Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls, the 4v4 tag fighter from Guilty Gear studio Arc System Works, is now available for purchase on PlayStation 5 and PC. However, no reviews will be published until next week because review codes were only sent out at the same time the game went live, at 4pm BST on Thursday. As far as we can tell, all other reviewers received their codes at the same time, leaving no time for a full assessment before launch.
Why the Delay?
Publishers are under no obligation to send review codes, but this is unusual behavior for Sony, which typically provides copies well in advance. Sony's explanation for the late delivery is that Marvel Tōkon is 'a live service title,' a description that seems odd for a fighting game. Technically, most modern fighters are live service titles, but they are rarely described as such, even franchises like Street Fighter that have only one entry per generation.
Marvel Tōkon is also priced at £59.99, unlike previous Sony live service titles, which have typically cost around half that amount. Only one year of DLC is currently planned, adding four new characters and a new stage. The first DLC character is confirmed to be Phoenix Cyclops, and further long-term support is likely being discussed, if not already locked in. The Ultimate Edition, priced at £94.99, includes extra costumes and other cosmetic items.
Multiplayer Focus and PC Release
Being a multiplayer game, Marvel Tōkon is also available on PC, despite Sony's recent retreat from PC ports of most of its PlayStation games. Single-player titles like Saros and the upcoming Wolverine will remain PlayStation 5 exclusives.
Sometimes review copies are shipped late to delay negative reviews, but having participated in Marvel Tōkon's open beta a couple of weeks ago, there didn't seem to be any major issues. 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 (Spider-Man's team, the Amazing Guardians). We enjoyed our time with all of it.
Beta Impressions and Full Roster
Online matches worked very well, with no intrusive lag or connection drops. While we'll save our full judgment for later, Squirrel Girl makes a cameo appearance in the Amazing Guardians route and even has a few lines of dialogue, which is a point in the game's favor.
Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls features 20 playable characters spread across five teams of four. Players can pick any four characters for regular play, but each team also has a unique story route in single-player. The full roster includes:
- 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 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 criticized for 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 late review copies, 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.
