Characters

Single Player Characters

The cast of Magical Drop are the namesakes of the 22 Major Arcana tarot cards. 16 of these characters are playable in the game’s main challenge mode and each character has a secondary color which can be selected by hitting the B button.

Should you play either of the game’s other modes you’ll notice the playable character list drops to 8: Fool, High Priestess, Lovers, Emperor, Chariot, Strength, Justice, and Star. While they are unable to be selected, some of the remaining cast may appear as bosses in the board-game inspired Magical Journey mode.

Hidden Characters

The two-player challenge mode also allows you to play as six additional characters who you may have previously faced off against in the single player modes: Fortune, Tower, Hermit, Temperance, Hanged Man, and Moon. To unlock them, highlight a character and press the “C” button three times when the countdown clock matches their Major Arcana number.

In addition to these six characters, there is an alternate version of Strength known as “Father Strength” available to select for multiplayer games. To select Father Strength highlight Strength on the menu, hold down the C button and then hit either A or B.

Finally, there is Black Pierrot, a notoriously difficult hidden boss character who appears should the player fulfill specific criteria in challenge mode. Black Pierrot, alongside his group of singing peanut women, is the only character who does not fit into the game’s tarot theme. He is only playable in the console version of the game, should you have previously completed challenge mode.

Drop Pattern Shapes

While playing you may notice some characters’ trash tends to overwhelm you more consistently. This is due to the fact that each character has their own pattern of balloons that they will send to their opponent after they create a chain reaction.

In the example above, you can see that Fool sends his balloons in a flat, uniform pattern. However, High Priestess puts the majority of her pressure on the two columns adjacent to the edge of the board. 

While at first glance some may assume it’s advantageous for the Fool to send more balloons than High Priestess, this is untrue. The flat shape fails to disrupt any previously assembled patterns your opponent had created on their side of the board and gives them an opportunity to reach quota quicker.

Drop Pattern Colors

In addition to variations in the shape of a character’s drop pattern, there are also differences in the colors of balloons they send. Here you’ll notice the Fool sends step-like arrays of colors to his opponent, while High Priestess sends rows of a single color. 

Like before, it may not be immediately apparent which is more dangerous, however a deeper analysis would reveal it takes far more moves to dig yourself out of High Priestess’ trash than it would Fool’s.

Character Tiers

While we won’t be able to explore the intricacies of every character’s drop patterns in this article alone, we can provide some general groupings of characters by strength.

This tier list, created by the Japanese Magical Drop player @yachicot, ranks the cast by how difficult their drop patterns are to deal with. Those higher on the tier list pressure specific sections of the board more intensely and send more intricate balloon patterns than those below them.

Since most competitive Magical Drop tournaments require players to choose the same character, you cannot just coast to victory on the strength of your favorite character alone. Instead, you’ll have to develop various strategies to succeed against high and low tier characters alike.

As a recommendation, if you are thinking of introducing others to Magical Drop, start by choosing a lower tier character when playing against them. The weaker drop patterns of characters like Fool or Devil will give new players more to learn and respond before being pushed off the board.