First off, if you have been living under a rock, Marvel Tokon has recieved critical acclaim from various critics, indicating that this game has killed it with a Sonic Heroes-esque format in story mode that has five stories, 4v4 tag mechanics and a decent cast of Marvel heroes and villains. A while back, I made a post that claimed that Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls became the new heart of the FGC. And it will be since the game is making its first appearance at Evo France 2026.
Danger_Bot over on the official Marvel Tokon Discord announced that a patch is coming on Friday, which is today, to include fixes to performance issues on PC and provide PC and PS5 stability improvements.
And there are reactions to the post that are overwhelmingly positive because the patch they pushed in had alleviated performance issues that became the continuous point of contention since launch. It also have emojis of Marvel Tokon characters. The one with the most reactions is Black Panther. Both Black Panther and Magik came nip and tuck to each other.
Today's patch came out and it remedies the issues in the PC version and brings in stability improvements for both versions, including fixes for several crashes.
All of the reactions are positive, praising devs fixing issues on PC. This post has the Wolverine emoji having the most reactions so far to honor his Battle Reborn Suit being available to all players for free and his new game by Insomniac coming out soon. It's a good thing I'm not playing it online until the patch comes out to fix issues. But enough with the patch. Let's get into the nitty gritty of this post.
Marvel Tokon is near perfect. The gameplay is decent and its 4v4 tag mechanics became the best. The characters and environment having a blend of American comics and Japanese manga are incredibly charming. The special moves are the best in the game. It has two ways to perform special moves, one button specials with directional influences like in Smash and motion inputs and attack buttons. Both are the same, but the motion input versions deal 100 more damage than the one button versions, which is how the "Good!" text appears in game. The comic book-style cutscenes in the story are the best in the game. I could just sit there and watch them as well.
So, when you assign your team on Battle Settings, the main menu screen displays the four characters on your team and the trim color varies by character you make as leader. That is the coolest thing about this. What you're seeing now has parts of the main menu screen colored blue because Magik is the leader of my team. Now, I will be the first to say, I am not a pro with Magik as I typically am with Annie in Skullgirls or Akali in 2XKO and will be with Atom Eve in Invincible VS when it comes to playstyles. But regardless, I had fun with her.
And what is even cooler is that it generates a front cover of your four-person team when you lock it in on the character select screen. It has the Marvel logo with the player number below it, a barcode on the lower left hand corner and the name of your team. I did find me a team already. What is the initial team I'm using?
Well, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, Hellbound Shapeshifters, featuring Magik, Ms. Marvel, Star-Lord and Green Goblin.
But there is a bit of a caveat to this. I am still working on learning Green Goblin since he rides on his glider in his Skill attack to contribute to his C-tier ease of use and his combos are a part of it. Star-Lord is relatively easy to learn. He gives you a nice dopamine rush when shooting projectiles as a typical gun and ball gamer. He is not a Noel-like, but he is fun, though. Ms. Marvel is essentially the Cerebella of Marvel Tokon with a lumpsum of punches. I did a livestream showcasing this team to use online. To make myself clear, the livestream dropped before the recent patch came out.
I can't help but wonder what this team makes me think of. I can't quite put my finger on it. Oh yeah, it sounds a lot like the Adventures of Flynt Buckler. You know, the fictional storybook in Escape From Ever After entailed Flynt's mission to defeat Tinder the Dragon became a backfire and new characters join in? It exactly sounds like that.
When you used the "It's Mahvel, Baybee!" term when Marvel Tokon was announced, it served as a spiritual successor to the Marvel vs. Capcom franchise. Marvel vs. Capcom has been a long line of tag fighting games for almost three decades, with games like Marvel vs. Capcom 2 being a masterclass in tag fighting. Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, however, sold poorly to not have a second season. Well, Marvel Tokon is a spiritual successor to Marvel vs. Capcom, but it's not Marvel vs. Capcom.
But to the general public, there's nothing that can come close to Marvel vs. Capcom 2, until one game that did. And that's Marvel Tokon. Marvel Tokon proved that you can make a new Marvel fighter to be a masterclass to the general public. Again, Tokon is the masterclass of a Marvel fighter to be met with overwhelming positivity. This shows that Marvel has been a product for decades with web-slinging, slicing with claws, causing destruction and so on. The success of Dragon Ball FighterZ allowed Marvel Tokon to come to fruition as the masterclass of a tag fighter because they have rich innovation, right tools and resources and a smaller team. Speaking of, I seem to realize something.
