Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls Beginner's Guide: Combos and Assists

Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls throws four-person teams, five attack buttons' worth of options, and a tag-assist system at you before you've even finished the tutorial. Arc System Works published its own beginner's guide on the PlayStation Blog, and it's genuinely useful, but it reads like a reference sheet rather than a plan. Here's the order to actually learn things in, built on that same official breakdown.

01Pick Your Fighter by Ease of Use

Every character on the select screen carries an EASE OF USE star rating, and it's worth trusting for your first few hours instead of picking whoever looks coolest. Captain America, Ms. Marvel, and Wolverine are the most beginner-friendly picks in the launch roster, with Iron Man and Spider-Man close behind. Storm and Danger sit at the harder end of the scale — save them for once the fundamentals below feel automatic, since both ask you to track more moving pieces at once than a newcomer really needs to.

Arc System Works also recommends thinking about team composition early rather than picking four characters you like and hoping it works out. Pairing a close-range specialist with a ranged one — Wolverine up front, Iron Man in reserve, for example — means you've always got an answer regardless of spacing. The full launch roster is split into five four-character teams, so there's room to build around whichever hero you land on first and fill in the rest later as you learn what each team needs.

Don't lock in a main after one match, either. Spend a few rounds against the CPU with two or three of the higher-rated candidates before you commit — how a fighter's Light, Medium, and Heavy attacks actually feel in your hands tells you more than a star rating ever will.

02Startup Battle Comes Before Everything Else

Startup Battle is Tōkon's tutorial mode, played as Captain America, and it's split into two halves. Basics covers individual character actions — Light, Medium, and Heavy attacks, combos, and Skills — and players who already know fighting games can safely skip straight past it. Assemble is different. It covers the team and cooperative mechanics unique to Tōkon, and it's worth finishing even if you've spent years in Street Fighter or Guilty Gear, because none of that experience carries over to calling in a teammate mid-combo or trading hits across a shared team.

03Link Attacks Are Your Core Offense

The fastest way into Tōkon's combat is repeating the same attack button. Four Light presses in a row (L-L-L-L) chain into a Skill and can trigger a Break, a stage transition that resets the pace of a round. Three Mediums (M-M-M) lead into a Super Skill, and three Heavies (H-H-H) lead into an Ultimate Skill. Learn all three strings in Training Mode before you touch anything else — they're the backbone of every combo you'll throw for weeks.

Once those feel automatic, there's a longer route worth drilling next: Light into Medium into Heavy, cancelled into a Skill, into an Assemble Rush, into a follow-up attack. It's the natural next step once the basic strings stop feeling new, and it's roughly where the game expects you to be once you've cleared Startup Battle.

Treat that table as a checklist rather than something to memorize in one sitting. Most of the damage you'll do in your first week comes from the top two rows alone — the Ultimate Skill and extended route are there for when you're already winning neutral and need to close out a round.

04Guard, Assemble Counter and Crossover

Hold back for standing guard, which covers overheads and mid attacks, and hold down-back for crouching guard, which covers lows. The easiest habit to build early is holding back by default and watching for your opponent's Heavy Chain starter, rather than trying to react to every single hit — that instinct to open up too early is what gets most newcomers hit over and over in their first few online matches.

Once blocking feels natural, add two defensive tools on top of it. Assemble Counter is a backstep performed while you're not guarding that automatically counterattacks if the opponent swings during it. Crossover calls in a teammate to interrupt an incoming attack while you hold guard, buying you a free opening. Both are taught directly inside Startup Battle's Assemble section, so there's no excuse to have skipped them if you followed the steps above in order.

The two tools solve different problems, and mixing them up is a common early mistake. Assemble Counter is for when you've read an attack coming and want to punish it immediately with your point character. Crossover is for when you're already cornered and guarding, and calling in a teammate to interrupt buys you a clean opening instead of just absorbing more chip damage. Neither one is free to use, so save them for moments where you've actually read something rather than throwing them out on reaction to every advance.

