Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls, the 4v4 tag fighter from Guilty Gear studio Arc System Works, is available now for purchase on PlayStation 5 and PC. However, our full review will not be ready until next week.
We only received a review code at the same time as the game went live, at 4pm BST on Thursday, and as far as we can tell all other reviewers are in the same boat. Publishers are under no obligation to ever send out review codes, although this is odd behaviour for Sony as it usually sends copies out well in advance.
Live service explanation
Sony’s explanation for why this hasn’t been the case with Marvel Tōkon is because it is ‘a live service title,’ although that’s a slightly strange description to give a fighting game. Technically, most modern fighters are live service titles, although they’re rarely ever described as such – even franchises like Street Fighter that only have one entry per generation.
Marvel Tōkon is also full price, at £59.99, unlike previous Sony live service titles, which have always been around half that. Currently, only one year of DLC is planned for Marvel Tōkon, which will add four new characters and a new stage. The first DLC character is confirmed to be Phoenix Cyclops and we’re sure further long term support is at least being discussed, if not already locked in. This is on top of the extra costumes and other cosmetic items available in the Ultimate Edition of the game, which is available for £94.99.
PC availability and beta impressions
It being a multiplayer game is why Marvel Tōkon is also available on PC, despite Sony’s decision to retreat from PC ports of most of its PlayStation games. As such, single-player fare like Saros and the upcoming Wolverine will only be released on PlayStation 5.
Sometimes review copies are shipped late or not at all in order to delay negative reviews, but having taken part in Marvel Tōkon’s open beta a couple of weeks ago, there didn’t seem to be any problems. The beta included most of the base roster, offline and online versus matches, a training mode, and an early look at one of its five story mode routes (for Spider-Man’s team, the Amazing Guardians), and we enjoyed our time with all of it.
Online matches, in particular, worked very well, with no intrusive lag or connection drops, and while we’ll save our judgment for later, Squirrel Girl does make a cameo appearance in the Amazing Guardians route and even has a line or two of dialogue. So that’s definitely a point in the game’s favour.
Full roster
In Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls, there are 20 playable characters spread across five teams of four. You can pick any four characters for regular play, but each team also has a unique story route in single-player. The full roster consists of:
- The Fighting Avengers: Captain America, Iron Man, Black Panther, Hulk
- The Unbreakable X-Men: Storm, Magik, Wolverine, Danger
- The Amazing Guardians: Spider-Man, Ms. Marvel, Star-Lord, Peni Parker
- The Samurai Outriders: Ghost Rider, Blade, Deadpool, Loki
- The Knights Of Doom: Doctor Doom, Magneto, Green Goblin, Carnage
We should mention we played the beta on PlayStation 5 and while there was an online outage that interrupted it, it was eventually resolved and didn’t last the entire weekend. By comparison, the PC version was heavily criticised for its performance issues. Arc System Works acknowledged this in an X post and pledged to have things fixed by launch. That’s unlikely to be the reason for the review copies arriving late though, as publishers often limit the choice of formats available and it wouldn’t have seemed odd if Sony only offered the PlayStation 5 version at launch.
