Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls тоглоомын тойм: Тулаант тоглоомуудын шинэ жишиг

Author’s Note:The author was provided a PlayStation 5 code for the purpose of this review. Additionally, this review does not account for the numerous issues plaguing the PC version of the game, but a patch for the PC version has been issued and aims to address many of the problems.

2026 has been generous to fighting game fans, though mostly in the realm of tag-based fighters. 2XKO, Invincible VS, Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game, and continued DLC content updates for Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8. There are a lot of fighters to pick from nowadays.

Despite being yet another tag-based fighter, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls manages to carve out its own identity and place among the modern greats. The earlier betas made me apprehensive about the game. The characters felt same-y after a while, and the tag mechanics felt awkward, cumbersome, and unintuitive. Arc Systems Works took all of that early feedback and turned the ship around.

A 20-character (plus an unlockable character) roster, nine stages, and a limited assist function may seem like knocks against the game on paper, but the depth of Marvel Tokon is surprisingly deep. We could see the tip of the iceberg during the betas, but it wasn’t until the full release this past Friday that we could fully explore beneath the surface, and there is a lot to explore in this game–both in terms of battle strategy and content.

The inevitable conversation of “which fighting game is best” is probably already underway between all of this year’s releases, but particularly with Avatar Legends because its release was also recent. It’s fine to have and enjoy two cakes, and both games will likely appeal to fighting game fans because both are magnificent. Fighting game fans are eating well in 2026.

While I do have some concerns about the game’s defensive mechanics, balance, and story mode characterizations, the overall package here is impressive, and I found myself staying up until the wee hours of the morning saying, “just one more set.”

Beautiful Comic Book-Style Action

To put it simply, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls isn’t just the best-looking fighting game to release this year; it’s the best-looking game of the year, period. The gorgeous comic-book art style and aesthetic highlight all of the positive aspects of the iconic Marvel characters. From the slick menu designs that feature your currently played team of characters to an in-depth avatar customizer for lobbies, and even the voiced comic-book-style Episode Mode, everything comes together to create polished eye candy, top to bottom.

In motion, the game looks and runs well, too. The supers are flashy and not too long, while each character has a distinct general visual identity. Surprisingly, that also makes each character “feel different,” at least in my head. For example, Carnage stands tall and moves slowly when moving forward, while Spider-Man stays low to the ground and is agile. These small but important details do wonders to set the game’s character designs into beautiful motion.

The game’s story mode, called Episode, is divided into five different campaigns, each focused on one of the game’s main teams: Fighting Avengers, Amazing Guardians, Unbreakable X-Men, Knights of Doom, and the Samurai Outriders. The team leaders (Captain America, Spider-Man, Storm, Dr. Doom, and Ghost Rider) serve as the main characters for each campaign, with an invitation sent to them to participate in a fighting tournament to defeat each other for the one chance to take a crack at the appropriately naked Champion boss, before he destroys the planet.

The Episode Mode consists of 10 main chapters for each team. They all follow a fairly redundant setup and structure, even borrowing the same opening cutscene. The first four chapters revolve around gathering the team, then the next is facing off against a mini-boss, and then the next four are facing off against the other teams, and the final chapters are focused on defeating the Champion.

Each Episode is a little over an hour long, so with roughly 5.5-6 hours worth of straight story content, Marvel Tokon is one of the most well-rounded modern fighting game packages. Most of the story is told in a visual graphic novel form, and while they aren’t as cinematic as games like Mortal Kombat or Injustice, I found myself enjoying these more than the story modes in those games. The story is allowed to let itself unravel without being restricted to four or five chapters per character and then forcing a perspective shift.

Some of the characterizations are a little odd, like Blade’s dialogue and Deadpool’s fairly tame fourth-wall-breaking antics, and Magneto’s entire motivation being bitter from not being allowed to join the X-Men team. Also, the writing is not Shakespeare by any stretch of the imagination. It’s not offensively bad, and it serves its purpose just fine. Every character gets a chance to shine, and the game does a good job of making sure no character feels like a “jobber,” even if they just so happen to be a villain.

4v4 Tag Carnage

Marvel Tokon is the first fighting game to feature 4v4 tag-team combat. 3v3 has been commonplace, with classics like Marvel vs. Capcom 2 dominating arcades, but the 4v4 here is both simple to understand and just mechanically dense enough to allow for the fighting game “sauce” that so many desire, without feeling overwhelming to anyone who just wants to pick their favorite Marvel character and smash buttons.

