Twisted Wonderland Gameplay

And so the new journey begins with the latest launch of Disney’s Twisted Wonderland in English on 20 Jan 2022!

When you first log into the game, you will be required to choose one character out of the 22 playable characters to be your first free SR card. When I heard that this game would only be released in US and Canada, I was ready to give up on it but when I played the trial dorm allocation game and Malleus was the first to greet me, I was immediately hooked. There is something really attractive about his aura – a mixture of intellect, confidence, childlikeness, loneliness and danger and he is crazy hot with his eye make up, long hair and horns.

Anyway no guesses who got my first pick for the SR.

Tutorial (Main Story, Prologue, Chapter 8)

After that you are guided through a tutorial through the first 8 chapters of the Prologue which introduces you to the basic gameplay which includes reading or listening to fully voiced dialogue in Japanese, turn-based battle and Twistunes which is the game’s version of a rhythm game. Before you have your first battle, you would be required to perform your first 10 pull with the 300 gems given to you. This is the only time you will be able to keep re-summoning your 10 pull until you get a combination of starting cards to your liking.

During this pull, you will only be able to get the SSR cards of students who are assigned to Heartslabyul and Savanaclaw dormitory, i.e. Riddle, Ace, Deuce, Carter, Trey, Leona, Jack and Ruggie. You are guaranteed at least 1 SSR through this pull and between 2-3 SRs. The SRs could be for any of the 22 available playable characters. Anyway feel free to keep re-summoning until you get the combination you’re happy with. Since Malleus SSR is not available, I went with a Leona SSR instead.

I have to admit it took awhile to understand the mechanics of the game with so many items that serve different purposes to collect. I didn’t think the tutorial was very well done especially for the battles but that’s fine, I managed to eventually figure it out. Also if you complete the tutorial before 28 Feb 2022, you will be eligible for all the goodies for early joiners which will enable you to summon more cards from the Dark Mirror.

Game Progression

The goal of the game is to progress through the story chapters. Twisted Wonderland is launched with the Prologue, Books 1 and 2 with future books to be released accordingly based on a schedule. In order to progress through the different parts of the Main Story, you will need to reach certain player rank level. Rank levels can only be increased by taking lessons, either History, Flying or Alchemy lessons. You spend LP or some kind of stamina point in order to go for lessons. LP recharges 1 per every 15 minutes, with Starshards or whenever you rank up.

This is where most of the grinding takes place and thankfully there is an auto run engine that you can just keep on loop. The character that you choose to be your study partner will have a higher probability of being called out to demonstrate their learning in class so gains the most experience. After attending sufficient lessons with the same character and meeting certain criteria, you will also trigger short chats with them.

Card Levelling & Lessons

History lessons will level up the cards you pick to go for lessons and there may be chance for Blooming Honey to be dropped which you can use to increase the level of the cards. By increasing the levels, the card will increase in HP and Power. Each card has a level cap during on its rarity, 80 for SSR, 60 for SR and 40 for R. When you summon a duplicate card, you will be able to raise the level limit of the card up to 4x. Alternatively, you can also use Awakening Perfume to raise the level caps.

Flying lessons will increase the Vignette level of card. SSR cards can reach level 3 while the rest have a max of 2 levels. Whenever you increase the vignette level of the card, you unlock a short unvoiced personal story which involves that character and his relationships with the other students in the academy. It is an interesting way to learn more about these playable characters. As this isn’t an otome however, these short stories are really just about the friendship between the boys, and not some date with the MC. Secret Smorgasbord may also drop during these lessons which can be used to increase the vignette level of the cards.

Alchemy lessons will increase the spell level of the card. Increasing the level of the spells will make them more powerful during battles and also unlock future upgrades that have additional effects during battle. There are four elements that spells can belong to – fire, water, grass and cosmic (neutral) and you can probably guess the type advantages and disadvantages they have. The elemental focus for each day is different as well as the characters you can buddy with to learn alchemy. This raises the buddy level between the two characters which in turn improves the buddy boost effect in battle. If you don’t have any cards of those characters, you won’t be able to learn alchemy for that day so this kinds of forces you to try and get at least one of each character in your roster (can buy R cards from the shop using thaumark). Likewise, spellbooks that can help you raise specific elemental spells may drop during these lessons.

