Arc System Works closed out the weekend open beta for Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls, and the takeaways go beyond the technical mess. The playtest ran across PS5 and PC, hit a Steam peak of 33,233 players according to Polygon, and left the fighting game community arguing about whether the game is actually good.
Love it or hate it
For the players who got in, opinions split hard. On the upside, social media filled with clips of flashy combos, elaborate resource-based routing, and a varied cast. Polygon notes players singled out Spider-Man for his frustrating style and Black Panther for slick mix-ups, and near-universal praise went to the animation and character designs.
The complaints were just as loud. Many found the game sluggish compared to other tag fighters: slow run speeds, floaty air movement, and attacks with heavy recovery. Systems that protect against cross-ups and slow overhead attacks limit the fast, grimy mix-ups the genre is known for. Top player Sonic Fox summed up the frustration, saying, "It feels like I'm constantly fighting the game and I hate that." Polygon also flags a wonky input reader that misreads uppercut motions as quarter circles unless done precisely.
A surprising community favorite
With the beta done, fighting game player and webtoon creator AlietteFaye gathered character usage data from players at Vibranium rank and above. As Eurogamer reports, Magik came out as the most-picked character overall, ahead of Blade, Magneto, and Spider-Man. She was also the most popular point (starting) character, with Black Panther taking third in that category.
That is a notable result given Magik is relatively obscure to casual Marvel fans compared to the likes of Iron Man or Captain America, though she has been a favorite in Marvel Rivals and Marvel Snap. At the bottom of the usage list sat Danger, Ms. Marvel, and, surprisingly, Captain America, who is the game's tutorial character and closest to an all-rounder. The data only reflects high-rank players, so a wider sample could look different.
The PC port and Arc's apology
The technical trouble was the loudest story of the weekend. A PlayStation Network outage locked many PS5 players out early on, and the PC version ran into serious performance problems: glitchy visuals, frame drops, and a game that struggled to hold a stable 60fps despite its stylized art. Players pointed at aggressive DRM and forced PSN login as likely culprits.
Arc System Works acknowledged the issues on social media, writing that its team was "actively investigating" and adding, "we sincerely apologise for the impact this has had on your experience." The studio followed with a six-part thread of community-suggested troubleshooting steps (shader warm-up, display and Nvidia tweaks, disabling capture software, verifying files), while stressing these were "not officially confirmed fixes." A feedback survey went up as the beta ended.
What it means for players
Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls launches on PC and PS5 on August 6, a week and a half after the beta closed. That is a tight window to smooth out a shaky PC port, and as Polygon notes, it seems unlikely every issue gets fixed in time. If you are tracking the release, the design complaints (pacing, mix-up limits, input reading) are harder to patch fast than performance, so the beta is worth watching as a preview of what launch may feel like.
