Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls, the new 4v4 tag fighting game from Arc System Works (the studio behind Guilty Gear, Blazblue, and Dragon Ball FighterZ), has launched to a 'Mixed' rating on Steam, sitting at around 56% negative out of roughly 1,565 to 1,600 reviews. While console players reportedly have had a decent experience, PC players have flooded the Steam page with complaints about technical problems.
The most common complaints center on performance: users report low frame rates, stuttering, and micro-jitters, with one reviewer noting they get only 45 fps compared to significantly higher rates in Tekken and Street Fighter 6. Reports also describe extremely high CPU utilization, with one PC player noting the game hogged up to 95 percent of CPU and as much as 5,000MB of memory during the open beta, alongside multiple instances of the PlayStation PC SDK Runtime launching in the background. Some players have speculated the required PlayStation Network sign-in may be contributing to these backend demands, though testing during the beta suggested the game was simply demanding on its own.
Linux and Steam Deck/SteamOS users face an additional barrier: the game reportedly refuses to launch on these platforms due to its kernel-level Easy Anti-Cheat implementation, despite other Arc System Works titles with the same anti-cheat, like Dragon Ball FighterZ, working fine on Linux. One widely cited Steam review called the game 'aggressively hostile to Linux players for absolutely no reason.' Workarounds exist, such as running a Windows boot drive on devices like the Steam Machine, but no native fix is currently available.
The mandatory PlayStation Network login has also drawn criticism, echoing backlash Helldivers 2 faced in May 2024 when a similar requirement was added. As with Helldivers 2, this login requirement reportedly makes Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls unavailable in countries without PSN coverage.
Online play has also been affected: some users report rollback netcode issues and lag they attribute either to netcode problems or poor performance, and stuttering on one player's end can affect their opponent's experience during rollback-based online matches, including crossplay matches with PS5 players. Some console players have reportedly resorted to disabling crossplay with PC to avoid these issues.
Despite the technical issues, early player numbers appear substantial, with concurrent player counts reported in the tens of thousands, though Tōkon's day-one Steam player count of 24,498 was about half of Dragon Ball FighterZ's 2018 launch peak of 44,303. Arc System Works has acknowledged the problems in a social media statement, thanking players for launch day and saying it is 'actively investigating' reports of PC performance issues, though it has not detailed specific fixes. Reports note that experiences vary, with some PC players saying they have not encountered major issues.