Wizard 101

Wizard101 Review

You asked for it, and we delivered.  Wizard101 is a very popular game, and our Wizard101 Review will help you decide if it’s for you or not.  Created by Kingisle Entertainment, Wizard101 is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) aimed primarily at kids and teenagers. As with most games targeted at such a demographic however, parents and adults will likely find just as much fun to be had with the game as anyone.

In a summed up word, Wizard 101 is engrossing. As you play a young wizard and go to school, enjoying and partaking in adventures and quests throughout the nearby Wizard City and the world beyond, parallels to the Harry Potter universe are abound and abundant. If you’ve ever wanted to play a Harry Potter MMORPG – or at least one worth its mettle, discarding the garbage that’s currently available in the niche – than Wizard 101 may very well be your favorite game of the year.

Indeed, the similarities and parallels one could draw to the Harry Potter universe edge extremely close to copyright infringement.

Wizard101 Review – The Story

Discovered to be a young wizard by Merle Ambrose – the Headmaster of the notorious Ravenwood Academy – you’re almost immediately plunged into the world of the Academy and the city it resides in, unimaginatively named Wizard City. Unsurprisingly, customizing your young wizard in Wizard101 is a game within itself, with this and the overall basics and game mechanics helpfully explained via voiceover by the aforementioned Headmaster, Merle Ambrose.

Sorting takes place via a series of questions and ultimately casts you into one of the primary seven schools of Magic: Balance, Death, Ice, Life, Myth and Storm. If you’d rather just choose your school of magic outright without any pesky questions, that option is available to you as well. The schools of magic are more or less self-explanatory, with the Life school being focused on healing and restoring life whereas Ice consists of ice-related spells, etc. etc.

Don’t worry about having to put all of your eggs in one basket however, as young wizards can, in addition to learning from their chosen discipline school of magic, gain points to be used in acquiring spells from other houses of magic as well.

Wizard101 Review – The Gameplay

Navigating around Wizard City and Ravenwood Academy is incredibly easy, as would be expected from a game targeted at kids and teenagers. Moving around is done with either the WASD or arrow keys with a handy and useful map and compass helping out in guiding you to specific locations throughout the game. While the graphics certainly won’t be winning any awards in the industry, it is an extremely bright and colorful game, with characters and NPC’s in the game animated in the obvious cartoon fashion.

Combat in Wizard101 is unsurprisingly simple with actual battles existing in the turn-based vein with every spell you cast costing what are known as power points. Obviously, the more powerful and advanced the spell, the more power points that will be required to cast it. Every spell in the game is styled like a trading game card with each having a stylized piece of art accompanied by information and a description of that particular spell/card.

There is also what are known as treasure cards in Wizard101 which are best described as one-time use spells. They’re either dropped by enemies or can be bought from the Ravenwood Academy library. Dueling other players revolve around casting buff and debuff (see: offensive and defensive support) spells whereas enemy character/NPC’s have magic icons above their names so that one can tell exactly what kind of magic they use in advance.

Wizard101 Review – The Economy

The economy of Wizard101 is simple gold coins. They can be gained by either undertaking and completing quests or by playing mini-games. Surprisingly, gold coins cannot be gained from dead (or in the case of Wizard101, “unconscious”) enemies. Clothing that is worn in the game is not just for show and actually give your young wizard certain boosts in stats and the like.

The aforementioned one-time use treasure cards can actually be traded amongst players and while gold is relatively easy to acquire in the game, items are not cheap. Wizard City is full of all sorts of different quests that you can undertake either alone or with your in-game friends. Nothing is too complicated and the quests usually consist of fetch quests, delivery quests or go and kill/knock out something quests.

Since Wizard101 is an MMO primarily targeted at kids and teens, communicating within the game is more or less quite restrictive and there are plenty of parental controls to guard against anything unsavory going on.

Overall, Wizard101 – despite being what has been phrased as a “kids game” – is extremely fun and offers an impressively long lasting experience. Indeed, it may very well be one of the best MMORPG’s of the year despite it likely not receiving much credit because of the aforementioned kids demographic.

Wizard101 Review – Final Words

If you’re looking for a fun and magical MMO experience than look no further than Wizard101. It can both be enjoyed by yourself, even if you’re an adult, or you can make the game a learning and shared experience with your child and enjoy the game with/through them that way. All in all, the game targets its young demographic well and doesn’t contain anything that a particularly strict parent would deem unnecessary or not needing to belong to such a game targeted at children.

On the other hand, as we already suggested, if you’re a fan of the Harry Potter series – either the books or the movies or both – than Wizard101 arguably offers you the best possible opportunity to experience such a world in the form of an MMO game. While the aforementioned copyright infringement similarities are warranted, it’s more or less a cookie cutter version MMO of the Harry Potter franchise and never tries to be anything else but that. If that or anything else stated in this review sounds appealing to you, than simply look no further than Wizard101.

We hope you’ve enjoyed our Wizard101 Review, and we urge you to comment below with your own experiences of the game.

Don’t take our word for it – go download and play Wizard101 yourself and see what you think.  It’s free to play after all!

It’s magical!