I reviewed the first season of Dimension 20, titled Fantasy High, and explained how it was my first time consuming anything Dungeons & Dragons related. It’s remarkable that such a series hooked me, but here I am. After the huge success of Fantasy High, the people behind Dimension 20 knew that fans couldn’t wait too much longer for a second season. And so, here we have Escape From the Bloodkeep, a mini-series that dungeon master Brennan Lee Mulligan has given the moniker of “Dimension 20: SideQuests.” These are intended to be miniature seasons that come out in between the main seasons, and so Escape From the Bloodkeep is much shorter than Fantasy High’s 17 episode season, clocking in instead at 6 episodes.
While Fantasy High took much more real-world inspiration for its campaign by setting it in a school, Escape From the Bloodkeep instead opts for giving us more of an actual high-fantasy setting. The hook here is that the characters we’re following are villains, living in a world ruled by an evil king in the Bloodkeep. However, the king randomly dies, setting everything into chaos. Not only does it set our heroes (or, rather, villains) into chaos because they were working for the king and no longer understand what they should be doing, but they’ve actually become the prime suspects in the death, and so the rest of the world is now against them.
My overall impression of Escape From the Bloodkeep it’s that it’s definitely still an entertaining addition to the Dimension 20 franchise, but that overall it’s not quite as good as Fantasy High. I have two main complaints that I’ll briefly dive into. First off, we have the cast. We have an entirely different cast for this, with Fantasy High’s cast only being reserved for the main seasons. I definitely don’t have a problem with this, but in the end this cast just wasn’t quite as good as the main cast. The standouts here are definitely Amy Vorpahl, Matt Mercer, and Mike Trapp, and so I wouldn’t mind seeing more of them in the future. Erika Ishii and Ify Nwadiwe also definitely have their moments, so I don’t inherently mind their presence. The one that bothers me the most is Rekha Shankar. I’ve never liked her as part of the Collegehumor cast, so I admittedly have a bit of a bias here going in. I’ve just found her to be insufferable in the past, and while she was better here than I was expecting, she still got on my nerves quite a bit. She doesn’t ruin the show or anything, but it definitely dragged things down for me.
The other main complaint I have is that the villain concept really isn’t well-utilized at all. I will say that this is a complaint that only bothers me in hindsight now that I’ve finished the show, because while it was happening I still immensely enjoyed it. However, when I do think about it, the main grab to this season was “let’s have fun playing as villains instead of heroes,” and in the end they all just wind up playing heroes anyway. The forces of good are considered the villains and everything, but this is just a name swap, not a behavior swap. The characters never really wind up doing anything truly villain-like, and so they don’t feel like villains at all. The only one that comes close to this is Ify’s character Markus, who occasionally tries to screw over the rest of the crew in order to obtain fortune for himself. The rest of them really don’t feel like villains though. This actually became most apparent to me when I watched behind the scenes footage for the season and found out that Brennan originally intended the final episode of the season to be a player vs. player battle for the crown, but that he realized it wouldn’t work at all since the characters winded up bonding together and becoming close as friends going into the final battle. While I did enjoy the battle we did get, it would have been so cool and unique to have a player vs. player battle, so it’s a shame this didn’t happen. Again, it’s not like this ruined the show for me, but in hindsight it made me realize that the season really kind of failed at what it set out to do.
However, none of that really winds up mattering in the end, because Escape From the Bloodkeep is still a hugely entertaining mini-season of Dimension 20. As always, Brennan easily makes this all worth it, being a dungeon master that’s both extremely talented at his craft and also really entertaining. The side characters that he creates are often more enjoyable than the main characters themselves, and he always injects so much personality into each of them. If you’re like me and enjoyed this aspect of the show most during Fantasy High, then you’re going to continue to find a lot more enjoyment in this.
So, I know this is still kind of a niche thing in a way, but keep in mind that I’ve never had any interest in Dungeons & Dragons whatsoever, and I freaking love Dimension 20. While Escape From the Bloodkeep may not have been quite on the same level as Fantasy High, it’s still a very entertaining time. If you’re subscribed to Dropout then you should definitely give this series a watch, but if you’re not then I actually think it’s a show that makes a subscription worth it. I love this show, and I’m eagerly anticipating the full second season that’s coming soon.
4/5
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