Puppet Depot recently released a new, paid game for iOS devices called Wonder Blade, and we would dare say it’s worth the premium cost. This appears to be the debut for the company, which is led by a certain Huang YueFeng, and we believe it’s a very solid initial effort that’s reminiscent of those old adventure games, yet designed for the modern-day mobile gamer. This is a game that has “tons of fun-filled levels,” various bosses (and types of boss battles/encounters), and different environments that could challenge you to no end as a different kind of knight with oh so many types of adventures to go on. Aside from the levels, bosses, weapons, boss fights, and minigames, there’s also a combo stringing mechanic that could help you as you face off against regular enemies and bosses alike!
As you can see, this may be an arcade game, but it certainly isn’t a hyper-casual title, or even a casual title. It’s for fans of those old PC arcade titles from the ‘80s and the ‘90s, and it’s a surprisingly deep game that may force you to learn much more than you may have bargained for. However, we do have something that might catch your fancy and prove helpful to you – a Wonder Blade beginner’s guide designed for people who may be playing the game for the first time, or for the first few times. Read on for some fundamental tips and tricks that will help you survive your first few adventures in the game!
1. The Basics Of Wonder Blade
The basic premise of Wonder Blade is that it’s an action/arcade/adventure title where your character goes from one location to the next, defeating enemies, including larger, tougher boss characters, and unleashing a mix of weapon and magic attacks while trying to keep your combo string going for as long as possible. Each level comes with multiple stages, and while most of the stages will simply have you defeating enemies around your size, with one sub-boss of sorts that’s got far more strength, hit points, and magic resistance than you do, but isn’t actually the main boss. That main boss will appear toward the end of the level, and unless you’ve properly improved your stats and leveled up your abilities, you’ll probably get polished off easily by the boss and his minions, with the boss doing about 80 percent of the damage or more.
Navigating your character around is very easy — the virtual joystick on the bottom left of your screen allows you to move him up, down, left, and right. On the right side, you’ll see four buttons corresponding to certain actions — A is for weapon attack, B is for jump, X is for magic attack, and Y is for your dodge roll. Over time, you will be taught special actions that you can do by combining two of these basic actions but aside from that, it’s those four buttons by themselves that you have to pay the most attention to.
After you defeat an enemy, regardless of what type of enemy it is, they will drop a variety of rewards which you can then collect — you can get coins, which represent one unit of currency each, you can get gems, which come in different colors/denominations and equate to multiple coins, weapons in rarer cases, or food, which allows you to regain some health. We will be talking about coins later on in this guide, so keep on reading if you want to know what you can use this currency for!
2. Step Back In Order To Launch Magic Attacks, Then Move Up Close
When completing the levels in Wonder Blade, most of the individual stages within will pit you against waves of enemies that will come at you as quickly as possible, but really aren’t that much of an Individual threat in the grand scheme of things. But the damage dealt by each enemy could add up over time, and you’ll need to get rid of these pesky lower-level enemies sooner rather than later. With that in mind, the best strategy here would be to step back and make sure all the enemies are closely bunched together, then launch a magic attack by hitting the “X” button. For your first magic spell, which is your fire spell, this won’t just injure enemies, but also launch them backward and keep them down for a few seconds. Once they’re down, you can keep them down by launching a flurry of weapon attacks, though it’s not always a smart idea to fight the enemies in close contact for too long. Going toe-to-toe with the bad guys is oftentimes a recipe for major health points losses, so don’t get overconfident!
3. Don’t Go Overboard With The Magic
Although magic makes for a great ranged attack that could hurt enemies (if not outright kill them) and keep them at bay, you should also be aware that you can only use magic attacks so often. The red bar on the upper left of your screen is your life, while the blue bar underneath it refers to the mana for your magic spells — use it up, and you won’t be able to cast any spells for your magic attacks for a few seconds. You don’t want to be all out of mana just when you’re about to face the sub-boss in a certain level, for instance, so make sure you’re using your magic as prudently as possible and not overusing it just for the sake of being able to stay back and away from contact!
4. Use Your Dodge Roll And Jump To Defend Yourself
As a beginner, you won’t have too many options when it comes to avoiding danger. But as it often is in games that have a fighting mechanic, it’s also important in Wonder Blade to play some defense to minimize the amount of damage you receive from those enemy attacks Jumping could help you avoid both close-contract and ranged attacks from enemies, and the good thing about this is that you can still launch a weapon or magic attack while airborne. However, it won’t always be of help, and that’s where the dodge roll comes in. Simply hit the Y button whenever you need to evade enemy attacks while on the ground — it sounds easier said than done, but you can always practice during the easier levels so you could evade those enemies with a simple roll toward safer, albeit nearby ground!
Speaking of replaying easier levels, read on and we’ll tell you if this practice is permitted in this game or not.
5. Grind For More Currency And Other Resources
Admittedly, we’re seeing fewer games that allow players to grind, which is the process of replaying previously completed levels to gain more XP, coins, resources, or whatnot. Fortunately, Wonder Blade does allow players to grind, so if you need to practice some more advanced moves, or if you’re farming for more coins or other resources, you can always go back to a level you have already complete and spend all the time you need practicing your skills or earning more goodies. It may or may not be because this is a paid title, but the important thing here is the ability to grind — it is possible, so don’t be afraid to take a break from the usual run of things! You have nothing to lose by grinding.
