One of the reasons Minecraft is my favorite game of all time is how alluring its world of endless possibilities is, so it’s a little strange that the Minecraft Dungeons series seems to represent the exact opposite. Minecraft Dungeons 2 is a brief, forgettable ARPG that’s as thin as they come, from its barebones story to its shallow gameplay, and you can see almost all it has to offer in the span of an afternoon. Simple, easygoing action is kinda the whole point here, but while there’s nothing actively offensive about this humdrum adventure, there’s also very little worth getting excited about either. The good news is that the minor improvements this sequel makes over the original are quite welcome, including more customizable characters and the added ability to jump, plus the new realm of the Sift adds some fresh color and creatures to the Minecraft universe – so if you’re looking to spend a mindless night or two swinging swords with your friends, you could do a lot worse than this.
If you didn’t play the first one, Minecraft Dungeons 2 takes the pixelated items and goofy mobs from Minecraft and throws them into an extremely light (and noticeably less gory) version of Diablo. You’ll delve into dungeons, smack around swarms of monsters, and tackle big ol’ slobbery bosses while hoovering up as much loot as you can along the way. But where most ARPGs lean hard into dizzying skill trees and loot with so many different stats you need a degree in mathematics to comprehend them, Minecraft Dungeons strips away most of that in favor of a much simpler framework. That makes it both more approachable and, almost equally, less interesting. While this sequel expands on the ideas from the first in modest ways, like by increasing the armor slots you’ve got from one to four, it mostly maintains that stripped down buildcrafting philosophy.
What we said about Minecraft Dungeons (2020)
Minecraft Dungeons is a beautiful and fun dungeon crawler with a simple but tried-and-true set of systems in place. It plays it extremely safe, though, without bringing anything mining or crafting spins to the genre to accompany Minecraft’s signature look and feel. Still, it’s just so damn charming, and so fun, it’s hard to fault it for going the safe route. With tons of loot, secret areas to uncover, and progressively more aggressive difficulty levels to unlock, Minecraft Dungeons has a fair amount of replayability beyond its relatively short six to eight-hour story mode. But who plays Minecraft for the story, anyway? – Seth Macy, May 22, 2020
Score: 7
Read the full Minecraft Dungeons review.
The roughly seven-hour story has your unnamed hero squaring off against an evil cabal of Illagers who gain access to a new dimension, called the Sift, and… actually, look at that, I’ve just about covered it all. The cutscenes and conversations to be found here are basically just a vague outline of a story that sends you to and fro to kill things and save the world, and that’s about as deep as it ever gets. It’s not like I was expecting some kind of emotional drama from my “Minecraft meets Diablo” game, but like most things in this adventure, there’s still very little to it.
The action is thankfully more developed than the story, adding some key features to the mix that make battling through the blocky world more enjoyable. I had completely forgotten, for example, that the original didn’t have a jump button, and having one here adds some needed platforming and light puzzles to solve – plus it gives you access to a new jump attack so you can drop a ‘bow on these filthy adds. You also have more options for enchanting your weapons and armor with special effects (which you unlock by conquering dungeons and completing quests throughout the world) as well as new artifacts that offer passive buffs, like increased damage with ranged weapons. All of these things are a decent step up from the original, but the vast majority of the moment-to-moment gameplay remains largely unchanged, and smacking samey zombies and Illagers tends to run thin quite quickly.
How your build feels is largely at the mercy of the RNG gods.
The fact that buildcrafting is mostly left up to whichever odd equipment you happen to stumble upon, rather than a class-based system, also means you and your co-op teammates all play exactly the same way, and you rarely have control over how your build feels (at least until you near the endgame), since you’re largely at the mercy of the RNG gods. For example, I wanted to play a rogue-type class, but kept finding big ass swords and tank-like items, so I ended up serving as our crew’s defacto melee fighter despite my best efforts. Not that there’s much of a difference anyway, since every player has access to the exact same dodge skill, base speed, weapon options, etc. and you won’t find a shield to add blocking to your arsenal or anything like that.
The handful of equipment slots you’re given offer a few perks each, like increased DPS or added benefits from using healing items, or the ability to shoot fireworks that explode and deal damage to everything in the vicinity (which are good for ringing in the new year, too). You’ll also find a small arsenal of melee and ranged weapons with which to thwack creepers and skeletons, each with just a single attack pattern for you to spam. As you progress, you’ll be able to add some neat enchantments to give weapons and armor a new perk, like one that makes you move faster after you score a kill, or another that lets your ranged attacks penetrate through a target, but none of them do much to shake up the hollow hacking and slashing.
The best part of Minecraft Dungeons 2 is the new area called the Sift, a magical, soul-powered realm filled with goat things, poisonous water, and more teal landscapes than was previously thought possible with the science of our day. This isn’t a game with a whole lot of personality, and it often feels like it merely wears a thin Minecraft skin – but this new dimension is one of the few ways in which it branches out to do its own thing, and it mostly succeeds at being an interesting place to explore. It’s got some new creatures and a super distinct vibe, with souls floating everywhere and dancing automatons roaming about. Unfortunately, this isn’t the best showcase of the new realm, since you’re mostly just plowing through areas killing things, so it really just made me wish I could wander around it in regular Minecraft. But in a game with not a whole lot of exciting stuff going on, getting to explore this new slice of the Minecraft universe was definitely a highlight.
Once you’ve completed the story, you’ll unlock the equally thin endgame, which adds a new activity called Soul Storms. These events summon more deadly enemies for a chance at better loot, but there aren’t really any other activities to pursue where you’ll really need this better gear – at least not yet. Mojang has said it has plans to roll out additional endgame content after launch, which could make this activity worth grinding some day, but for now it feels mostly like more of the same monotonous chopping and dodging I’d already had enough of by the end of the story. The new equipment, which adds an additional perk to all the weapons and armor you find within this elite tier, is a decent prize at least, so even though I immediately felt like there wasn’t much for me to do with my new kit, there’s something about obtaining cool stuff that’s a worthy end in itself.
Beyond the Soul Storms, you’ll mostly roam around, complete any side quests you hadn’t gotten to yet, replay boss fights from the story, and conquer the numerous optional dungeons that can unlock some new enchantment options for your gear. That’s all fine, but it’s all the same button mashing that will have worn out its welcome by that point. My friends and I tried to find reasons to stick around, curious if the story was just a primer for a more deep, compelling endgame (as is often the case with ARPGs), but it seems like that just hasn’t been built yet.
