As someone of a novice fighting game player, who dabbles, understands a bit of what it’s about but not able to play at a level where one enjoys online matches, Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls has done an incredible feat. It made learning how to play the game fun and approachable.
That high, that it feels like you want to get better because you feel like you can pull off something cool by just mashing, is great! I’ve convinced myself that maybe this time around, I should actually put in time to learn how to play a fighting game at an adequate level where I don’t embarrass myself online.
But now that I think I’m ready to take the next steps, Marvel Tōkon left me hanging. Let me explain my gripe, which could in turn lead to opportunity to further improve the onboarding process and help turn more novice or new fighting game players into lifelong fans of the genre.
Why Fighting Games Are Hard To Approach For The Uninitiated
Fighting games are a unique brand of video games, in that they are the few that are mechanically isolated from the greater video game hegemony. Over time, games have evolved to be more and more like each other, sharing mechanics and concepts. Look at how many games have some form of RPG progression, how many games makes use of the left stick of the controller to move and the right stick to control the camera. A lot of games have settled to some form of universal conventions, but not fighting games. The control scheme and the philosophy of how button presses works in a fighting game can come unintuitive, or even entirely alien, to even an experienced gamer who happens to never touched them before.
Fighting games also evolve out of a specific culture: the arcades. People gather these entertainment avenues allured by the loud, attention-seeking,coin-munching machines, taking turns in having a go at it, learning from each other, figuring out the game together beyond the printed movelist offered. They didn’t learn from following tutorials, it’s all by experience. Some mechanics and game concepts are never documented in-game, only transmitted and shared orally. Even with the availability of online connectivity and social media today, fighting game players can talk about fighting games like they speak entirely different language—they form their own notations and lexicon with dedicated community-run wikis.
All of these are great as a culture, it’s fascinating to see the fighting game community thriving, but for those who only been playing games that are easily accessible to them, getting into fighting games is an insane leap into the unfamiliar.
Think of it this way: imagine buying a skateboard. You don’t necessarily can figure out how to skateboard on your own, especially during the pre-internet times. Popping an ollie doesn’t come naturally, and popping it consistently requires a lot of practice. You need to be surrounded with fellow skateboarders, learn from each other, support each other, especially as you’ll need take some big slams as part of your journey to get good at executing a really cool trick, like how painful losses can be until you master that really technical 20+ hit combo in a fighting game.
More mainstream and conventional sports, in contrast to skateboarding, can be intuitively picked up thanks to their mass exposure and low entry barrier. As a kid, you can figure out how to play football (soccer) given some time just chasing the ball with the mates offside rules be damned. Not skateboarding, you can hurt yourself without learning anything at worst.
With fighting games’ reputation of being a real niche genre of games where its mechanical convention don’t overlap as much to the greater video game genres, and as a person who still couldn’t get into fighting games, that will always be my angle when approaching fighting games. I’m still stuck as a novice with not enough motivation or interest in really putting in time to learn by going the extra lengths and seek out help. I prefer to learn my video games through the games themselves.
It Teaches The How, But Not The Why
To the credit of developer Arc System Works, they have made the skill floor to Marvel Tokon really low, that anyone can button mash and, assuming they are facing against another player of similar level of skill, can have a fun time.
The Startup Battle sequence, as I raved in my impressions of the game’s Closed Beta test, still holds up: it does a great job at explaining the basics of fighting games and the basic mechanics exclusive to Marvel Tōkon. You’ll know what button to press, you’ll know how.
What Marvel Tōkon lacks, however, is guiding these new players to the next step, the next level of play. It doesn’t teach you why you press those buttons.
In other words, Marvel Tōkon teaches you how to play Marvel Tōkon, but didn’t teach you how to play a fighting game.
To explain this further, let me share this experience. I felt comfortable playing against the CPU at level 4, sparring over 100 matches. I’m ready to learn more. I want to learn more. Marvel Tōkon is fun! But as soon as I step into the character guide to learn and do the combo trials, in dawned on me I still haven’t grasp something the game assumed I know by trying out the combo trials.
What The Hell Is A Jump Cancel?!
This is a little pedantic, I know what a jump cancel is, it’s animation cancelling—where an action is interrupted partway because you pressed another button. But in the context of playing Marvel Tokon, this thing, listed as part of the combo, just came out of nowhere.
I was trained how to move around, do backdashes, even blocks. The game put so much attention at getting beginners up to speed but failed to get them ready for the next step in the climb.
So I struggled at this supposedly simple combo. Even watching playbacks it still doesn’t make sense how to pull off the jump cancel. I thought I knew, but I didn’t, things didn’t happen consistently. Something’s off, wrong, but I don’t know why. But a good 20 minutes of staring, pressing buttons and muttering “what the hell is a jump cancel?!” everytime the combot dropped, it eventually clicked.
