Since its release, people have been throwing themselves at Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls. Much debate has been had around who are the strongest characters in the base roster, but now that the game’s first big tournament has concluded, we may have an early answer.
Community Effort Orlando (CEO) was hosted over the weekend, and once again brought thousands of people to Florida to play a variety of fighting games. 1058 people entered the tournament bracket for Marvel Tōkon, giving us a great source of data for which characters are dominating in this early stage in the game’s competitive life.
Of the top 8 players, every single one of them used Spider-Man in their team. Most used him as an assist character rather than as their starting fighter, though it’s worth noting that tournament winning SonicFox had Spidey as their point character.
As for why Spider-Man proved so popular? Well, as a character he has a very strong offensive move list, and is able to open up blocking opponents with a variety of powerful blows. He’s also in possession of one of the best overhead attacks in the game, which he can pull out quickly forcing you to quickly decide whether to block while standing or blocking.
There are some other characters worth looking at, though. Blade was present on six of the eight teams, and Magneto was present on five. Magik, who was the most popular character during the game’s open beta, was the fourth most popular character and remains a strong contender on the roster, even if she has seemingly fallen by the wayside just a little.
The reaction to Spider-Man’s popularity among the world’s best Marvel Tōkon players has resulted in some to call for nerfs to hit the friendly neighborhood superhero, though it’s also worth remembering that Marvel Tōkon hasn’t been out for even a month yet. It’s probably better to leave things as they are for a while longer, to see if Spider-Man and his peers present in top-tier teams remain there given additional scrutiny.
