Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls review: “A stunning comeback for superhero fighters essential for Marvel and genre fans alike”

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Arc System Works and Sony Interactive Entertainment have set out their stall for Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls, a team-based superhero fighting game coming to PlayStation 5 and PC, with a fresh trailer shown during a recent State of Play alongside an early review verdict describing it as a strong return to form for the superhero fighting genre. Producer Takeshi Yamanaka used the reveal to introduce a new playable roster and to outline the game's story-driven Episode Mode, while a separate hands-on review focused on how the fighting mechanics themselves hold up.

According to Yamanaka, the trailer marked the first in a planned series of team reveals, introducing a group dubbed the Unbreakable X-Men. In the game's fiction, a new threat approaches Earth just as many established X-Men are sidelined following an earlier battle, leaving Storm to lead a smaller replacement squad under Charles Xavier's guidance. The line-up includes Magik, wielding her self-created Soulsword; a scarred but still formidable Wolverine; and Danger, the once-dormant training-room AI from the Danger Room that has since gained sentience and a physical form. Yamanaka framed the story as one of mutants distrusted by the humans they continue to protect, though he gave no detail on how the plot resolves.

The review, meanwhile, situates Marvel Tōkon within the lineage of Marvel vs Capcom 2, long regarded as a landmark of the genre, and credits Arc System Works — known for technically demanding anime-style fighters — with finally producing a worthy successor by refining ideas from its earlier titles BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle and Dragon Ball FighterZ. The reviewer highlighted the game's four-versus-four team structure, in which squads share a single health bar and only the lead fighter starts on stage, with teammates providing assists or swapping in once an 'assemble' gauge fills. Simplified single-button inputs were praised for making flashy combos accessible to newcomers while still rewarding the careful team management that separates skilled players from casual ones.

The two accounts otherwise diverge in focus and tone: Yamanaka's production update, tied to the State of Play showing, concentrated on narrative ambitions — an Episode Mode built with Marvel Games and a veteran Marvel comics writer, presented as motion comics with manga-style art, full voice acting in ten languages, and support for PS5 features such as Tempest 3D AudioTech and DualSense haptics — alongside a mention of rewards for early purchasers of different launch editions. The review, by contrast, was more mixed on this front, describing the five-episode story mode as lightweight and largely a tutorial dressing, and singling out other additions such as the Arcadia Rumble party mode and arcade ladders as comparatively minor next to the core online and offline matchmaking options, even as it rated the underlying fighting system itself very highly.

• blog.playstation.com
• www.theguardian.com