Marvel Tokon Is Now Out and the PC Port Is Still Dreadful

The game that only got a PC open beta two weeks before release is shockingly having a pretty rocky launch on PC. According to people diving into Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls on release, while the release version doesn't have some of the issues they saw during the beta, it's still not in a good enough state.

One of the most bizarre issues people have spotted at the moment, is that random stage select can lead to discrepancy between players and spectators, which leads to a desync.

However, the most pressing issue right now is performance. A lot of people are running the game with stutters at best and horrible slowdowns at worst, even when they fulfill the hardware requirements.

Rather embarassingly this showed up even during the content creator tournament when Max was fighting against BoxBox.

Much of this seems to be tied to abysmal anti-tamper technology that places a major load onto the CPU, and since it was previously used on Concord, it feels like clear evidence of Sony having massive detrimental impact on quality of the game.

And with Theia being more litigious, any workarounds that people discover will have to be kept on the down low.

So, overall, Sony reused anti-tamper software from a game that was shut down less than a month after launch, all to deter the pirates and stop cheaters in the genre where they are notoriously uncommon.

And for that, you get:

• Worse performance.
• Less detailed educational resources.
• Mods are harder to make, including potato mods that made the game more accessible.
• The game can't be played on Linux, which includes Steam Decks and Steam Machines.

Not to mention, even if none of these are relevant to you, and the game runs fine on your machine, guess what? You're still affected. Fighting games are played against other people, and if their system is struggling you are going to feel that when the netcode starts chugging.

This is one of the worst launches Arc System Works had in a long while, and it's sad how much of this could've been avoided if Sony just funded the game without interfering with its development.