This is NOT the same Marvel TOKON

Let's go. Should I be excited for Tokon because I'm really excited? That's a great question. What a what a great question because I'm here uh with three plus hours of gameplay impressions of what is the new version of Tokon where the game has gone through a substantial amount of changes and just for some historical perspective. Yeah, I think I've been hopeful that Tokon was going to be a game that I would enjoy in the past and unfortunately all of it's amazing except playing it and I just was not having a really good time playing it. There was a lot of hope that that would change with training mode and things like that, but just for me personally, I was like, "Okay, well, this just might not be a thing for me, dude." Uh, and it's fine. It's fine. I'm going to hope that eventually maybe we get characters and things like that that'll do it for me, you know? That was that was where I was at. There wasn't a lot for me to attach myself to from a gameplay perspective. It didn't play like other fighting games. It was very weird. Flash forward to uh this week. We got to play what is effectively the Korea build that was at Ark World Tour. They put the game into my hands and I've been pretty critical of it. They did not have to invite me over to check this out. So, does it make a substantial jump from the previous game? Is it a more interactive game? Is it a thing that really highlights some of the moments? A lot of stuff that we're seeing that they're talking about sounds really good, bro. But when you play the game, that is that's everything. Does it translate to actual gameplay? Um, is any of the stuff that was wide concerns from across the board actually being implemented in a thoughtful and more engaging way to make a better video game? Hell yeah, brother. It's a different game. Like, straight up, dude. I I found myself playing characters that I had played before and just being like, ah, I just don't like the way the character plays. But in this new game, way better. Like some characters really surprising me where it's like I played a lot of Wolverine. Did I enjoy Wolverine as much as the other two new characters that were added to the game, which was magic and um which was magic as well as danger? No, I actually enjoyed magic more. Right. Believe it or not, like Magic might be one of my favorite characters that they've added to this game from a gameplay perspective. She's ridiculously fun, dude. And Wolverine's also mad fun. So, I want to get into the nitty-gritty of it. I did not play a lot of Danger. Admittedly, Penny was not in this build of the game. It was the one that was playable at, you know, at Arc Arc World Tour. It feels like if you want this to be a team game, it really can be. A lot of the beats and elements were there before. It's just that they weren't working in a way that made you feel like you're incentivized to do this stuff. There is just gray health in the game now. like bringing in the character does not necessarily give you those incentives to like like get more life back or something like that, but I was trying to figure out why gray health is recovering the way it was. Um, and it's it's definitely different. It's very different. It seems like damage is also higher, weirdly enough. Combos are much longer. Damage almost feels like it's much higher, but there's recoverable health now. So, the the teeter totter effect of how matches can go can be a lot different. So, why does the game feel different, right? Why does the game feel a lot different than it did before? The biggest one is that you don't have a shotgun pointed at you at any given time. And that shotgun was in the form of an a whiffing autocombo. And the autocombos are there. In fact, some of them got better in some ways when they land. If you have like all the resources in this build, at least, granted, most of the stuff I'm talking about can change. If you mash light auto combo, it automatically goes into your big team assemble super. I think that's fair, dude. How autocombos are actually utilized and um implemented is significantly less effective than they were before. They just do way less damage. The next biggest change of the game, you just get to call your assists anywhere because the neutral assist brings in the the generic lariat, but forward does shooter, down does antiier, back does unique. So at this point, you just get to call any of your assists on block or hit at any time. When you jumped in the previous version of the game, every character would come out and do a generic shooter assist. Um, they were okay, but it felt extremely limited because you would have to jump and then on your jump, a character would follow the character up here and then you would land and there'd be a projectile. It just didn't feel good. So now in neutral, you can jump around and just call any of your assists, bro. Even better, this is this is something that I the game's gotten more casual as a result of this. You remember before if you wanted to call your assist, you had to press like back down, right? Now, if you have access to your whole team and you just want to bring out every single one of those [ __ ] you want to jump and bring out every single one of those [ __ ] you just press this button three times over. They all come out like immediately. As fast as you press them, it goes 1 2 3. They're out, out, out. And all of a sudden, there's four characters on screen. Or your opponent did it and you're jumping at each other and there's four characters on screen. This was a fiveb button fighting game before chat. Like at its core, you could press you could play tokcon with five buttons. Okay, light, medium, heavy, unique, and it was assemble. That is not how the game is played anymore. The game