/10

Image: Arcade Perfect / CC BY 2.0, source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Retrovolt_Arcade_2017_-_Arcade_Machines_1.jpg