Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls Review

Sony wanted a first party fighting game, Marvel had not licensed a serious one in years, and Arc System Works were the obvious studio to ask. What came back is not Marvel vs Capcom with a fourth slot bolted on. A team shares a single Vital Gauge that lengthens as more of the roster unlocks during the match, and access to all four fighters is earned in the fight itself through damage and through wall breaks carried over from Guilty Gear Strive, so a round has a shape and a comeback has a mechanism behind it.

Assist types picked at the select screen decide what each reserve actually contributes. Twenty fighters across five teams is a real roster, Kieron Gillen wrote five campaigns to carry them, and the cel shaded art is the best work the studio has done.

Then there is the PC version. It requires a PlayStation Network account, which locks it out of 132 countries, and the account and anti cheat layers made it run so poorly that PlayStation players switched off crossplay to avoid matching against stuttering opponents. Console reviews landed in the mid eighties. PC reviews did not. It still sold more than 485,000 copies in its first week. A very good fighting game with a self inflicted wound on the platform where these communities live.