Action · 2026 · Arc System Works · local · online
Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls
A Marvel fighting game where even the unpractised look good — and whose problems all lie elsewhere.
What it is about
A fighting game with Marvel characters by Arc System Works, who previously made Guilty Gear and Dragon Ball FighterZ. Each side runs a team of four and swaps them mid-fight.
The inputs are simplified: good-looking attack strings come out without practised button combinations.
Our verdict for couples
Two verdicts pull apart here, and the reason matters for you. The press gives the game 85 points, players on Steam only 47 percent approval, and virtually all the criticism concerns things that do not occur on a sofa: a forced PlayStation Network sign-in, processor load, and online play that many call unusable. One review puts it as a conditional recommendation: take it if you stick to local versus and the single-player modes. That is precisely our case. What remains then is a fighting game two people can start on an evening without either of you practising button combinations — the inputs are simplified, and the attack strings still look like the comics. It is still a fighting game, though: whoever plays more often wins, and you notice immediately.
Pros
- At the television one copy is enough, and no network account is needed
- Simplified inputs: the attack strings look good even without practice
- Each side runs four characters and swaps mid-fight
- A fight takes minutes — the evening ends whenever you want
Cons
- Whoever plays more often wins clearly — for pairs of very unequal practice this turns one-sided fast
- Online play requires a PlayStation Network account even on PC, and it is not available everywhere
- Online, many report stutters and fights drifting out of sync
- The processor load on PC is strikingly high, even on strong machines
Suitable from
Hobby
- Conflict potential
- Heated
- Cosiness
- Tense
- When you can stop
- After 15 minutes
- How long it lasts
- No ending
What other co-op fans say
Only forty-seven percent approval across more than five thousand reviews — and reading them resolves the contradiction with the press quickly: almost nobody writes against the fighting game itself. The simplified inputs get praised, the swapping between four characters, and the single-player modes. What drags the approval down is everything around it: the mandatory PlayStation Network sign-in, the processor load, and above all online play that many call unusable. Several reviews recommend it explicitly to those who play locally.
- “Buy this only if you play exclusively on a Windows 11 PC, do not mind linking a Sony account, and plan to focus on local versus or single-player modes.”
- “On a fundamental level, this is a ridiculously fun fighting game. However, the game clearly wasn’t quite ready for release.”
- “One of the things that I enjoy the most is having fun with friends, this thing is almost completely invalidated by poor netcode and/or poor optimization.”
Summarised by machine from 60 Steam reviews, not written by our editors. The quotes appear verbatim in those reviews.
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