I had mentioned in my review of the first season of Dimension 20, Fantasy High, that this show did the impossible by making me interested in Dungeons & Dragons, which I previously had nothing but scorn for. I found Fantasy High to be such a fresh and fun campaign, and so I found myself hooked on something that I never thought I would be. To hold people over for this second longer season, The Unsleeping City, there was sort of a mini-season of Dimension 20 called Escape From the Bloodkeep. I did enjoy Bloodkeep, but I wasn’t nearly as interested in the story, and I found the cast to be a bit inferior overall to the cast of Fantasy High. So, now the third season of Dimension 20 has arrived, and it brings back the cast from Fantasy High in an all-new adventure. I figured that The Unsleeping City would be more on par with Fantasy High, but it unfortunately it ends up falling a bit short for me again.

On a conceptual level, I love The Unsleeping City. I felt like part of the reason I didn’t care for Bloodkeep as much was because of its more traditional high fantasy setting, whereas I found Fantasy High’s high school setting to be a bit more accessible. I wasn’t sure how they could follow up on this, but The Unsleeping City does a great job of this by setting its campaign in a real-life place: New York City. This was a really interesting idea, and it does end up paying off by seeing some battles in places like Times Square and Broadway. There are certain times where you might not grasp a setting if you aren’t familiar with New York, but it should only add to it for people that are familiar, rather than taking away from people that aren’t.

Now let’s talk characters. Going around the table, Zac Oyama has created Ricky Matsui, a firefighter who’s basically just an archetype of a “dumb Superman.” Zac’s character Gorgug was my favorite in Fantasy High, and somehow he manages to make Ricky just as fun, once again being my favorite character in The Unsleeping City. He plays it so well, and Ricky is just so likeable. Then, Emily Axford plays Sophia Bicicleta, a middle-aged woman whose husband recently left her. Emily’s character Fig was another one of my favorites in Fantasy High, and so unsurprisingly she really brings it here with Sophia again. I just love the way Emily plays her characters, and Sophia is no exception. Next is Lou Wilson’s character, Kingston Brown, who is basically the stereotype for the New Yorker that is friends with everybody and is always just trying to help his neighborhood. Fabian was one of my least favorite characters in Fantasy High, and so I actually found Kingston to be a big improvement. Lou plays the character with a lot of heart, and so he ended up being one of my surprise favorites this season. Siobhan Thompson plays Misty Moore, the stereotype of an old Broadway star that knows that she’s too good for those around her. In the end, I think Misty winded up being my least favorite character this season, which is a shame, because I really liked what she did with Adaine in Fantasy High. I just thought Misty was a bit unlikeable, and not all that interesting. She has her moments, but…meh. Brian Murphy plays Kugrash, the only non-human character of the group. Kugrash used to be a man, but got turned into a giant rat by a witch years ago. Kugrash is a ton of fun, and so I found him to be an improvement over Murph’s previous character, Riz. Finally, Ally Beardsley plays Pete the Plug, who is just a giant drug addict/dealer. I consider Ally’s character Kristen from Fantasy High to be much better, but Pete winded up being pretty interesting in the end. At the start of the season I absolutely hated him and thought he was a terrible character, but he gets much better as the season goes on.

I do think that the characters overall were pretty great. Brennan also makes some more fun and interesting NPCs as well. I didn’t think that there quite as many fun characters as there were in Fantasy High, but there was at least a few of them. Some of the standouts that come to mind right away are a gangster named Don Confetti, and Kugrash’s one son Wally.

So, I both loved the concept and characters for the season, so why do I still consider it a bit of a letdown? Well, it’s just the story, mainly. I’ve noticed that Brennan has a tendency for making the plots of these seasons be a bit convoluted to begin with, but The Unsleeping City was just hard to follow. Again, I like it in theory, because the story it explores is that there’s hidden magic in New York City, and that there’s a dream realm that lives side by side with ours. This is fun in theory, but I just thought it got too bogged down by the details, and there were a lot of times I didn’t even really get what was actually happening. While I was hooked on the characters and setting, I just didn’t think they had a very fun journey to go on.

I do still really enjoy this series, but I’ve felt a bit of diminishing returns so far. I just immensely enjoyed Fantasy High, and now the two seasons that have followed have felt slightly worse. It’s still good enough that I haven’t lost interest, but I’m hoping that it doesn’t keep going downhill.

3.5/5