is a six button fighting game now. No matter what tag has completely shifted by default to this button. If you want to tag to a character, it's only this button. And it means that like there's clear and concise moments when I get to tag to this guy. It shows up on screen that you get a a good chunk of time for you to do it. There's a lot of like 2x KO tag stuff happening now within the neutral of the game. Also, if you're landing these random stray hits all the time with like some some goofball characters unique assist or some goofball character's anti-air, dude, you have to find a way to get up there. The game's neutral has air dashing and double jumping, right? And now with free free form assist calling, it plays out a lot like Dragon Ball Fighters neutral without super dash or without shotgun whiffing autocombos. And it felt great. It felt like a like a like a normal fighting game. It felt like like a traditional fighting game where you have to go do these things and elevate and find the situation and the awareness and it's all you can't always just do this like one thing, you know? There's a completely new assist in the game as well. When you do a regular jump, you call your grounded assists. But as soon as you make a double jump or you go to super jump height, the assists change. They then go from being grounded assist to being air to ground assists. So like Wolverine, for example, has a dive kick, but it's a dive punch and it dives forward and it allows you to get a character from like above the screen all the way down to the screen. If you land a combo, what happens? What do you guys think would happen if you get somebody up in an air combo and you're in double jump height and you call the assist? Generic Lariat assist. You don't get the ground to air assist. It's very weird. When you're up there and you're like, "Oh, I want to bring them down with my assist." You can't. Uh because you're in super jump or double jump height. The only assists you're able to do are your forward, down, and back, which are shooter anti-air and unique, or your neutral, which is the generic Lariat. So, it's kind of that one felt like something's missing here. I think this assist is really cool, but it's very odd that you can only do it in double jump and super jump in neutral. Nowhere else. What else? Like, not everything's perfect there. There so much has changed that some things are not like jelling with the new system completely. As an example, I found sometimes when I was jumping around and doing things. I jumped over a dude. I called a projectile assist. I've I've crossed up now causing a sandwich. And I'm like, go tag into whoever theuck that is, right? It wouldn't let me. And I'm like, what's going on here? When you hold the direction and call the tag, for some reason, you wouldn't it wouldn't tag. And I was like, this is either protecting against some really goofy situation. Um, but I genuinely didn't like that because it felt like my button stopped working. It's like tag and you're holding down back and pressing tag and nothing's happening. So, for some reason, when you dedicated to a button, like a direction, you just don't get to tag at all, which felt weird. I I don't even know. I don't even know if that's intentional. I don't think we should be able to tag on block, bro. But if we are jumping around and pressing forward or back and we want to tag to another character, we should be able to do that. The other thing to mention what I which I what I think is still being worked on a bit is this stylish combo gauge. And there's no visual feedback in the game currently for how their stylish combo game operates. But the idea is if you do more unique and cool combos that the game will reward you with effectively stylish combos that will do more damage. I feel like if I do or see people come up with really cool and unique combos that utilize the full breadth of the team or anything like that, there should be a reward for that. There should be a reward for that. They said it's still being worked on, but that was as from the developers perspective of them being there. Like that's the intention of it. I guess I can talk about Wolverine and he's great. He's great. Fundamentally different than Marvel versus Capcom Wolverine. He's pretty much a wreck character with a buff. And when he gets the buff, uh, he gets access to like new moves. He his air dash is quite good, too. He has a high priority projectile cuz it's so slow. He uh crushes a lot of other projectiles in the game, which is neat. That that's that's very fun. Feels good, man. It just feels like a good alternative take on Wolverine than what has historically been. The star of the show is Magic. She's not particularly fast, but she has really good normals, like super good normals. And because of super good normals with really effective specials, she has this great down button move where she stabs the ground and like a pillar of fire comes up. I'm like, whoa, this is neat. Really cool conversions and [ __ ] Like she's got the she's got the wild [ __ ] that like Captain America and Iron Man have where out of dragon punch she can do a bunch of crazy [ __ ] It's like whoa. I was having the AI do some nutty things to me and then a dev showed up and did even crazier things and it was like whoa, she's got some really cool stuff and her unique ability has her making portals and she could travel through those portals by holding down the unique and that [ __ ] is tricky as hell. I still did not fully comprehend why it was working the way it was. I will literally shoot a projectile in a portal and it will pop up behind the opponent and shoot them in the back and it's like what the [ __ ] is going on that on top of assists. H this [ __ ] this chick's going to be