Like most fighting games, you need to press the next input of the combo while the current attacks is being played. That’s how you cancel a standing attack into a jump. That’s the jump cancel. In rhythm game terms, you’re not just pressing on the beat, you pressing buttons between the beats, that’s how you flow and do a combo.
Various tips during the Startup Battle and the extra Battle Guide hinted at how you should do the input ahead of time, or something along the lines. But it never drilled it into me how important this concept is.
To a seasoned fighting game player, this is common knowledge, probably considered common sense. Combos in itself are a series of animation cancels, an unintentional bugs in the code, but linking together attacks like this is so fun it wound up becoming a fundamental feature in fighting games. It’s an old tale that one would assume everybody just knows, so why bother explaining.
This is a problem with common sense, it’s so common that it becomes unspoken what it supposed to be because explaining it is stupid, as it’s so obvious why it is. But to those who are new to the community this unspoken rule can end up completely oblivious to the supposedly obvious.
As stupid as it is having to explain a jump cancel, especially when it isn’t really a documented feature, it should be. It’s an important step a novice player needs to learn to overcome the hurdle into being a competent enough player to beat those level 5 CPUs who knows how to crouch block. You’ll need to add overheads into your pressure, or be humiliated by the AI who will block those auto-combo strings with ease and punish you greatly.
Teaches You How To Play The Game, But Not Teach How To Play A Fighting Game
And this is another thing Marvel Tokon has fumbled. The bit I mentioned earlier: not teaching you the “why you press buttons.” A lot of the training tools assume you know concepts like “pressure” and “punish.” People who don’t play enough fighting games don’t understand these concepts! It’s like talking to a person who just learned how to move the chess pieces about forking and opening theories. And you didn’t provide them a crash course what forking and opening theories are and why they matter.
I’ve remembered some lessons from watching YouTube tutorials about teaching new fighting game players that pinpoint how important it is to pin your opponent into the corner and inversely how dangerous it is if you’re stuck there. I’ve watched enough fighting game tournaments to pick up on how important the neutral game is, but you won’t ever discover this if you rely solely in learning Marvel Tōkon without external resources outside of the game.
If you really want to get good at playing fighting games, it’s clear that you still need to do some studying with experienced players, watch and read up on guides and not entirely rely on the game itself to make you into a proper player. This is even evident in the recent Evo 2026 streamer showmatch between Tyler1 and Ludwig.
The two creators, with not much experience in Street Fighter 6, took two different approaches to prepare for the showmatch: Tyler1 grinded online, playing matches after matches but was overcomed by Ludwig who trained privately with coaches.
In-game experiences are not enough to get good at fighting games, is one of the takeaways from this exhibition, and I reckon this is a stumbling block that stops many a gamer who can pull of quarter circle motions and DP inputs from actually being good at fighting games. They know how to play the game, but they don’t know how to play a fighting game.
Closing Thoughts
It’s not fair that I am singling out Marvel Tōkon in this regard, I don’t believe that many games even offer this sort of training, where it provides you with the knowledge on how to play a fighting game like seasoned fighting game players do.
But this is actually to the credit of Marvel Tōkon’s excellent onboarding and for it being fun as hell that I actually reached this level! I’ve took the right steps and now I want to go do those 20+ hit combos. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, an escape out of fighting game scrubdom. But alas, that path staircase stops halfway, so I’m back in limbo unless I look up guides online, take time to study YouTube videos, or do it the old fashion way of the FGC and find friends who can teach me and get me up to speed.
Fighting game developers have created good solutions to get people into fighting games, but it’s time that we tackle the next step and start to teach intermediate concepts of playing a fighting game. Teaching concepts like zoning but also why you zone. Game plans like conditioning the opponent. Stuff like that, that the true fighting game connoisseurs know by heart.
It’s important that you don’t just know how to press the buttons, but why you press them. And I think this is a rather important step in getting people to love fighting games. Players rave about the fun they have at this level where it’s about understanding the opponent and overcome them personally rather than a test of who can input the longest combo without dropping.
That said, the fact that Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls sparked this rant is a compliment to the game’s excellent onboarding. It convinced me I’m good enough to actually master this complicated game, and it might convince you too.
(Side Note: Despite the jump cancel bit being the jumping point for this, apparently, the one Magik combo trial I was stuck at which first introduced the jump cancel input can be done without really doing the jump input, as I discovered just before posting this. Just do a crouching hard into a hard and she jumps to catch the juggled opponent in the air. Why? Go figure. The game doesn’t explain this, so the point of this article still stands.)
Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls is out now on PS5 and PC (Steam, Epic Games Store).