Dmitry King
Dmitry KingThe continued expansion of the Minecraft franchise is chock-full of charm and is immensely playable. Owing more than a little to predecessors such as Diablo, Minecraft Dungeons crafts an enjoyable and family-friendly experience. The game is thin on the ground in some areas, with some gameplay issues that could cause frustration.
I should probably admit before we dive in that I never got into Minecraft. I haven’t tried all that hard, but I have a short attention span and it’s easy for my mind to wander, which makes it hard to focus on resource gathering and, you know, the, um. Minecrafting. I do love a good dungeon crawler, though, and Minecraft Dungeons honestly pulls out a lot of stops in the name of being just that.
The story is one of the areas where Minecraft Dungeons is thin on the ground, but in this instance, that’s not a criticism. Minecraft Dungeons is a family experience, and the story has the appropriate amount of depth: the Arch-Illager has taken the Orb of Dominance and has set about trying to rule the land. It’s up to you and up to three others, via online or local multiplayer, to venture forth and stop him.
The game doesn’t really need to be any deeper than it is, and honestly, I can’t say for certain but the Minecraft universe probably has just as much lore as, for example, the Diablo universe. The difference is that Minecraft Dungeons doesn’t stuff the world with collectible notes and audio files. It’s just here to be played, and that’s not a bad thing.
The storyline is the jumping-off point for 10 missions, not including the tutorial section. These are played out from an isometric viewpoint through procedurally generated dungeons with randomized enemies. You spend the game hack-and-slashing your way through those enemies, with the occasional boss littered in.
There’s no character creation, although you are able to select from a wide range of in-game avatars. There are no classes, either. Instead, you customize your gameplay through the loot that you pick up. The loot gives you a good amount of variety on the following: melee weapons, long-range weapons, armor and artifacts, magical items that run on a cooldown.
Loot is found one of four ways: it is picked up in-game after defeating enemies, opening chests, as a reward for completing a mission, or purchased from a merchant at the in-game camp. Loot is entirely random. You can’t pick and choose what to buy from the merchants, they’ll just give you an item appropriate to your level.
Luckily, the currency of the game known as emeralds is incredibly easy to pick up. They can be found in dungeons and salvaged from destroying unwanted items. That way, if the loot found on levels or the items from the merchants don’t satisfy your needs, you can just stand there mashing the buy button over and over, hoping for something better. I’m sorry, what?
Between each mission, you head back to camp, which populates with the aforementioned merchants as you play the game. There otherwise isn’t a lot to do here until after you’ve completed the storyline for the first time. The camp starts opening up a little, and you find various reasons to pick those missions back up and play through them again. Minecraft Dungeons offers variable difficulty and increased difficulty modes upon completion, and has promised DLC with more missions. Mojang seems keen to retain the replayability of the game.
The gameplay itself is largely satisfying. Iconic Minecraft enemies and more descend upon you in mobs and ambushes across large, sprawling levels that reward exploration and trying to oust every enemy in sight. You can hack with a melee weapon and shoot from afar. Early on, the game warns you that arrows are in limited supply, but they frequently drop from enemies and always drop from supply chests that are dotted through each level. As such, I only ran out of arrows once or twice.
I couldn’t feel a tremendous amount of difference between weapons when using them. There was still enough weight to movement and animation that you could tell the difference between using a claymore and a sickle but I don’t think that the difference was extreme enough to really encourage picking a playstyle.
The same went for armor. While some armor advertised itself as heavy and some advertised itself as ideal for thieves, there’s no sneaking or speed component to the gameplay and as such, the armor you prefer may come down to aesthetics. This was a feeling further compounded by the enchantment system.
As you level up, you’re awarded points that can be spent on enchanting weapons and armor with different effects. As far as Enchantments go, there are ones that slow and freeze mobs, do fire damage, and that gives you a damage boost at full health. Salvaging any enchanted items will return your points to you, allowing them to be used again on any new items you come across and would rather use.