Your First Session, Step by Step

1. 1Play through Captain America's Basics tutorial first. It walks you through Light, Medium and Heavy attacks, combos, Skills and character-specific actions before anything team-based comes into play.10 min
2. 2Don't skip Assemble even if you've played other fighters for years — it's where Tōkon teaches the team and cooperative mechanics you won't find in a typical one-on-one fighting game.10 min
3. 3Open the character select screen and check the star rating next to each fighter. Captain America, Ms. Marvel and Wolverine carry the most stars; Iron Man and Spider-Man are close behind.5 min
4. 4Practice L-L-L-L, M-M-M and H-H-H in Training Mode until they're automatic. These strings chain into a Skill, a Super Skill and an Ultimate Skill respectively.15 min
5. 5Hold back for standing guard against overheads and mid attacks, and hold down-back for crouching guard against lows. Default to holding back and watching for a Heavy Chain starter.10 min
6. 6Practice the backstep-into-counter of Assemble Counter when you're not guarding, and the ally-interrupt of Crossover when you are. Both are taught inside Startup Battle.10 min
7. 7Memorize which direction calls which teammate — neutral or forward for your second fighter, down for your third, back for your fourth — and practice tagging in off the Switch? prompt.10 min
8. 8If motion inputs are slowing you down, switch to Quick Skills in the control settings. You'll trade a little damage and Skill Gauge generation for consistency while you're still learning.5 min

05Calling In Assists and Swapping Fighters

Assemble Assist calls a teammate in with a single button press, and the direction you hold decides who shows up: neutral or forward brings in your second fighter, down brings in your third, and back brings in your fourth. A directional input plus L2 swaps your active character outright instead — holding back and L2, for example, brings your fourth teammate directly into the fight as your new point character.

After you call an assist, watch for a "Switch?" prompt on screen. Pressing L2 during that window lets you tag into the character you just called in, which is the cleanest way to extend a combo across two fighters without memorizing any extra inputs beyond the assist call you already know.

Start by picking one assist and using it for one job — interrupting an opponent's advance, for instance — rather than trying to memorize all three calls at once. Once that single assist is reflexive, add a second for a different situation, like extending a combo after a Link Attack string connects. Treat the four-character roster less like four separate characters to master and more like one toolkit you unlock piece by piece.

06Command Inputs vs. Quick Skills

Every Skill in Tōkon can be thrown out two different ways. Command Inputs — the traditional motion inputs fighting-game veterans already know — deal slightly more damage and build more Skill Gauge per use. Quick Skills trade that small edge for a single button press, and the official guide recommends them for newcomers outright. If motion inputs are costing you rounds right now, there's no shame in switching over; the Quick Skill button can be remapped in the control settings, and nothing stops you from relearning Command Inputs later once your fundamentals have caught up.

A reasonable rule of thumb: if you're dropping a Link Attack string because you're thinking about the Skill input instead of the string itself, that's your signal to switch to Quick Skills immediately, not a sign you need more reps on motion inputs. The damage difference between the two input styles is small enough that it shouldn't be costing you rounds you'd otherwise win on fundamentals. You can always revisit Command Inputs in Training Mode once blocking, Link Attacks, and assists are second nature.

07Episode Mode Rewards the Fundamentals Too

It's easy to treat all of this as online-only prep, but Tōkon's story content leans on the same mechanics. The Amazing Guardians Episode, one of Episode Mode's story chapters, is told through motion comics and walks through why Spider-Man ends up forming his own team, including run-ins with story figures Promoter and Champion along the way. The fights inside it still expect the Link Attacks, guard habits, and assist calls covered above, so none of the time spent in Training Mode is wasted even if ranked online isn't your goal.

“We can't wait to see the teams you create and the battles you'll bring to life.”Kazuto Sekine, Game Director and Lead Battle Designer, Arc System Works

None of this replaces time in Training Mode. Once you've got one fighter, one Link Attack string, and one assist down cold, everything else in Tōkon — the rest of the launch roster, Episode Mode's remaining stories, ranked play — opens up a lot faster than it looks like it will from the character select screen.