Selecting the first two characters of your team guarantees you immediate access to them, while the other two characters on your team must be unlocked either by losing a round or smashing the opponent into the wall. The assist system is universal: every character has a projectile, a launcher, and a unique move for their assist calls, but only one can be used each match per character, and it all depends on the order the team is chosen.

The natural pace of the game is slower than one may expect, with each player having four characters, meaning that all eight characters can end up on the screen at once. However, the general speed of the game is not as fast as Avatar Legends or Marvel vs. Capcom.

The combo system is also easy to understand. Lights chain into mediums, which chain into heavies, which can chain into specials, which can chain into supers. But it’s the assist system where things get chaotic. The versatility of the assist system seems trivial at first, but learning how to tag into other characters during certain attacks to chain much more complex combo strings is a blast to figure out. You can play the game with just your main point character and the assists, but the game rewards you for using your whole team and creating stylish combos by giving you more damage.

In the betas, the use of auto-combos gave many Dragon Ball FighterZ players horrific flashbacks of auto-correcting mid-air auto-combos. I’m happy to say that the auto-combos have been significantly tuned down in the final version. They still have a use, like landing a poke and being able to guarantee a wall break to get another character on your team, but the damage isn’t too serious, and almost all of them are unsafe on block. Covering with an assist also becomes risky because mashing auto-combos means you are probably not blocking, which can lead to the opponent getting an opening that hits for a ton of damage.

Fixing an issue from the early betas, the tag and assist buttons have now been separated, making Marvel Tokon a 5-button fighter. Now, it’s easy to call the correct assist and still tag to the assisting character.

Out of the 21 characters, I spent the most time with Green Goblin, Carnage, Loki, and Magneto. I dabbled with everyone else, and I found the game balance to be pretty good for a launch build. I do have some concerns about how oppressive Green Goblin and Spider-Man’s mix-ups are, but overall, every character feels strong. That’s especially impressive considering this is a tag fighter, and those are usually busted at this point.

The only mechanical issue I have is with the defensive mechanics. The game allows for a Crossover attack and an Assemble Counter. Both of these happen frequently in a match, and while the Assemble Counter can also be countered by the opponent on a read, it often is a get-out-of-jail-free card, especially online. The defensive mechanics do need to be there in a game in which you can be comboed from full screen on repeat using specific assists, but I wonder if the game needs a push block system to add a layer of decision-making. It’s not the end of the world, but the Assemble Counter in particular can drastically slow down the pace of matches. Crouching heavy is also an incredibly strong anti-air that Dragon Ball FighterZ fans will remember well.

A Little Bit of This, A Little Bit of That

In addition to the Episode mode, Marvel Tokon features an All-Star Arena, which is an arcade mode with branching paths, a survival mode, Arcadia Rumble, which is a mode that lets you play either offline or online with other people using your avatar character to gather points and then end each round with a normal fight against a selected opponent, local versus matches, ranked matches, casual matches, lobbies, combo trials, tutorial mode, and an extensive training mode.

It’s a pretty sizable package featuring more content than I expected. The best part? All of the content in the game is fun, except for the pesky Survival boss fights near the end of the 100-fight gauntlet. The lobbies are gorgeous, and while they are totally optional, the amount of detail on display is immaculate. There are cabinets for first-to-one, first-to-two, and first-to-three matches. There is an area to begin casual and ranked matches from the lobby. There are mini-games to play, like shooting basketball in front of the X Mansion.

Combine all of that with the social aspect of lobbies and the competitive nature of ranked fighting games, along with buttery smooth rollback netcode, and this is one of the best-valued fighting game packages in recent memory.

Final Score: 9/10

With a content-rich package, a solid roster full of popular and obscure picks, a deep-but-accessible combat system, and a good amount of single-player content, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is a knockout and is an easy recommendation for fighting game fans.

I would have liked to have seen a bigger focus on the teammate characters for each team in the story, and I have some concerns about the long-term meta of the defensive mechanics, but any concerns I have will likely be alleviated by future patches. A patch has now rolled out for the PC version of the game, so I’m hoping that the patch fixes the game for PC players, so more people can enjoy the game on the platform of their choosing.

2026 is the year of fighting games in so many ways, and Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is yet another stellar game in this already-stacked year, and I can’t wait to play it for many years to come.