Marvel Tokon: Fighting Soul weekend beta was love it or hate it

This weekend, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls received its first public playtest across PlayStation 5 and Windows PC, drawing in Marvel fans and fighting game enthusiasts alike. It didn’t take long for players to dive headlong into its depths, posting involved combos and flashy sequences. However, as it tends to go, many were similarly quick to get into online arguments about whether the game is good.

Unfortunately, Marvel Tokon's playtest got off to a bit of a rocky start. Almost immediately, Sony's PlayStation Network suffered an outage that made the game unplayable for many. Later that afternoon, there were several hours of server maintenance. Afterward, many players found a much bigger, potentially more long-lasting problem: Marvel Tokon's PC port is in very rough shape. Players posted videos of glitchy visuals and massive frame drops, with many complaining that the game is incredibly demanding on PC despite utilizing non-realistic, stylized visuals. Booting the game from a fresh install can lead to a choppy PlayStation Studios intro that takes several minutes to load due to hitches and stops.

While players found clever workarounds that involved pre-compiling shaders and messing with the Nvidia control panel, it was still very difficult to get Marvel Tokon to run at a stable 60 frames per second, something that is a borderline requirement for fighting games. Many chalked these issues up to the game's seemingly aggressive use of anti-piracy DRM software, as well as its forced integration with PlayStation Network (which you have to manually log into whenever you open the game). And even if you don't personally have performance issues, online play can still be quite choppy and miserable if your opponent's computer is struggling. Arc System Works has promised to investigate these issues.

For those who were able to actually play Marvel Tokon, opinions were a bit divided. On the positive side, players almost immediately filled social media with clips of flashy combos, showcasing complicated routing that involves complicated resource decisions. Others enjoyed the diversity of the cast and how varied the characters' play styles are: One user posted that Spider-Man is great at frustrating his foes, just like Peter Parker, while others showcased neat mix-ups with Black Panther.

Most are in agreement that the game looks gorgeous, with flashy animations and inspired character designs. In particular, Magik has been a standout. Not only was she the most picked fighter at Vibranium rank (this is the second-highest tier of the ranked mode), but she also gained a lot of fans for her idle animation and for being a badass with a giant sword. No surprises there; Magik has been an X-Men fan favorite in other games, such as Marvel Rivals and Marvel Snap.

Overall, the game's beta hit a 33,233 player peak on Steam, which is quite solid.

However, there were quite a few players who came away disappointed. One major complaint is that Marvel Tokon feels quite slow compared to most other tag fighting games. Most characters' run speed isn’t very fast, air movement is floaty, and attacks are generally slow with a lot of recovery frames. As a result, everything feels sluggish.

On top of this, despite being a tag fighter, which are generally known for grimy mix-ups, many of Marvel Tokon’s systems are designed to limit high-speed plays. There’s a lot of protection on cross-ups, and overhead attacks are generally slow. As top player Sonic Fox put it, “It feels like I’m constantly fighting the game and I hate that.” There still are ways to mix up your opponent, but this often feels like something the developers overlooked rather than a core part of the experience.

Lastly, the game’s input reader — how it registers incoming attacks — feels quite wonky and frequently leads to accidental moves. In particular, the game will often register uppercut motions (a Z motion on a stick) as quarter circles unless you do them very precisely.

While Arc System Works still has some time to make changes to Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls before its Aug. 6 release on PC and PS5, it seems unlikely that all of these issues will be fixed in a week and a half. We'll find out soon enough.