You will need to progressively raise the level and power of your team, have a good combination of different elemental spells while pairing characters who will boost each other’s power or HP to win the increasingly difficult battles in the Main Story. There is another duo battle feature that will unlock if you have a SSR card and after raising its spell level to 5. Lastly if you have the character specific items earned from Alchemy lessons, have raised the card to its max level and read the personal story, you can unlock a new card image for your enjoyment.

Battles & Exams

There are three types of battles – one that requires you to defeat your opponent in 5 turns (or end with higher HP), to defend for 5 turns, and to defeat the opponent in as many turns as required. Your HP is a combined total of the cards that make up your team and you lose when your HP drops to 0. You will need to set up a team of four plus one support (guest or friend) to enter the battle.

As each card has two spells, this counts for a total of 10 possible spells cast in each battle. Before each turn commences, you will have to pick the best combination pair attack taking into consideration elemental advantage and buddy boost while guessing one of two spells your opponent will be using. At least one spell will be left unknown though you can possibly guess what the type will be based on their attack line up.

Take note when choosing the spell to use each turn, the choice of element and order of appearance will affect both your attack and defense. For example, if your opponent uses a water spell first then grass spell and you have chosen your first and second spell to be both a fire spell. In this case, you will suffer a resistance discount on your attack and your opponent gains a damage boost against you for their first attack. For the second attack however, as fire trumps grass, you will gain both a damage boost as well as damage resistance against your enemy’s attack. As such it is very important to take note of these type advantages and the order in which they will be used to plan your battle effectively.

You will unlock the Exam module after you complete your first book of the Main Story. During exams you can pit your team of 5 cards against the exam battles and see how well your team fares ranging for Easy to Hard mode. Each exam comes with its specific elemental type so this forces you to create teams that are full fire, water or grass element, which also means endless grinding. Thankfully, the developers reward your grinding efforts with short stories.

Twistunes

Another challenge you will come across as the story progresses is Twistunes which requires you to tap in rhythm with the music in various ways depending on the color of the circle – green, red, blue and purple. I like the purple circle type challenges the most. These Twistunes come with Easy, Normal and Hard difficulty mode and this makes the game a lot more challenging and also increases it replayability while waiting for new story or event releases. It seems almost impossible for me to score SS for Hard mode but I guess this means an endless circle of trying and trying. Thankfully you don’t need to use any resource to play the tunes other than your own musical talent or lack thereof.

Mirror Summons

The most important resource in this game is your gems which is the in game currency that allows you to buy anything. But it is best saved up for summoning cards through the Dark Mirror. The gacha system in Twisted Wonderland is transparent. Pity is at 100 pulls which you will be guaranteed a SSR, however, should you get a SSR before 100, it DOES NOT reset your counter. Which means that you could have the chance of having more than 1 SSR within a 100 pulls! With the game launch, there are a total of 96 possible cards to collect –

8 SSR cards for characters in Book 1 and 2

22 SR Labcoat attire for each character

22 SR Ceremonial attire for the dorm leaders

22 R PE uniform for each characer

22 R School uniform for each character (You can purchase these cards directly from the shop for 10,000 thaumarks and each comes with a vignette that you can read immediately, a great way to have your first impression of these characters)

More cards will be added I suppose when events are launched. I like it that even R cards come with short stories to give you insight into each character. It takes 300 gems for a 10 pull (though you can buy a Tenfold Summon key from the Mr S’ shop with 250 gems once a month). There are currently 3 banners – a special one-time tenfold summon which guarantees you a SSR of the 8 ‘starter’ characters but requires 300 paid gems, a limited time feature highlight banner which showcases Riddle currently and gives you higher chance to get his SSR/SR cards, and a standard banner with all available cards.

This pretty much sums up the general gameplay for Twisted Wonderland. I look forward to reading the stories and learning more about these quirky characters, grinding and levelling up all the cards so I can read their personal stories, and trying to attain SS grade for all the Twistunes challenges. I look forward to the game’s first event as well to see how those play out. I may consider doing a story recap and character analysis as well if time permits.

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