Nerdy Geek Reviews : Wizard 101

Skullkid755 I am gonna need a good transition, um, let me see. Oh let me see. Let me see money come out of your hands and go into my band account cause my game is free to play. Free to play isn't free people. Wizard 101 taught me that, The Simpsons Tapped Out taught me that, any terrible mobile game taught me that, did I mention Wizard 101? Oh yes, I did. Yep, today I'll be reviewing the MMORPG game Wizard 101 for PC or whatever other computers and maybe consoles in the future. You know, I wanted to review Portal today but I'll review this instead since I've been planning this for weeks. So, let me tell you a bit about my playing time for this game.

On my first account I played for many hours for a few months on the desktop computer my family shared since I didn't have my own computer at the time. My time was long and it got to the point where all the quests I was doing involved me spending real money just to go to the required areas. Wait, tell me something. You give me a quest for free, and I have to finish it by paying with real money! Who thought of that. At least tell me I need to pay to complete before I accept. Or maybe make a retail version that costs 60 bucks. Wanna know why I chose that price? Cause it's still less than the amount of money you'd use to get 100% through micro transactions. I kept doing nothing but grinding hoping if I got to a higher level I would get more quests I could complete. Like any RPG though, it takes forever to grind after you get past level ten, especially taking out nothing but enemies that you can kill with one attack. I forgot my login information after the computer messed up and later I made a new account on our next computer. I played the game for a few hours and got bored since I was doing stuff I already did the same way and it gave me the feeling of a lack of replay ability. Hey, here's a current event of my gaming life. I lost my progress in Grand Theft Auto 4 after transferring two storage devices two a new device and since I saved on two storage devices the one with less progress was on the one that was transferred afterwards meaning a smaller save file overwriting the bigger one meaning I'd have to replay from Ivan the Not So Terrible. I still enjoyed the missions though since I knew what to do and was more determined. It took me less than a week but I've gotten from Ivan the Not So Terrible to Luck of the Irish in less than a week. So, yeah, I got bored with Wizard 101 do to lack of replay ability and a bunch of micro transactions I never even performed.

Now, let's get to the story. You are a wizard taking on several quests all connected to Malistair's plans that are causing chaos in the spiral. Well, you'd expect someone called Mal-est-air to be a villain and he was a villain. The ending I know of is from Haedox's review on YouTube so thanks for not making me do tedious stuff Haedox! He's a You Tuber pretty underrated he has good game reviews but how about I just get to the ending of the first arc cause I didn't watch the part of the video that reviewed the second arc. The first arc ends with Malistair saying his wife died so he's messing up the Spiral to get a dragon to bring her to life... so he's not evil he's just misunderstood and is trying to do good or he's someone with good intentions who executes them the wrong way. He's a good and interesting villain but the villain with a sad backstory is something old I'd like to see a villain who was just very spoiled and poorly raised as a child so he just does what he sees right cause of how he grew up and was treated. Or a villain who can't control himself so he needs someone to fight him and end his life for the greater good but his disease causes him to be destructive and indestructible. Okay plot, but it was only long since MMO games are meant to be addictive.

Now for the world. The world is pretty big. And you have several areas. These areas are connected by tunnels and going through these tunnels gives you a very long loading screen. The world is open, but doesn't feel open. And plenty areas again require money to access so f*ck your sense of determination and curiosity we just want cash! The areas are different though, but The Commons and Unicorn Way feel kind of similar and again loading screens. One thing that was strange was that the PvP arena was in Unicorn Way instead of The Commons but the Commons is wear the players meet most of the time. Also, I remember while playing the game told me I must get to level 20 in order to visit an area I went on one quest for under level ten. Wait, in order to back track, I must level up multiple levels and probably end up finding out that the area wasn't as interesting as I hoped. I never got to level twenty on either account so I never went back. And I felt jealous when a player went to an area I couldn't access even when I saw that they were in that area on my friends list cause when I clicked go to their area it told me something like this "We get money, you get a disappointing area!" So, good world, but it's held back by greed, loading screens, and not being able to return sometimes.

Then we have the combat. It's pretty repetitive, but it was the only reason I kept playing in the first place.
You pick a spell from a card deck if you have enough pips and then use it. A lot of times it would "fizzle" and not work and just play an animation where black powder comes from your wand. It's fun, but repetitive. And it sucks when you fizzle. It's still fun, making this the games strong point.

Now for quests. They are basically get the item and defeat the enemy majority of the time. In most MMOs this is all there is for quests, and Wizard 101 could have broken that pattern by giving us stealth quests where you avoid random battles off the sidewalks since the enemies all use something that sends you back to the start of the area as their first move and it works if you are killed by it.Racing quests where you must get on the back of something that you can move way faster on and then go to a starting line and race from one part of the spiral to another while being able to go into race mode by clicking on something in the quest menu and being able to explore until you collide with your vehicle or just click to go back to the race in the exact same state it was just in. This game could have been a great game if the quests had variety but since they're all the same Wizard 101 will never have it's own "All you had to do was follow the damn train CJ!"

Graphics are pretty good. I like the art style and how it runs on computers easily while being an online only game. You can make your character look unique by taking your time and mounts make moving around take less time. So, good in the extra areas.

Since this is an MMO, I still need to review the multiplayer. The multiplayer isn't that great. In PvP, okay players who are at level let's say 20 compete with people who are at level 89 and have a very very very great chance at winning the battle! It's so unfair and unbalanced and people who perform micro transactions all the time end up winning cause of the capitalistic game developers! That's even worse since at least the experienced players worked to get that powerful. The community is nice but that's easy to say when you have to use quick chat. It's not as bad as the icons in Zelda Triforce Heroes but I would like to say "Well, I hope no one Mal-aists me in my sleep" as a joke when going to my dorm in Ravenwood.

There's pets and pet mini games along with the pet derby and they are a bit fun but the pet derby is a bit unfair too. You use mini games to make your pet better and they can compete and age and all that but
one banana peel and the player with the most skill can lose instantly.

The spells are given to classes. The two classes that are the best to me are Death and Fire. The Death school is just one kid in front of a cliff since the school itself was destroyed or taken away. The Fire school is a teacher with orange hair giving spells to people. Fire does good damage and gives good health while death does damage that gives health. You use training points to get spells from other classes. Good character customization put in and time for the final paragraph of this review that I've been spending about an hour of my time on.

So, this is a game I recommend. Well, I recommend it to people with enough money. If you are against the ideas of "Freemium" and "Pay 2 Win" skip the game. It will consume your time you could be using to play better multiplayer games like Team Fortress 2 or Halo Reach. This game gets a 7/10 for being good up until cash becomes essential to progress much. This has been my very long review of Wizard 101, and I hope you enjoyed it, because I will make more reviews of games in the future and goodbye.

Comments

Never played this - visitor

Good rant - Nateawesomeness

The game sounds good and a very detailed review. But that post-quest cash request sounds kinda horrid. - visitor

Good review. - visitor

Nice. - WonkeyDude98