The core gameplay of Tokyo Ghoul: Break the Chains revolves around turn-based card battles. Cards are randomly drawn for the player depending on their character roster, and use them strategically in battles. The game offers more than 30 characters to choose from, allowing players to create their own powerful lineup.
It features a 7DS style of card combining turn-based combat. You have a set amount of energy to spend every turn and you can either draw cards, use it to move cards around, or use an energy card to replenish your ultimate skill. Identical adjacent cards will combine and will result in a more powerful version of that attack.
The game also has cel-shaded graphics as the usual visuals for Anime-based mobile games. The effects are impressive, and performance wise, it’s once of the most smoothest games I’ve played on my Snapdragon 888 device. I didn’t even bother checking the graphics settings because the performance was silky smooth from the outset while still looking sharp.
Many of the game's additional elements, such as research, autobattle, PVP, and co-op, are heavily gated by your profile level, which takes time to increase. This means you won't have access to most of the game's content for a long time when starting out.
Energy or stamina is a key resource in the game, and it is used for almost every mission and even watching cutscenes (even if you skip them). You have a starting limit of around 30 stamina which slowly goes up as you level up, but imagine, one mission or cutscene will already cost 10-25 stamina, so this is pretty overwhelming. Fortunately, the game provides a lot of stamina rewards in the early stages, but I can only imagine the costs when these bonuses are now gone.