Yes, if done properly twisting is a type of cold weld and very reliable but even back in the day not everyone managed to get that right. The same technique was used extensively in Japanese audio equipment back in the 60s and 70s, it's known as "wire wrap" in that field. In audio it was typically used to connect wires to a post soldered into a PCB rather than joining wires but the physics are the same.
The worst splice method I've personally encountered is looping several small wires around an M3 screw with nut and washer, tightening the screw and taping the whole lot. It was tremendously popular from the early days of electricity into the early 1960s in Austria and these splices fail by the dozen! I've never been to a place with that type of splice that didn't have at least a few loose ones! My first experience with them was pulling a few splices from a box just to get an idea of what goes where, then turning the circuit back on, only to hear a highly ominous crackle and fizzle from that box! Just moving the splices had loosened the connection enough to make it arc! Needless to say I always disconnected all power when leaving from that point until the full rewire was completed!
