Wizard City's Remade Quests

[Torpzun26]

Thanks to Wizard City and Krokotopia being free for a limited time, I took one of my mule characters through Unicorn Way and the three streets to see what the changed quests were like. It was a lot of fun, loved a lot of it.



Cyclops Lane is perhaps the absolute best of the three streets. Not only do we learn that General Akilles is working with Malistaire because Malistaire had once saved his life, but we also get to learn a bit about the captured students as well. We even get to learn about Sergeant Sweeny, who keeps damaging his armor. They also improved on the part where Cyrus tries to get you expelled, which is one of the most hilarious moments in the entire game. You were this close to being expelled over an unintentional joke. It's an entertaining trip that is full of world-building; all the streets are but Cyclops Lane does this better than the rest.





There is a Play As Your Pet sidequest in Cyclops Lane, and I really like how it was handled. In Karamelle, the quest that lets you play as your pet has you change into your pet then you follow an immediate trail to your objective. Here, you have to become your pet and look for the missing spellbooks on your own.

Outside of Cyclops Lane, I also really enjoyed the Death students Duncan Grimwater and Penny Dreadful. They have done a wonderful job at driving home just how much Duncan adores Malistaire. It makes a lot more sense why he ends up joining the Cabal now. It is also a really neat side story of Duncan constantly praising Malistaire and claiming that Malistaire could easily stop everything that's going wrong with Wizard City... when it's Malistaire who is doing all of this to Wizard City.



And then there's Penny Dreadful. A big reason why I love her so much is because of the contrast of how she is now from what she was before these quests were remade.




Instead of being a helpless wizard who needs to be rescued, Penny actually knows how to handle herself! She still goes off to Dark Cave, but she doesn't need rescuing. I'm proud of her. The one thing I miss is that you don't accidentally write a report on how to cook the undead anymore. I really liked that one.



And then there's Firecat Alley. Firecat Alley doesn't have the worldbuilding that Cyclops Lane does, but still expands upon Greta Darkkettle and her leaving the Ravenwood school of magic. Her passive-agressiveness over her firing was pretty fun to read, especially the bit where she blamed the student for turning himself into a Humongofrog. It was also really nice that Gloria Krendell was able to figure out that you were working for her and wanted you to say hi to her. It shows that Ravenwood is still cordial with Greta even if Greta doesn't think the same.

Lizzo... oh boy, the Lizzo discourse. I'll just say that despite Lizzo being only a reference to the real Lizzo, when a lot of our other musicians in the game are more than just references, and that one of Lizzo's primary messages is being body positivity when Lizzo is a plus-sized person and the ingame Lizzo being skinny... I'm bad at sentence structure. It just feels wrong for a character named Lizzo to be depicted like this.

Despite all of this, Lizzo's dialogue was entertaining. I particularly loved the one sidequest where she gave one of the Banshees a role in a fake play just to get her to shut up. And how she called out Shelus for being scared. Shelus got quite a bit of development as well, but his sidequests are pretty much the same as before, just with dialogue that reinforces his character as a sniveling merchant.



I wasn't as impressed with Unicorn Way or Triton Avenue's questlines. They're definitely an improvement and much more entertaining than before, but they are not on the same level as Cyclops Lane or Firecat Alley. I've already went over Duncan Grimwater, who I think is the best part of the Triton Avenue questline by far. I'm not really a fan of switching out the captive Griffinbane student from Artur to Susie. It just felt like they took a subverted trop and reversed that decision for no real reason. A good thing about the Triton Avenue questline is that the environment changes as you complete the storyline, like in Unicorn Way, though to a much lesser extent. Speaking of Unicorn Way, I liked the changing environment and I liked the expansion of Ceren Nightchant's character, but that's pretty much it.

What do I want to see from here on out? I think this is an easy enough question to answer. I want to see more of our classmates. I don't want to have their stories end when we're done with Wizard City. One thing that irked me during the graduation scene is that we see our classmates and it looks like they're still level 5 when we're level 100. We go save the Spiral, save the Spiral a second time, and they've done nothing at all? I wanna see them have their own goals, their own stories, and we can occasionally run into them throughout our quests.

[Dylan Windwalker]

I don't even think there's a balance student that we ever meet (in depth) in the game. Like a balance student that gives out quests for a side quest or main quest, rather than being just the object of a quest completion... or at least they're so insignificant that I cannot recall them.

[PlayerNEntered]

I don't even think there's a balance student that we ever meet (in depth) in the game. Like a balance student that gives out quests for a side quest or main quest, rather than being just the object of a quest completion... or at least they're so insignificant that I cannot recall them.

One thing I wish the WC quest revamps added were more talking to students and learning about their school from their pov