Minecraft Dungeons II Review – Jumping Straight Into the Sift

I’ve played the original Minecraft Dungeons both solo and couch co-op for many hours. It was a fun break from the more serious gameplay and stories of similar games (I’m looking at you, Diablo IV).

Mojang Studios, the studio behind the very popular Minecraft franchise, has now created a sequel to their original dungeon crawler. In this game, you’ll fight your way through both the Overworld and the Sift to stop the Illager High Council, who want to take over the world.

You don’t need to have played the original to get the story of Minecraft Dungeons II, but it might help to know a bit of the general Minecraft lore. The story doesn’t continue straight from the end of the first one, but is a separate story in its own right.

One thing you can do in Minecraft Dungeons II that was not possible in the original: You can now jump! You’ll need that, together with your roll, to escape tight situations.

TL;DR

If the kids are already playing Minecraft, and let’s face it, who isn’t, this new and easygoing action RPG for the whole family will net you and them many hours of dungeon crawling right from the comfort of your own couch.

Story: The Bad Guys Emerge

We begin our journey in Squid Coast, a quiet village, but not for long. Soon we see glimpses of the Illager High Council – The Prime Enchanter, the Supreme Evoker, and the Grand Illusioner. They lead the Illagers against you, this time not only from the Overworld, but also from a newly discovered dimension: the Sift. Among the new dangers are the powerful blue enemies, who will stop at nothing to hunt you down.

The Illager High Council makes short work of Squid Coast, and after you and the villagers escape in your small boats, you are greeted by the locals at Brave Haven, while the Illager High Council retreat back into the Sift.

You will be calling Brave Haven your home from now on. The locals are happy to have you here. They start by having you help the beekeepers of Honeycomb Fields. The Illager High Council’s magic is leaking through to the Overworld and is corrupting it. The bees are the first to be affected.

On your way, you spot the regular enemies of the Minecraft universe, the slow zombies, the archer skeletons, the slime blobs, and, if you’re really unlucky, an angry enderman.

You’ll soon find yourself in various skirmishes with these enemies, firing your bow and arrow or launching bolts from a crossbow at the faraway ones, while also stabbing the near ones with your newly found sword or your trusty sickles – or even jumping for your life to get away from the stronger mobs.

Gameplay: Fight, Loot, Upgrade, Repeat

Minecraft Dungeons II has the same gameplay as other roguelike games. You fight some monsters, you find some new loot, be it weapons, armour, or trinkets, you compare it to the already equipped and see if anything’s better, then swap, and repeat. In most other roguelikes there’s an element of character customization, but not in Minecraft Dungeons II. Every character can use every type of weapon, and you’ll often be switching between swords, sickles, spears, bows, crossbows, and more, as you keep finding items that are just one level better than what you have.

The new thing in Minecraft Dungeons II compared to the original, besides being able to jump, is the way enchantments work. In the original, each weapon itself had several aspects that could be upgraded and when you found a new weapon, you could immediately repurpose the enchantments. Now, you need to first find the enchantsmith, then find the proper tomes of enchantment to be able to enchant a particular weapon.

You’ll pay with enchantment points that you get every so often from leveling up, and you’ll get the point back, if you salvage your upgraded weapon. However, it means that when you do find a better weapon than what you had, you’ll have to go back to town to upgrade it. This isn’t always the break you want when going on a longer questline, and it seems to halt your progress.

The quests are, as always, quite linear, in the sense that they’re often just “go over there and collect whatever”. This monotony is nicely broken by introducing dungeons, where players can find better weapons and new enchantment tomes, as well as Sifts, where you’ll find stronger enemies and better loot.

When going on longer quests, you’ll want to use the guiding fireflies. A simple button press will shoot out fireflies from your position and will guide you towards the goal of your current quest. During my gameplay, I got lost a couple times, and the fireflies helped me back on track. A single time, not so much, as they instructed me to jump through a locked gate and out over a cliff.

In tight situations, it was nice to have artifacts that helped build out the character. I had a healing totem that I would often throw down when I saw many enemies in tight spaces. Artifacts cost souls, just like in the original, and some of my enchantments for my weapons would replenish these faster, making it possible to stay longer in combat, without having to run away.

I only played Minecraft Dungeons II solo, but the game will allow for couch co-op of up to four players, as well as mixed co-op with people online. There’s also matchmaking, so, if you want, you’ll always have somebody to play with.

Visuals: The Blocks You Know and Love

I am always amazed at how designers manage to pour so much emotion and liveliness into cube blocks of different sizes. It’s truly amazing that you can see doubt, fear, determination and many other emotions in the blocky faces of your character, the Villagers, the different mobs and creatures, and the Illager High Council.

The interface has all the aspects you know from similar games, a health bar, a soul bar for spell casting, your various hotkey-activated abilities. The minimap isn’t always helpful, as it fails to show terrain differences clearly, but the proper map is very detailed and will guide you through the Overworld.

The quest interface gives you the ability to replay the conversation you had up to the point where the quest giver gave it to you, so you can always re-read what you were actually supposed to do.

A new addition is the quest tracker that shoots out a firefly to guide you towards your current goal. If you get lost – or forget to pick up a quest item – this will come in handy, however, it is not without its own limitations. I got stuck and the firefly told me to just walk through the locked door or jump over the impenetrable cliff face.

Audio: Mumble, Mumble, Mumble

Again, I’ll give it to the designers, they really understand how to convey emotion through just a couple of mumble sounds, that is all you’ll ever get out of the Villagers.

The narrator’s voice is soothing and dramatic when needed which helps with the immersion of the game and helps in dragging you into the story. You are the protagonist!

All in all the ambient music and sound effects scream Minecraft in the best way possible.

Conclusion: Should You Play Minecraft Dungeons II?

I will probably pick this up from time to time, play it with some friends or with the kids, but as a solo experience it becomes too much the same cycle of fight, loot, run away, upgrade, get lost, get back on track. It’s difficult to gauge when your build is right for the next encounter.

The initial couple of hours were spent running very confused around Brave Haven and Honeycomb Fields, while every time you wanted to take stock of your surroundings, you’d be ambushed, and you can indeed die while looking at your inventory.

Mojang has delivered an experience inside their vastly popular Minecraft franchise that’ll cater to a slightly different crowd than their other offerings in, for example, Minecraft. Minecraft Dungeons II stays true to the classic feel of Minecraft, with the blocky visuals, the mumble of the Villagers as audio, and then layers some darkness in the perpetual onslaught of mobs surrounding you at the worst of times.

We’d like to thank Xbox for providing us with a review key for Minecraft Dungeons II.