The Fighting-Game Comeback Marvel Deserves
Despite its origins as a comic book publisher, Marvel is fighting game royalty on par with the likes of Mortal Kombat and The King of Fighters. But after the disappointing Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite fell massively short of expectations, and with the release of Arc System Works' Dragon Ball FighterZ giving hyper tag-team fighting game fans a new home, Marvel's reign in the fighting game world felt at its end. Just shy of a decade since Infinite, however, Arc System Works delivers Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls, a fighter that is as much of an advancement to the genre as it is an homage to the Marvel vs. Capcom era.
Marvel Tōkon is a 4v4 fighting game, but it’s no ordinary tag fighter. Each team shares a single health bar, but you can effectively play this as a 1v1 fighting game where your team's only purpose is to come in for assists. This helps retain the high-octane fighting fans are accustomed to without the need to memorize four entire movesets. Super and special moves are also assigned to simple button presses alongside more standard fighting game inputs, making it easier to pick up any fighter.
Matches have a unique rhythm as they start with your main character and one assist, then you gradually gain access to your additional teammates. Not only does this style allow drastic momentum shifts, but it encourages you to be on the attack to gain control of your entire arsenal as soon as possible, making matches exhilarating at times.
While the hard-fought matches I played online aptly demonstrate the combo system’s depth, it’s still approachable. Despite my typical struggles with longer combos, Marvel Tōkon’s character-agnostic control uniformity helps keep the combat approachable for a wider audience. The characters are instead differentiated by unique traits and dedicated specials, which range from Doctor Doom creating barriers to Green Goblin summoning his glider.
Arc System Works is known for over-the-top fighting and absolutely gorgeous visuals, and Marvel Tōkon sits alongside Guilty Gear Strive as one of the best-looking fighting games to date. Arc's signature 3D models that look like 2D drawings remain as impressive as they were back when we first saw Guilty Gear Xrd. Just as Dragon Ball FighterZ advanced on what Xrd did, Tōkon feels like another visual jump.
A major part of the visual praise belongs to the character designs, which are all unique, fantastic, and tasteful. The anime-inspired style just works for this game; Iron Man, for example, has armor that looks ripped out of a Mecha anime, while Hulk’s exaggerated proportions and armor make him as huge and intimidating as he deserves to be.
Story mode comes in the form of Episodes about teams in a worldwide tournament to take on a cosmic entity, The Champion, who has been travelling the universe and ending planets he deems unworthy. These narratives are told through visual novel scenes featuring the pre-set teams interspersed with fights. Each Episode takes around an hour to beat, and they’re all basic and predictable. Most stories follow the same format aside from a few differences in the Knights of Doom's path.
Episodes also don't serve as a tutorial in the same way story modes in fighting games sometimes do, with only very basic introductions to each character. Tōkon does have fairly in-depth training and tutorial options, but the character-specific tutorials are little more than some combo trials. They are useful, but don't really teach you the full mentality and gameplans behind each character.
Online is standard for Arc games: lobbies, ranked and casual matches, plus a silly eight-player side mode called Arcadia Rumble. The netcode is great, with barely any noticeable issues when I've played, even over Wi-Fi.
A fighting game's impact is difficult to determine at launch due to balancing updates and the community's approach to it. Given the package Arc has delivered here, though, Marvel Tōkon is a more than worthy successor to Marvel vs. Capcom and Dragon Ball FighterZ. I believe it has the potential to become a fighting game mainstay for years to come.
