Marvel Tokonn: Fighting Souls finally released, and while console players appear to be having a decent time with the 4v4 tag fighting game, PC players are reporting significant technical issues ranging from stuttering to netcode issues.
The game currently has a mixed user score on Steam, with the vast majority of negative reviews focusing on technical problems. While some are experiencing few issues, others are running into problems despite having decent hardware above the minimum recommended specifications released by the developers.
User Lameme14 wrote the following on the game’s Steam page: “[I] was very excited for the game, but as is I can’t recommend it; On the grounds that I can’t actually launch the damn thing. The anti-cheat leads into a completely black window, and my CPU being clocked to hell and back. Not to mention multiple instances of the Playstation PC SDK trying to run.
“After a solid amount of tinkering, and letting the black screen sit for about half an hour the game did finally load into it. Though it runs terribly, with constant micro jitters.”
Others, including a user named Vestige, have pointed to the game’s lack of Linux support as a major downside. They wrote: “This game is aggressively hostile to Linux players for absolutely no reason. Not only is there a precedent of every (non riot) fighting game working on Linux, there is precedent of ArcSys games working great on Linux, as well as Sony published games working on Linux.”
The game also does not appear to work at all on the SteamOS without some serious workarounds. The Steam Machine, for example, can run Marvel Tokon. However, you need a windows boot drive to get the game running as producer Karim Jovian showed on X.
As for the stuttering issues, it appears the game is struggling to stay at a solid 60fps consistently. While these drops are very small in terms of lengths, they are resulting in a run on effect on the gameplay, especially during online play. You can read an in-depth breakdown of the problem here. In simple terms, stuttering means gameplay frames are being lost, which during an online match results in the rollback netcode adjusting a fight to make sure both players are seeing the same thing. This means that even if your setup is running the game with no problems, an online match with another player suffering from stuttering will impact the experience.
In response to this feedback the developers of Marvel Tokon have released a statement on social media addressing the issues, and communicating that reports of technical problems are being investigated. In the meantime, players are figuring out their own fixes. Some console players are turning off crossplay with PC altogether, which seems to be working.
It’s certainly a rough start for the fighting game, especially after the open beta went down well (despite a PSN outage). Here’s hoping a proper fix will come in soon to get things back on track.