This is an interesting and unique approach. It makes for a fascinating replacement for a class system, but over time I felt that I was losing any real sense of individuality. I was recycling current items for new ones at a steady pace, and couldn’t find any motivation for retaining an older item unless I was deeply attached to a particular enchantment, which I rarely was. I never really settled on a way I preferred to play. Furthermore, without being able to upgrade equipment, you’re eventually forced to recycle it anyway, as it won’t stand the test of time.
The enemy AI and pathfinding in this game are generously described as janky. Enemies are utterly fixated on reaching you and hitting you, at the cost of all else. In later levels, this results in them tossing themselves into an abyss. At earlier levels, this means that they tend to sense you through a wall and start firing. Sometimes projectiles from enemies that can’t even see you will just go straight through doors and walls to damage you.
It also complicates some of the gameplay. Take, for example, TNT. As a random droppable item, this explosive can be picked up and thrown at enemies. Before use, you run around with it on top of your head. You throw it, it shows a blast radius, and you get out of the way or risk dying to your own explosive. Only the enemies follow you so doggedly that when you leave the TNT radius, all those enemies you were throwing it at have also left. It is so frustrating.
It’s worth noting that in my opinion when a dungeon crawler is done right, you should have very little to say about it. It should just go a bit like a car. You should just be able to disappear into the night and re-emerge several hours later needing a shower and needing to eat something. That analogy went off the rails, but for the most part, Minecraft Dungeons absolutely does just go, which is what made some of the frustrations more prominent to me.
The environments go hand in hand with the graphics, which are an absolute delight. Whilst Minecraft itself has never managed to grab me, the graphics have always been deeply charming in their blocky style, and Minecraft Dungeons takes that style and elevates it. The lighting and layouts of deserts, forests, caves, mines, swamps, and castles are built with obvious care and animations that are rich.
It’s an utter treat to run around in these dungeons. There are gorgeous environmental details that are nothing short of wonderful. A particular favorite of mine was a nighttime scene with glowing mushrooms that emit musical notes as you run through them.
The sound design, too, is great. Enemies make the familiar Minecraft noises without being too repetitive or overwhelmingly irritating, and there’s something weirdly satisfying about salvaging an item and listening to the emeralds clink-clink-clink into your pocket. The soundtrack is charming and atmospheric, neither intrusive nor underwhelming. It just fits.
I was impressed by the way it felt like real music for a real dungeon crawler too. There is a part of me that is used to things geared towards younger players being unbearably loud, catchy, and obnoxious, but Minecraft Dungeons has a lovingly crafted soundtrack. In many ways, it reminds me of the original Diablo soundtrack, though understandably it is a few levels less dark.
The environments are also kind to mistakes. If you roll off a ledge or get stuck somewhere impossible, you’ll respawn at a nearby checkpoint with no penalty. The checkpoint system in this game is very generous too and is clearly friendly towards family play. However, it is not without its challenges. If you die more than three times, you’ll be sent back to camp and have to restart the whole level. You’re more likely to die near the end of the level than at the start, for obvious reasons. This makes running around on your last life pretty precarious when it could erase an hour or more of progress.
For the criticisms I’ve listed above, I highly enjoyed my time with Minecraft Dungeons and will look forward to playing it again when the dungeon crawler bug bites me. The issues I’ve levied against it are either likely things that won’t bother the audience of the game (families and children) or are small potatoes in the grand scheme of the hack-and-slash. There’s plenty familiar for parents who played and adored Diablo, and it might just be a nearly perfect way to introduce their children to the genre. All in all, it was well worth my time.
A Nintendo Switch review copy of Minecraft Dungeons was provided by Mojang Studios for this review.
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🔥1.2 KMinecraft Dungeons
$19.99 USD
Pros
- Beautiful, iconic graphics
- Re-playable and captivating
- Delightful soundtrack
Cons
- Poor enemy pathfinding
- Shallow items and crafting system
