Marvel Tōkon Debuts with Disappointing 44% Rating on Steam: Fans Suggest Delaying PC Release for Improvements

It’s not entirely surprising that Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls, the latest anime fighter from Arc System Works featuring Marvel heroes, is facing a rocky start on PC. The game’s open beta had already shown signs of trouble on this platform just weeks before its official launch. The negative buzz seems to have taken its toll, as the game debuted with only about half the player count on Steam compared to what Dragon Ball FighterZ, another title from Arc System Works, achieved at its launch in 2018.

On launch day, Tōkon attracted 24,498 players on Steam, while FighterZ peaked at 44,303 back in 2018. Since Tōkon is also available on PlayStation 5, it’s likely that a significant number of players are enjoying it on console. However, those who opted for the Steam version have reported various issues, leading to low user reviews.

Since the open beta, players have noted that the game is surprisingly demanding on PC. Some speculate this might be due to the requirement for a PlayStation Network sign-in, which could be running additional background processes that consume CPU and memory. Tests conducted during the beta indicated that the game is inherently resource-intensive.

One player shared their experience, stating, “The game often hogged upwards of 95 percent of my CPU and occasionally as much as 5,000MB of my PC’s physical memory. Six separate versions of the PlayStation PC SDK Runtime application also booted when starting the game, although these had very minimal impact on my CPU and memory.”

With the full game now available, it appears that performance issues have not improved much since the beta. Linux users, in particular, seem to be struggling to get the game running smoothly.

One Steam review expressed frustration: “This game is horribly optimized and they should have pushed the PC release date back until they figured this out. I play Tekken and SF6 on Ultra and never dip under 60fps. This is sad because I want to recommend this game due to how fun it is, but realistically it’s in such a bad spot right now. Wait for a hotfix before purchasing.”

In response to the launch, Arc System Works released a statement thanking players for their support and acknowledged the performance issues some PC users are facing. They assured fans that the team is actively investigating these reports, though they didn’t specify the exact problems being addressed.

For whatever it’s worth, some PC players have reported no performance issues at all, so experiences may vary. However, it seems that picking up the game on PC might be a gamble. After about eight hours of gameplay with friends on launch day, I encountered only minor performance hiccups on PS5, primarily related to online lag.