Editor’s Note: The author of this review is reviewing it solely on the game’s merit with mild knowledge of source material. Marvel Tokon is stated by the developers as a love letter to both Japanese Anime and Marvel Comics, so opinions here do not reflect on either. 

Let me begin by addressing my personal biggest bugbear about Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls. As of the time of writing, the powers that be (I presume) have chosen not to allow players to use Valve’s implementation of the Easy Anti-Cheat system. Unless that changes in the future (which is possible), this means Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls is unplayable on SteamOS or any other flavor of Linux. Though I’m displeased that I had to temporarily switch to Windows to do this review, I’m not going to let that poison my outlook. Now that I’ve at least acknowledged that, let’s begin in earnest.

Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls is, aesthetically speaking, like a cross between a comic book and an anime series from the 1980s or thereabouts. I know effectively nothing about anime in general, so I can’t really analyze that aspect in any depth. For that matter, I also can’t really provide a super-detailed critique of the core gameplay of Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls because I’m not well-versed in the minutiae of fighting games. Still, I’ll do my best. Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls is a 4v4 team-based fighting game. That might make you think of the Marvel vs. Capcom series, and understandably so.

However, one crucial difference is that all four characters you pick share a single health meter rather than each fighter having their own. Thus, though you can still switch between your chosen fighters in battle, you can’t prolong the fight by switching to whoever has the most remaining health. Therefore, I think you’ll probably be best served if you just pick whatever four characters have fighting styles you like, or even your four favorite characters out of the available roster. There’s probably someone so well-versed in the fine details of fighting games who can give much better advice than that, but that’s not me.

The overarching plot of Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls, the reason all these ragtag groups of heroes and villains are banding together to fight each other, is as follows: Earth is unexpectedly contacted by some supposedly unfathomably powerful dork who calls himself “the Champion,” and his employee, “the Promoter.” They declare a fighting tournament to determine who the four strongest fighters on the planet are. Once the tournament concludes, the team of four who won it will then face the Champion. If the chosen fighters lose against him, the planet will be instantly destroyed. You know, the usual “world-threatening intergalactic bad guy” trope.

Every possible combination of four characters you can choose has been assigned a team name, but the majority of the spotlight is given to the more “major” teams you can play as in the story mode. I’m disappointed by how generic and uninspired the team names seem to be. I get that it’s impractical to come up with a unique name for every possible permutation of playable characters, but I get the feeling Arc System Works gave the Marvel Tōkon development team two lists of words they could use for team names, from which they were absolutely not allowed to deviate.

On the other side of that coin, though, the story mode does a pretty good job of showing how the more “major” teams ended up forming. For example, I started with the story chapter on the “Knights of Doom” team, which consists of Doctor Doom, Magneto, the Green Goblin, and Carnage. Though Magneto is considered an anti-hero, his main goal of establishing a utopia for mutants where they’re not regarded with fear and distrust is arguably noble. Thus, you’d likely think he would never fight alongside the likes of two insane spree killers and the self-proclaimed “benevolent tyrant” of Latveria.

Editor’s Note: Magneto is also considered a villain depending on the story arc. 

The story mode suitably addresses the confusion you might have about Magneto’s motivations in that context as you take the Knights of Doom through the Champion’s tournament. You start off fighting the Champion single-handedly as Doctor Doom, who continues to form his ultimate strategy as the story chapter progresses. I’m not exactly surprised that, at multiple points in the story, you’re expected to fight the Champion multiple times consecutively because he keeps pulling the “this isn’t even my final form” anime trope and becoming progressively more powerful. Even though I also think that’s somewhat uninspired, it’s not a deal breaker for me.

My next complaint is one that I suspect only pedants like myself will even notice at all, let alone point out, but here goes. There’s often dialogue that plays during a fight when you switch characters or call for an assist from a team member. Many pairs of characters have dialogue lines specifically intended for each other, such as Iron Man and Captain America. However, with pairs of characters for whom that isn’t the case, there’s an obvious gap of silence and change in intonation between a character saying something like, “I’m ready whenever,” and then saying their partner’s name.

Like I said, I know I’m really nitpicking here, but I want to acknowledge it because (for some reason) it bothers me every time I hear it. On that note, however, most of the voice acting in Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls is great. A good percentage of the voice cast from Marvel’s Midnight Suns reprises their roles here, like Josh Keaton as Iron Man and Steve Blum as Wolverine. Of course, Nolan North voices Deadpool, since hiring anyone else for that job (other than in live-action) ought to be a major violation of international law at this point.

I’ll conclude by answering a few questions. Is Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls in the running to be my Game of the Year this year? No. Do I think its $60 price tag for the base edition or its $100 price tag for the ultimate edition is justified? No, absolutely not, and that’s considering I was given a review copy of the ultimate edition. Is Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls an impressive fighting game? I’d say decently so, though again, I’m by no means a fighting game guru. With that all being said, I’d generally advise waiting to grab Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls until it’s significantly discounted.

A PC review copy of Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls was provided by PlayStation Publishing, LLC for this review.

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Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls

$59.99

6.5

Score

6.5/10

Pros

• Fluid, enjoyable, intuitive core gameplay loop.
• Decent story mode.
• Mostly good voice acting, despite some quirks.

Cons

• No Linux or Steam Deck support whatsoever.
• Online play requires a PlayStation account.
• Voice acting has some weird quirks.