crazy. She just has like soul bad guy install dude. It works almost the same like and I think she gets a different she does she got a different cash out super just like soul bad guy does. It doesn't have this in Guilty Gear Strive I realize. uh in the old Guilty Gears and Guilty Gear Xard, she's like the same thing and it lasts a good amount of time and it makes all of her specials nuts. It makes everything she does like really freaking crazy. It was very fun and I I thought that the more I played Magic, the more I was just really enjoying stuff in the game. I think you'll need to adjust your settings. You can't call that danger. If you guys want impressions of danger, she's super weird. Uh and and there was no way within a small period of time. We need days. So, she's not like a pick up and play. I'm going to be good with this charact. No, not at all. She's easily the weirdest character of everybody in the game. From a perspective of like a pre-release fighting game, it's very easy to change gameplay things. It's hard to change like art or add art or add like voices or add modes like that kind of that's tough. Like those will take a significant amount of time that needed to be prepared for ahead of time. But it comes to like switching around how goofy gameplay things work. Dude, I've been told by devs like if this if this [ __ ] is going to change, now is the time because the game's not out yet. The game isn't the game isn't a thing. Like the game is not dedicated to being a thing yet. It can change. And the e gameplay stuff like we're not adding moves to characters. I'm just going to straight up tell you chat like tagging got so much better because the ability just for you to run towards the opponent and jump over them, call an assist. As you jump over them, the assist is on the other side and you land and do like a cross up or something like that, sandwiching the opponent and leading to like a weird a weird mixup situation is available everywhere now. It's just everywhere. You don't have to do a weird gimmick lariat setup or anything. It doesn't cost anything. It's available at all times. So, it feels great. It feels like we're just playing the game the way it always should be, you know. How are the wall breaks now? They take up less time. That's what's the most important. But I did find myself because I was unfamiliar with what was going to wall break on some new characters. They were happening a lot still and I was not like wanting that to happen. I was like, "Oh crap, that's right. This wall breaks." Ah crap, that wall breaks. But now that you know what specifically wall breaks and what doesn't, it's certainly better and it takes up less time as well. Oh yeah, and the act of tagging is just faster. Like straight up, the act of like tagging into the next character is just faster. The team super does like 40 to 45%. Even if you do it at the end of a combo, it was still doing a ton. I still think some things are kind of missing. The gray health now exists. The game added gray health, but it's not really utilized in a way that is like the best. Like, you can't really manipulate it. I think Wolverine's the only one that could manipulate it because his he has a natural regen. I think there's room to grow there is all I'm going to say. I think there is an opportunity. I I still think that the the act of getting a full team assembled, while it is a lot better than it was before, it doesn't really feel like the game is the game is like completely changed in that way. No, no. You just get access to do like some more combos and you get more health, you know? But does it really feel like the team is assembled, [ __ ] let's go, dude? You can't even do that super. Like, if you're doing well, you actually cannot do that super until you're you're in the last round and you're losing. Instead of like a cool, we've teamed up and we get to do this. It's more of a comeback mechanic, right? Because by the time you're in the final two rounds, you've already assembled your whole team. Did the input reading feel better? No. Unfortunately, no. It was the same like you really had to be specific on your Dragon Punch input in order for it to give you what you want. This this turned from a game that like I really wanted to like and I I kind of just fully accepted that maybe this game isn't for me. And I I'll hope that maybe that eventually happens that way, but it it felt like the Mortal Kombat 11 of like team-based fighting games, man. Where it's like this people are really going to like this. this. I think some people really are going to like this, but for unfortunately, it just doesn't hit any notes for me outside of having great visuals, cool music, and like wonderful characters. It's like, yeah, I came I came to that acceptance, dude. I went from that to I actively want to play more. I I left that session thinking of all the [ __ ] I can do and thinking of like, bro, what if this character's added? What are they going to play like? Who's that going to work with? Oh my god. like it was so much better. I think things are still going to change. I don't think this is the finality of it. A lot of stuff still needs to be ironed out in my personal opinion. I don't think they're completely done with some gameplay tuning cuz some things were weird and because all these characters had so many tools and abilities and now so much assisting and crazy [ __ ] bro. it. I legit got like giggles when me and devs or like me me fighting Kenny, we would jump at each other and mash the assist button and there is eight characters on the screen. Everybody like every single [ __ ] and they all run away. It legit made me like audibly laugh every single time it happened. I feel good, chat. I have never been this excited talking about Toon, bro.