Minecraft Dungeons 2 Review
A diamond in co-op, but solo players might find themselves caving in.
Minecraft Dungeons 2 is the next instalment in, well, Minecraft Dungeons. If you've never played either game and you're the type of person who hears the word "Minecraft" and immediately switches off, assuming it's all blocks and building, this series might genuinely surprise you. Minecraft Dungeons is Minecraft's take on the co-op looter RPG, and a great one at that. It's one of those combinations that sounds like it shouldn't exist on paper, but the moment you pick up a controller it feels like the most natural fit in the world.
I'll be upfront about where I'm coming from. I played the hell out of the first game, to the point of farming every single unique weapon it had to offer. I loved it, I got properly addicted to it, and so I came into the sequel with very high expectations. For the most part, those expectations were met. I put around 20 hours into Minecraft Dungeons 2, most of it in co-op and some of it alone, and here's how it all shook out.
The biggest change, and I feel like I've said this about eight times this month alone, is that Minecraft Dungeons 2 has gone open world. The first game had you pick a level from a map, play it from start to finish with some procedurally generated elements thrown in, and beat the boss at the end in the hope of landing your next unique weapon. This time you're exploring not one but two hand-crafted open worlds, where mobs and bosses will ambush you as you roam. Once you hit the post game, even more events start spawning across the map, giving you more chances at better loot. The randomness hasn't disappeared, it has just moved. Side dungeons, mines and rifts spawn around the world, and that's where the procedural generation now lives.
To be fair, the open world suits this kind of game really well. Exploring with up to three friends, whether online or on the couch, picking up side quests as you go, stumbling across a cave and having that quick debate about whether to go in or push on, it all works. It gives the game a sense of adventure that a level select screen never quite could.
That said, and I can't quite put my finger on why, I found myself missing the old formula. There was something about rushing the same level again on a harder difficulty, knowing exactly what was waiting at the end, that just clicked for me. The game does give you a menu with a checklist of every piece of loot available in a given area, which is a genuinely useful addition. The problem is that the areas are large and the checklists are long. Normally a huge loot pool is a good thing, but when you're hunting for something specific, I much prefer a tighter pool tied to a single level, or something like a Borderlands boss you can farm over and over to target exactly the item you're after. None of this is bad design, to be clear. It's personal preference, and I'm sure plenty of players will prefer the new approach. Farming in this sequel just feels less like a precision hunt and more like casting a wide net.
Where Minecraft Dungeons 2 absolutely shines is co-op. I played through the main story and a chunk of the post game with two friends online, and we had a lot of fun and a lot of laughs. We blasted through the campaign, which runs around five to six hours, in a single sitting, and not once did any of us get bored. Building up your character, discovering new weapons and items as you go, seeing who ends up the strongest and comparing what loot each of you got, it's just the definition of fun. That constant "what did you get?" back and forth is exactly what this series does best, and the sequel nails it.
The story itself is as lighthearted as you'd expect from a Minecraft game. Nobody is picking this up for the narrative, but I'll admit it was a little more thought through than I expected going in, and it does a good job of pulling you from one area to the next. It helps that the game is genuinely pretty to look at. The classic Minecraft blocks lend themselves perfectly to a bright, vibrant world, and exploring it is a pleasure. And the music? Well, it's a Minecraft game, so of course it's fantastic.
The bosses are a little more of a mixed bag. Across the board they're decent, both the story encounters and the random ones that crop up in the overworld, but none of them really stood out. Nothing was bad, but nothing had us talking about it afterwards either. For a looter, that feels like a small missed opportunity, because a memorable boss is exactly the kind of thing that gives you a reason to keep coming back and farming.
It's worth setting expectations on depth too. This is a far lighter, less serious game than something like Diablo, and the build system reflects that. You have a primary weapon, a secondary ranged weapon, and a set of artifacts that act as your spells and skills. You can enchant all of these with extra passive abilities using books you find out in the world, and some weapons roll with a random bonus passive if you're lucky. Once you're happy with your setup, you can take your gear to the blacksmith and level it up so it doesn't fall behind the new loot you're finding. And that's more or less it.
Maybe it's because I'm getting old, but I really appreciate a game that doesn't overcomplicate things for the sake of it. Simple doesn't mean shallow here either, because the sheer variety of gear keeps things fresh. Throughout the campaign you're constantly picking up new types of weapons and new spells, trying them out and swapping things around until you finally land on a combination you want to keep. Even at level 70 in the post game I was still finding weapon types I'd never seen before, and I was genuinely surprised by just how many there are. For a game with such a straightforward build system, it does a great job of making every drop feel like it could be the one that changes how you play.
Then my friends went offline, and I decided to carry on solo. Oh boy, is it a different game. Honestly, at times it felt close to unplayable. If you go in with a full tryhard mindset, you can probably make it work. But if you're playing the way the co-op experience encourages you to, relaxed and just having fun, it doesn't hold up. Certain encounters throw so many mobs at you that the cooldown on your dodge simply can't keep up, and unless you're constantly kiting enemies around you'll get overwhelmed and wiped out. On top of that, unless you're specifically building around defensive passives, you'll start going down in two or three hits.
In co-op, that fragility is part of the chaos and part of the fun. Someone goes down, someone else scrambles to revive them, and everyone laughs about it afterwards. Alone, there's no safety net. One death sends you all the way back to the hub, and you're starting that boss fight or dungeon from scratch. The balance feels like it was built with a full party in mind, and solo players are left paying the price for it. It's a shame, because the combat and loot loop are good enough that I'd happily have kept playing on my own if the game had let me.
Honestly, that's the only real negative I can point to, but for some players it will be a big one. If you're a solo player first and foremost, it's something you need to know going in.
So where does that leave Minecraft Dungeons 2? If you played the first game, you pretty much know what to expect, just in an open world rather than a level select, and whether that's an upgrade will come down to how you like to farm. For everyone else, if you want a fun, lighthearted RPG that isn't overly complex and is built to be played with friends, this is a great choice. Grab a couple of mates, jump in, and you'll have a blast. Just be prepared if you're planning to go it alone.
