MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls New Assist System Feels Like A Breath of Fresh Air For The Game

One of the biggest gripes of the last beta, it feels, was the Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls Assist System. In an attempt to simplify the inherently chaotic nature of tag fighters, the game had given every character a Rush Assist- a general mid attack that served no purpose other than to extend pressure and force a guess with the game's active tag.

Having tried the new build at Arc World Tour 2025-26, it's great to see just how radically the game has changed thanks partially to user feedback. While the game has a huge myriad of changes, the biggest lies in the assists. In short, what was once a strict system with black-and-white use cases has now become much more open, as every character becomes free to use their unique assists in the middle of combos (unless called during a special move).

Combined with the ability to call ground assists while jumping, suddenly the game becomes infinitely more threatening. The tag fighter classic of jumping and calling a beam assist is well and truly back, and now you're dealing with Doom beams without the resources to prepare for my jump-in that it was covering. The faster assist calls are also a big help to this- every assist comes out with the speed of a regular move, meaning your chances of suddenly eating a DP from Magik are low, but never zero. 

Getting Crazy With Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls Assists

Speaking of the "Vertical" assist (the universal anti air assigned to down + assist), these might have been the biggest winners from the changes. Their use in combos makes them infinitely more powerful, being able to extend air combos massively if you're paying attention or even as launchers in some cases. It's one of those things I'm looking forward to practicing when the game launches- since a simple corner situation can trigger three different assists: do it partway through a jump and you can get the unique assist, hit the peak of the jump and get the air assist, or do it wrong and get the Rush assist. 

What's interesting is the way the rule the games work on the unique assists vs Rush assists. Basically, the game defines any move that's special cancellable as getting a unique assist and any special move as triggering the Rush assist. This has one notable exception: rekkas. Ghost Rider's Rekka starter is both a special move and special cancellable, and as such he can now set up the diabolical guessing game of following up his Rekka 1 with either a projectile assist to punish mashing, or enforcing his high low mix with the rekka follow ups. 

Obviously this is one of those things you really wanna do more labbing with to make sense of things. But as it is, the Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls assist buff is already one of its most satisfying changes yet- and I can't wait to further sink my teeth into this game when it launches August 6th.