Remember what happened weeks after 2XKO came out on console? Half of the team was laid off due to its flop at launch. The cause of this is that 2XKO has started development when the team was large. However, that contributed to laying off half of the team weeks after console release and ending active development in December after a year due to low player retention falling short of revenue goals, leaving a long chain of disappointment and sadness and the game available and online for the foreseeable future.
They knew that larger teams have no idea what they are doing while smaller and independent teams have the creative freedom and tendency to stay focused on making games properly without the distractions and establish an overkill player base. That's how Highguard became an utter commercial failure to contribute to shutting it down.
Here's the thing. Marvel Tokon was developed by Arc System Works, a small studio that Sony doesn't own. They only helped publish it, which makes it a stark difference in comparison to a modern AAA studios today. Now, imagine if a smaller, independent and focused team started developing 2XKO while staying small. Upon launch, the game would have an overkill player retention and momentum would reach the level needed for long-term sustainability because small scale teams are always focused and have creative freedom to develop games well. This is something that is basically intended to explain how Overwatch is the only commercially successful live service game that survived the impact.
Marvel Tokon isn't the only tag fighter that was developed from the start by a small team. Invincible VS and even SEGA vs. Capcom: The Next Level were developed from the start by small teams of Quarter Up and 4CYDE Studios. 2026 now has a trifecta of tag fighters that were developed from the start by small teams that have the tendency to take creative risks and drive a high-to-overkill player retention at launch. However, they have made a rocky launch like 2XKO did.
We can cross out Invincible VS for now because I don't think that it's gonna have years of support, especially since over 20 employees were laid off from Quarter Up. We'll cross it out and move on. SEGA vs. Capcom will be getting years of support like Marvel Tokon is since we have a treasure trove of characters and character themes just straight up confirmed during the livestream I watched. That's something we'll be looking forward to and I have future plans for it.
Well, that one just aged... poorly. Apparently, 4CYDE Studios has announced that SEGA vs. Capcom has been sadly shut down and was given a cease and desist order due to using Capcom's characters and likeness. While I'm saddened to hear this darning and devastating news, this one is not depressing nor maddening for me. It genuinely stinks, but that's how things go sometimes. I think the reasoning for shutting down SEGA vs. Capcom is because it wasn't pitched to Capcom for approval.
Now, with 2XKO ceasing active development in December and SEGA vs. Capcom shut down, we apparently have only Marvel Tokon left to support, which is just straight up pathetic to just support the only tag fighting game that is still bearing the Sony DRM that plagued thousands of players, especially since Sony's history of backlash-worthy foolishness like killing discs in 2028 made gamers mad. But we were told to stay tuned to find out what original project 4CYDE is working on. What will the original project gonna be? Will it be an original 2v2 tag fighter? Will it make up for 2XKO and SEGA vs. Capcom's devastating fate? We'll have to wait and see.
Remember what I said that Sona could be the Ulala of 2XKO? I had a interest in seeing Sona in 2XKO like I had with Miss Fortune, Leona, Graves, Vayne, Garen, Lucian and a treasure trove of characters I want and in seeing the singer in SEGA vs. Capcom, until I heard that 2XKO is ceasing active development in December and SEGA vs. Capcom was slapped a C&D order to shut it down. That prompted me to delete and scrap posts that talk about the future of both 2v2 tag fighters that are being left in the dust.
Fortunately, after looking through the book of Marvel characters, I have found not one, but two characters; one that could be the Ulala of Marvel Tokon and the other that could be a Lux-style shoto in Marvel Tokon. And they are Songbird and Luna Snow. Guess what? They are the two heroines that can meet the criteria. And while Songbird could be the Ulala of Marvel Tokon, Luna Snow could actually be a Lux-esque shoto in Marvel Tokon, with snow powers. Pretty cool, huh?
Not only we have Marvel Tokon because we also are experiencing another tag fighter on the DC side of things. And that is DCKO, a 2v2 tag fighter with various characters across the DC Universe. Suffice to say that DCKO is going to be left in the dust as it's gonna be a Mobile game.
Now, if there is one thing I want in Marvel Tokon, I would say an online co-op game mode. An online co-op game mode in Marvel Tokon sounds like a great idea to me. It allows four players on the same team to battle against four players, like how KOF and Dragon Ball FighterZ handled having an online co-op game mode to have three players against three players and how 2XKO handled Duo Play where two players work as a duo. Think about it, I can team up with three of my friends and take on four of our opponents. That would be straight up crazy, don't you think?
In conclusion and summary, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is dope. I loved the comic book stylization and the designs that have a blend of American comics and Japanese manga for characters. I am loving every second of it. These are my first impressions and thoughts regarding Marvel Tokon. Evo France is around the corner and that's where Marvel Tokon will have its first appearance at.
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