One of the biggest challenges in tag fighters is actually having a team of characters. Fighting game characters are complex organisms, and having multiple of them in the same player's control tends to be multiplicative rather than additive. For years, we've thought three was the height of this- and then came Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls, which decided that humanity should strive for a 4-character utopia. 

Given how largely understood the 3v3 format had become, the idea of four characters seemed daunting. When should I call my assist? Should I tag out and let my point character recover grey health? What if I need a character with a good anti-air but my current point, against all odds, is Hsien-Ko? Thankfully, there's a quick way to get the hang of it in Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls: Just don't. 

Sharing Is Not Caring About Learning BNBs For Other Characters

While "Assists as my neutral skip" is tag fighter tradition, never underestimate the power of the signature Arc System Works "Big jumping special so criminal it's being charged with Neutral Evasion"

Thanks to the shared health bar, you actually don't really have to care about your back two characters in Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls. Considering they're not even there for half the match, it's surprisingly easy to just throw them in the back of your mind, along with info like replying that annoying email or picking up your dry-cleaning. Thanks to the shared health bar, you never really have to spend time as a character you don't want to be, 

That's how I spent the entirety of my own run in Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls second beta. I had a simple goal: learn to play Ghost Rider. By-and-large he's monumentally more complex than my secondary, Doctor Doom: he's got resource meters, weird normals and even a rekka to establish his offensive pressure. In short, he could very well be a character from a 1v1 game, but was suddenly thrown into the 4v4 chaos.

A little grease always keeps the wheels a-spinning / Like sitting on 23's to get the squealers grinning / Hitting on many trees, feel real linen / Spitting on enemies, get the steel for tin men

Once you lock in on wanting to learn a single character, the rest of the game's systems melt into a much more recognizable form. Letting characters simply be assists makes it much easier to focus on your game plan. Yes, I adore playing as Doctor Doom, but by having him set up as the projectile assist, his function was simple: create a big hitbox on the screen that stopped people walking forwards. It's not like Ghost Rider struggled with that with his super long 2M, but Doom's selfless philantropy meant I could lock my opponents down, and potentially even catch any of their own assists. If I was feeling extra saucy with it, the beam was a great visual cover for Ghost Rider's own rekka. The result? A visually annoying mix as you're now stuck guessing high or low while the muffled sounds of Rapp Snitch Knishes play in the background. 

The idea was simple: you only need to learn your other characters in so as much as they help your point run their game plan. Ghost Rider feels slower than a lot of characters, especially in closer range. The solution? Throw a spinning child lariat every now and again to catch a jump-in that 2H might miss. Occasionally, the child can also extend my combos, buying enough time for Ghost Rider to set up the next 50/50.

Running as fast as he can / Iron Man assists again!

It feels like the further back in my lineup a character is, the less you actually need to learn them. Iron Man exists for two purposes only: setting up missiles on knockdown and as a backup beam assist in case Doom is on cooldown. Meanwhle, I trust Doctor Doom with my life. By the end of the beta I was getting comfortable enough to do Active Tags, swapping between Ghost Rider and Doom as if they were Power Man and Iron Fist. 

It helps that a lot of the systems are universal- all the Assemble systems like Crossover attacks and Assemble Smash don't care who's on your team, just how many of them are there when you get into the Team Aerial Combos. If more characters are going to be as wild as the multi-directional barrage of Spider-Man or the heat-popping antics of Ghost Rider, sticking to the 1+3 or 2+2 approach might be the best way to learn them. 

Where no brains but gum flap / He said his gun clap, then he fled after one slap (pap!)

Of course, part of this also has to do with the fact the betas didn't have a training mode. It's why you'd see so many comments complaining about autocombos- if you're not comfortable learning on the fly it's pretty easy to optimize success by working with even the simplest tools you have. 

Personally, I'm keen to see where Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls heads next. There's so much room on the roster for potential weirdos that I'd really like to see get an Arc System Works coat of paint, and the possibility that I might even be able to pilot all four characters competently sounds like a sweet goal to work towards. 

For now, though, Child Lariat it is.