6. Don’t Forget To Open The Treasure Chests At The End Of A Level
It’s very easy to forget to do it, and you might not even realize that you can open treasure chests after you’ve beaten the main boss in a level. After all, this is something that the game doesn’t teach outright, and you may have to figure things out yourself after you’ve beaten your first boss. But you will get treasure chests as a reward for winning the boss battle, and you can open them simply by hitting the A button once you’re near them, so you can use your weapon to force them open. These treasure chests contain coins, gems, and snacks, though we don’t think there’s any connection between the size of the chests and the quality of the rewards inside. You will get rewarded no matter how you look at it — it’s all a matter of figuring out how to open those chests, just as we explained above!
7. How To String Those Combos Together
If you look at the description of Wonder Blade, you’ll see multiple references to combo chains. As such, you may be wondering — is it really that important to string ‘em together? Does this mean higher damage inflicted, and how do you create a combo chain anyway?
It’s actually quite easy to get the chain going — just keep on connecting on your attacks against the enemies, and make sure you don’t miss on your attacks, get hit by an enemy attack, or remain inactive (i.e. no attacks whatsoever) for too long. Weapon and magic attacks both count toward the combo string, which you’ll see on the right side, together with adjectives describing your string so far. Unfortunately, a long string won’t ensure greater damage, but it will earn you more points at the end of a level if you put together a long string when fighting a boss!
If you want to keep the string going until you reach 100+, the best thing to do here is to corner the enemies toward the right or left side of the screen, then keep on attacking relentlessly without stopping. If there are enemies behind you, that could complicate things, but aside from that, the main benefit of combos, as we can see, is that they’re fun to pull off and could improve your score if pulled off during boss fights.
8. Improving Your Stats
Before going on a new level, you should always stay on the main menu screen for a while and make sure you’ve taken some time to improve your stats. Your character has four stats which you can improve on with the skill points you earn for completing new stages, and these stats include Power, which determines your basic attack damage, Defense, which increases your hit points, Magic, which improves magic damage, and Skill, which increases the chance of a critical hit. While there’s no drawback to creating an all-rounder by making all stats equal or similar to each other, we think that Power and Magic are the most important stats, followed by Defense. Of course, it’s a good thing to have a solid chance of a crit hit, but at the end of the day, it’s the basic things that matter, meaning the amount of offense you deal out with your weapons and magic, as well as the amount of HP your character has.
In the Upgrade screen, you’ll see a list of cards which you have either unlocked or are supposed to unlock once you reach certain game milestones. You’ll have a separate set of skill points to allocate toward your cards, again based on the levels and individual stages you’ve completed up to that point. Take note that these aren’t spells per se, but rather modifiers that could improve the effect that your spells are having at a given point in the game! New cards become available as you level up and score more points in the boss battles.
As a bonus tip, if you’re unhappy with how you allocated each stat to your character, you can choose to reset everything, allowing you to start from square one and redistribute those stats to your liking. This won’t come cheap, though, as doing this will set you back by a whopping 1,000 coins!
9. Surviving The Sub-Boss / Boss Fights
We’ve talked about boss fights several times in this Wonder Blade strategy guide, but how can you ensure yourself of a good chance to beat these literal big baddies and go on to the next level?
First of all, let’s talk about the sub-bosses, which usually take the form of big, beefy enemies that are seemingly much, much harder to take down than four basic enemies doing the same thing at the same time. Their HP is off the roof in comparison to you, and there’s always a chance they will fling you from one side of the screen to the next! They, as previously mentioned, appear to be impervious to magic at times; yes, you can cast a spell at them and take out some HP that way, but in many cases, they’ll keep walking toward you as if nothing happened. We would suggest trying to bunch the sub-boss with other enemies that may be trying to fight you as well, then stepping back, and firing from a distance so your magic spells affect as many enemies, including the sub-boss, as possible.
When talking about the main bosses, these are even bigger, stronger, and tougher, and in some cases faster, and you will notice that a lot of them have special skills that set them apart. Before anything else, you’ll want to pay attention to how the special skills work, as each skill appears to be used only during a fixed period of time as a boss battle takes place. Avoid crossing the main boss’ path when those skills are being launched, and always try to stay as far back as possible to avoid incurring damage.
Should you lose all your HP, you will then be given the option to restart the stage from the very top, or to use your Phoenix Feather — if you’re able to buy one for 499 coins, this could be very helpful, as it instantly revives you and allows you to restart where you left off and continue the boss battle instead of starting from square one. Using a Phoenix Feather will restore all your HP and mana, but won’t do anything to the boss’ HP — that means you can jump back in and easily finish the job in most cases!
10. Not All Boss Encounters Are Actual Battles
Last, but not the least for this guide, you may have noticed that for the first level, the final stage doesn’t actually involve your character battling a big and fearsome boss, but rather running away from him. This is something you should expect when playing Wonder Blade, as some final encounters with bosses may take the form of a minigame — in the above example, your objective is to run away from the boss until you find the exit, and that won’t necessarily involve any kind of fighting! You will, however, want to prepare for this minigame-styled boss encounter and not unnecessarily chase any coins or gems while running away — it could be tricky at first to elude that big lug we were referring to!