MARVEL Tōkon Fighting Souls

[one-armed dwarf]

I'll just put a thread here, rather than chat in twitch thread. 

 

Anyway, for all the stuff about fighting games being easy/hard, I think I find this a substantially harder game to get comfortable with than Avatar cause of how chaotic it is. The tags/assists/extending pressure/looping them in combos and all the universal mechanics make it a bit much at times

 

It's easy to see that if you are into comics, then this is a cool and stylish take on them. Has a similar vibe to Marvel Rivals, but while that game felt like it was duck taped together and had a mobile game vibe, this feels properly AAA and expensive and is pretty much guaranteed to be a massive hit cause of how full a package it is and how great it looks. Also it helps that the skill floor relies on powerful autocombos and defensive counters. So you can find big, explosive looking combos that just automatically go into your level 3 super or whatever.

 

Me though, I like to start things off gentle

 

I'm going to spend a bit of time trying to understand the combo building, cause you're supposed to combine some autocombo gatlings with your regular normals/specials and assist to bridge it all together. The combo building is a bit hard for me to get used to, but I saw a relatively straightforward BnB with Magik with wall carry. I'd like to learn one clever setup with the portals, some sort of anti-air (you can combo from her DP, and assist can always extend things), and that will be my project for the open beta. 

[Maf]

The reception to the beta is much better but there’s still some sharp criticism. 
 

When those starter pack videos were coming out the past week a lot of people were saying it looked boring and had no sauce. That seems to have cleaned up immediately. Some of the videos and left/right mix with the tagging and side switch combos is crazy

 

But the negative stuff is people still saying it feels slow, confused by how the mechanics fit together, the screen transitions, and some people are still unhappy with the limitations around tagging. 
 

A few months ago it seemed like this game was far too rigid and about to fall flat on its face. It seems to have done enough to get a lot of support and make people happy, but it’s not universal.
 

That said it’s a fighting game. People still moaning about SF6 despite it being the current FGC king. 

[one-armed dwarf]

I don't like how it feels, it kinda feels like molasses though part of that is at least a skill issue as I figure it out. There is a lot of skill expression in combos and pressure, due to assists. But I'm more interested in how neutral feels and how the game flows, and at the skill floor at least it just feels very clunky to me. There's something about the way an air dash works in an Arc Sys game where they feel really stubby and cease momentum quickly, or something. Then a lot of neutral gets very messy when people are bringing assists out

 

It occurred to me just now that the p1/p2 indicators are supposed to tell you who's who, is that your Blade or the other guy's, but off the bat that just feels like a huge problem with an unideal solution. But I'm getting into scrub quote territory here, it's hard to be objective when you're thrown in the deep end with tons of systems and characters to learn, which is why they push autocombos so hard I think if you aren't interested in learning all the things you need to know

 

Its just at some point, the flashiness wears off and I want to study the game, and there's some learning obstacles here that I'm going to find hard to deal with I think. 

[Maf]

Maybe a bit worrying the official Twitter account is now troubleshooting PC problems. Maybe this is very indicative of the final version. 

[one-armed dwarf]

The problem is it's very CPU intensive. But the actual issue won't (well, shouldn't) affect you with your CPU

 

What it will impact are people you match with, who are struggling to play the game. You can even see one or two matches like this on the video I posted on the twitch thread, where I get a match with 8f rollback but 25ms ping, cause the other user's framerate is struggling and the rollback has to delay like crazy and slow the game down to compensate. Strive's netcode works the same way, an ethernet cable can't do anything about that, but if you're playing against other people you will have the same issue on PS5, unless there's a crossplay off toggle maybe so you only ever see PS5 players who should obviously be able to play the game

 

Other issue is it straight up just caches all the shaders when you start the game up, during the Sony and Marvel logos, which run at like 4 fps while it's doing it lol. Makes it look super broken

[one-armed dwarf]

Yeah, I'm really having a mare with this. It feels so sluggish. 

 

My losses are my own fault, but there's just something about it that feels really off. I don't know what. The way the characters move, or their animations, I don't know. 

 

There's big, complicated and flashy combos. But it feels like you're wading through syrup to execute on them. 

