The director of Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls has publicly apologized for the fighting game’s troubled PC launch and detailed the balance adjustments the development team plans to roll out based on its own internal findings. Kazuto Sekine, who leads the project at Arc System Works’ Tokon studio, delivered the statement on Monday, September 14, releasing it both as a brief social media post and as a fuller, in-depth blog entry on the game’s official Steam page. The move arrives as the community continues to weigh the title’s rocky technical debut against its strong critical reception, and it signals that the developer intends to actively address the input and assist mechanics that drew the most criticism.
While Sekine opened the statement by celebrating the positive response to the game’s content, he did not shy away from acknowledging the instability that plagued the PC version at launch. “It was never our intention for players to be unable to enjoy the game as we envisioned,” he wrote, pledging that the team is “currently making progress on improvements to the PC version so that everyone can enjoy the game to the fullest.” The remarks follow a similar apology from producer Takeshi Yamanaka, who in an August interview with VGC admitted that regaining the player base’s trust would be “extremely challenging” after numerous in-game issues were reported.
Input Responsiveness and the Assist Problem
Beyond the general stability concerns, Sekine identified two specific areas the team believes “need to be addressed,” centering on input registration and the frequency of assists and tags. According to the director, certain inputs—such as attacks launched from aerial dashes or the Free Flight mechanic—would occasionally fail to register, or fail entirely. To combat this, the studio plans to recalibrate the current input windows, aiming for a smoother and more responsive experience overall.
The specifics of the fix are revealing. “In the current state, there is a 6-frame input buffer when holding a button,” Sekine explained. “However, we intend to adjust the way inputs are handled so that, in certain cases, the action will be performed even when the button is not held.” In practical terms, this means the game will become more forgiving of imprecise timing, reducing the frustration of missed inputs that can derail a competitive match.
The assist and tag situation proved equally contentious. Sekine conceded that the game was originally balanced around the expectation that players would constantly tag their characters in and out of battle—and that the current state has, in fact, exceeded those expectations. The team is now working to increase the cooldown time for certain assists and switches, a change designed to “allow us to maintain rushdown capabilities while also creating more time for phases of neutral play.” He noted the studio is targeting these updates “as soon as possible.”
“We have observed that particular inputs, such as attacks from aerial dashes or Free Flight, would sometimes not register correctly or even at all. To address these issues, we intend to adjust the current input windows to ensure a smoother and more responsive gameplay experience.”
Kazuto Sekine, Director of Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls
A Deliberate, Measured Approach
Notably, Sekine emphasized that sweeping changes to overall character balance are unlikely to happen in the near term. He and the Tokon team feel it is too early to make broad modifications, describing the current period as a “discovery phase.” “It is still too early to start modifying character traits,” he said, particularly given that the assist and tag adjustments will themselves ripple through the broader gameplay.
This measured stance reflects a developer still learning the ins and outs of its own roster. It also suggests that the fixes being prioritized are largely technical and systemic rather than roster-wide overhauls, which may temper expectations among players hoping for immediate, dramatic rebalancing.
Looking Ahead
Despite the rough start, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls has earned genuine respect within the fighting game community. IGN awarded the title a nine out of 10, and after Steam reviews stumbled, Arc System Works moved quickly to push an update that resolved many of the PC-side problems. Since then, the publisher has maintained steady communication with the community, as this latest blog post demonstrates.
For players who have been waiting for the game to reach its full potential, the message from Sekine is one of accountability and intent. The studio is not merely issuing a public apology—it is outlining concrete, actionable steps to improve input handling, assist timing, and overall responsiveness. Whether those updates arrive swiftly enough to fully restore confidence remains to be seen, but the Tokon team has made clear that it is listening, and it is working.
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