Last updated on August 24, 2026
I’ll admit it upfront: I’m not exactly a fighting game guy. It’s always struck me as odd, since it’s not some niche genre like CRPGs or turn based strategy, so the odds of me liking it should have been pretty high from the start, especially since I grew up on Street Fighter 5, Mortal Kombat 9 and Injustice: Gods Among Us.
Eventually I came to terms with the fact that I just don’t play fighters that well. A textbook skill issue, and Tokon didn’t manage to change my mind on that front either.
It’s been a long time since we got a new Marvel fighting game, and the same can be said about Arc System Works, whose last release was Guilty Gear: Strive back in 2021. That game had its rough patches, but fans still loved it and plenty of them are still playing it daily.
A fresh start
My main question going in was simple: can Marvel Tokon top what came before it? After several hours of mashing the controller until the buttons nearly popped out, I landed on an answer: this is too different a title to even compare fairly, and honestly, that’s a good thing. It’s the kind of game fans have been asking for, and Sony decided to deliver it with one of the best fighting game studios in the business behind it.
Difficulty wise, this is a genuinely complex game. It took me a good few hours to get comfortable with the basic controls and to clear every campaign episode, and even then, I took enough of a beating that I needed a few days away from it afterward.
Only here can you watch Blade fight Carnage
We get a big budget fighting game almost every year at this point, but this year it feels like the genre has no intention of slowing down, especially with gameplay getting more and more layered, which is exactly where I want to focus next.
Marvel Tokon isn’t a standard one on one fighter like Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter or Tekken. It’s a 4v4 brawler, where roster variety matters enormously if you want to take down your opponent in the most stylish way possible.
You can play with traditional or modern controls. I almost always go with modern, since it’s easier to pick up and it makes online matches feel a lot fairer overall.
Like any good fighter, the game offers several singleplayer modes, and my favorite by far is the Episodes mode, where different four member teams face off against a threat to Earth. Every team is put together brilliantly and delivers an experience you couldn’t even get from the comics themselves.
My one real complaint about the Episodes mode is that the final boss stayed exactly the same across every single episode, with barely any dialogue changing. You knew exactly where each story was heading, and that predictability made me lose interest fairly quickly.
Snap, and the grime is gone
One of the biggest reasons I ended up loving this game is its art style. Arc System Works is always the studio you want when you’re chasing a genuinely striking visual identity, and picking them for this Marvel title has to be one of the smartest calls Sony has made in years. As for the game and Arc System’s own fingerprint, it’s clear they love pulling inspiration from popular anime and other staples of Japanese pop culture.
The first reference I noticed in Tokon was the final boss from the Episodes mode, who bears a striking resemblance to a certain Dragon Ball character, Broly. At least that’s how the transformations felt to me, even if the writers didn’t quite manage to sell him as a truly colossal threat to Earth or the universe.
The stages are just as detailed as the characters, though admittedly some felt a bit too simple. Then again, especially in a 4v4 brawl, it’s genuinely hard to keep your eyes on the background long enough to notice any flaws, unless your opponent happens to be AFK.
The champion barks but doesn’t bite
I played this game mostly in the evenings, right when I had zero energy left after work and wasn’t in the mood for much of anything. Still, the dopamine hit this game delivered through its audio, especially the sound design on every ability I whiffed against an enemy, kept me wide awake for hours without even noticing it was already past 2am. It delivers on nearly every front, and it can absolutely hold its own against NetherRealm Studios when it comes to audio design.
I expected more from the story
When it comes to the narrative, I find myself at a loss for words, not because it’s good, and not because it’s bad, but because it’s genuinely confusing. As a fairly big fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the comics, and pretty much every other form of media Disney and Marvel have put out, I was a little disappointed to see how uninteresting the story and characters ended up being, with none of the writing really landing.
The voice acting and character design remain top tier, but the dialogue I saw during the comic panel style episode segments felt oddly distant from each character’s actual personality, to the point where I lost interest fairly early. One line from Carnage in particular, “I love children,” felt bizarrely off for a character defined entirely by terror who spends his time hunting down every Spider-Man variant in the universe.
A satisfying package overall
The gameplay won me over, and so did the character designs and cinematics. That said, the story and the repetitiveness of the Episodes mode were the parts I disliked most, especially given how high my expectations were going in.
Arc System Works is certainly not a weak studio, they’re one of the best in the business, but I’m not convinced this title is their magnum opus. Hopefully we’ll see continued support for it going forward.
Final score: 8.5/10
I’m passionate about books and video games. These two great passions represent, for me, a boundless universe where I can “escape” from reality whenever I need or want to. There are so many stories, worlds, and landscapes where I can instantly teleport that I don’t think a whole lifetime would be enough to explore them all (though it would be my greatest dream to be able to).