 

There's a lot of positivity online for it, so I'm probably missing something with it maybe or not taking something into account or this is just a difficult skill floor until universal mechanics, character tools and movement lock into place, and playing it right after Avatar might have been a bad call. It might even be a good call to just learn this with autocombos first, learn the neutral interactions against characters so your neutral wins aren't just a three hit combo but a XXX combo that turns you into a big dragon, until you lab and get more optimised

 

I'm curious to watch a tournament near the end of the beta and see the things people learn. If I can substantiate my criticism a bit better, with more than an ounce of salt, it's that the game is not just slow but constantly is getting interrupted by wall breaks and (very long) super skills. It feels like it a happens a lot more often than in Strive, and your defense options are not as strong in here as in that game due to the inherent nature of assist-driven pressure. 

 

edit reading online, Leffen is having trouble running the game on his super computer. So it sounds like some really weird shit is going on there and it's not just raw horsepower. 

 

I wonder why it's so locked down with the EAC shit, I have to imagine again that it's a Sony mandate or something, as they're connecting with PSN and using their network to handle authentication and identities. ArcSys games don't have this problem

[one-armed dwarf]

There's tournaments today as the beta winds down, but here's one from yesterday

 

 

Definitely a 'not for me' on this one, didn't login to it today. Kinda just can't get past how the flow of it feels, pacing of matches and how hard it is to parse. I don't think people will be calling this an 'easy' game when it releases, beyond the autocombo stuff. 

[Maf]

People discovered that you can tag for free in this game (which usually

cost a resource)

 

You have to call an assist, then do a move for your currently controlled character, than complete the tag to the assist, and your first character keeps doing the move you input while you take control of the assist character and for some reason this doesn’t use a resource. 
 

So call assist without tagging > do move > then complete the tag

 

This lets you do the move you input with your first character while taking control of the new character 

 

It can be looped through all available assists as well
 

Err, maybe I’ll experiment with that on like…year 2 or something. Seems complicated 

[one-armed dwarf]

The calling out of assists feels so weird that trying to do a clean bit of tech like that is going to be frustrating. Even just using them in a basic manner, it feels laggy and hard to predict. Skill issue I guess. 

[Maf]

Tokon Bullshit edition is 25% off on Loaded

 

https://www.loaded.com/marvel-tokon-fighting-souls-ultimate-edition-pc-steam-eu

 

C’mon, PC version, I need you to pull through just one time 

[Maf]

The skins in this game are great 

 

 

 

I like the og comic book shading on the second one. Hopefully Spider-Man gets his original costume at some point 

[Maf]

Hulk is apparently not a grappler, which is disappointing. However, he does have lots and lots and LOTS of armour 

 

 

 

Command normal is “unblockable”, it says 

[one-armed dwarf]

 

Hulk was who I started playing just before I quit Rivals. He was weirdly hard and technical from what I remember, compared to other tanks anyway. 

 

Now both Rivals and Tokon have that 'puny god' animation in them, the one where Loki gets smashed on the floor

 

 

 

 

edit wait the fuck, where is my guy's nipples? 

 

 

[one-armed dwarf]

 

People breaking down all the references, bits of Street Fighter, Tekken, Battle Hero Toshinden, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Guilty Gear, some way weirder shit. 

 

He has hidden moves which aren't shown here as well

[Maf]

Was just about to comment on this^ 

 

Deadpool looks v difficult to play. Sacrifices health for stronger attacks, has a second moveset where all his specials change, all specials on either moveset can be modified depending on which of the 3 grenades he has equipped - and what grenade you get is random when doing the input. 
 

The animations and stuff are sick and I like the voice lines (Did anyone order bullet holes?) but not for me. 
 

Game unlocks at 4pm. So this is basically out tomorrow 

[one-armed dwarf]

🤔 today is tomorrow? 🤔

[Maf]

Today is always tomorrow. It’s basically already next week 

[Maf]

Decided I’m going to get the PS5 basic edition to lab and mess around with and then buy UE edition on PC tomorrow for my real account. Initially PC version seems fine. Still wait a day, though, let it cook 

[one-armed dwarf]

It's getting review bombed on steam right now. Bad word of mouth is going to be really bad for its longevity if they can't turn it around, given that PC is (for some reason) where the audience tends to live long term for fighting games, even if console up front sales are higher

 

Like, the game will do really good, but long term is important for fighters

 

Avatar can still redeem itself! Release the ranked update now while Tokon is shitting itself!

[Maf]

Does it have issues on PC? Watching Diaphone and Max it looks like it plays fine