Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls Debuts With 60% Negative Reviews on Steam. What Went Wrong With PlayStation’s New Fighting Game?

After months of anticipation, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls, the ambitious crossover fighting game featuring comics’ most iconic heroes and villains, has officially arrived on PS5 and PC. While early reactions from console players have been largely positive, the situation with the Steam version is more complicated.

The Arc System Works-developed title actually got off to a strong start in terms of concurrent players on Steam, especially impressive for a competitive fighting game. Yet many fans were quickly left disappointed over the performance and optimization of the PC port.

Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls’ PC Port Receives Dozens of Negative Reviews

Since its launch on August 6, 2026, the Sony-published title has been met with a flood of user complaints. What should have been a celebratory milestone has instead devolved into frustration, as a significant portion of the player base has reported all kinds of technical issues.

At the time of writing, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls has accumulated 617 user reviews on Steam, of which only 40% are positive. That translates to a 60% disapproval rate among players, giving the game a “mixed” overall rating on Valve’s platform signal for a high-profile release.

Scanning through the comment section, the vast majority of negative reviews cite poor optimization, performance errors, and other technical shortcomings that undermine the gameplay experience. Several users noted that they had to lower resolutions and tinker with various settings just to achieve a playable frame rate.

One disappointed fan wrote: “I was incredibly hyped for this launch, but in a fighting game where stable 60 fps and precise input timing are absolutely critical, the current state of this PC port is completely unacceptable.” Another user said: “The game itself is great, but it runs terribly even on powerful equipment.”

On social media and Steam reviews, some users have reported being unable to launch Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls altogether. Affected players say they encounter an error message indicating that the anti-cheat system fails to initialize, which prevents them from progressing past the title screen.

“The game is a lot of fun, but Sony somehow managed to botch the PC release,” reads yet another review. “The settings menu is poorly implemented, netcode issues and poor performance make the online experience awful, and the anti-cheat software eats up system resources.”

Neither Arc System Works nor Sony has issued an official response to the ongoing backlash, so it’s hard to know whether the developers are aware of the problems or trying to find a solution.

Despite the Rough Launch, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls Still Draws Crowds on Steam

During Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls’ open beta test in late July, players similarly flagged excessive GPU usage and other hardware-related issues. At the time, the development team assured fans that fixes were in the works.

There’s no denying that such a troubled launch is a major disappointment for what was expected to be one of the standout fighting games of the year. We can only hope that Arc System Works moves quickly to roll out patches and fixes these issues as soon as possible.

Despite the rocky reception, the game has had a good start. Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls peaked at 24,419 concurrent players on Steam shortly after release, and as of this writing, approximately 22,522 users remain active on the PC version. PlayStation 5 player counts have not been disclosed.

For context, the studio’s previous major title, Guilty Gear Strive, reached a peak of 31,156 concurrent users on Steam. However, that game was not subject to the same regional restrictions as Marvel Tokon, which remains unavailable in over 100 countries on Valve’s storefront.

This geographic limitation is widely believed to stem from Sony’s mandatory PSN account-linking requirement, which forces PC players to connect their Steam profiles to PlayStation Network services. The policy sparked similar outcry a few years ago when Sony attempted to enforce the same rule for Helldivers 2 players.

Have you had a chance to try Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls? Did you encounter any technical or performance issues? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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