The original Minecraft game needs no introduction: it has sold over 425 million copies worldwide and nearly every gamer on the planet has tried it at least once. While we are unlikely to see a Minecraft 2 anytime soon, the franchise still gets new games through its many spinoffs.
One of those spinoffs was the release of Minecraft Dungeons, and that game came out in 2020 and amassed an amazing peak of over 25 million players worldwide. Due to the success of the first game, Minecraft Dungeons II is available this year on PC, Xbox Series X/S, PS5, Switch 2, and Switch.
Minecraft Dungeons II has a unique story as it introduces an all-new dimension to the Minecraft universe. Players get to explore and fight through a new dimension called The Sift.
The Illager High Council seeks to harness the raw soul energy of The Sift and use its power to unleash corruption across the Overworld. As the player, you have to create your own hero to stop this madness so peace and harmony can finally exist in the Minecraft universe.
One of the coolest things about Minecraft Dungeons II is that it's not just a normal single-player experience. If for some reason you think the game is hard, you can assemble a team of up to four players to fight the evil Illager High Council and their plans to ruin the Overworld,
You can either gather four players on the same device with couch co-op, or find players online to play together. Even though the game is entirely playable as a single-player game, I recommend gathering other players to help you if you want to play it on the hardest difficulty setting.
Despite being an officially licensed Minecraft game, Minecraft Dungeons II does not use the Bedrock game engine. Instead, the new game is built using Unreal Engine 5, and this allows it to have a seamless open-world environment with impressive lighting effects.
Not to mention, Minecraft Dungeons II runs relatively well if you're playing the game on Xbox Series X. The game is output at 4K and runs at a buttery smooth 60fps at all times. Even if there are lots of enemies on the screen simultaneously, I didn't notice any major frame drops during my playthrough.
As for the gameplay itself, Minecraft Dungeons II is officially described as an isometric action role-playing game. It's pretty much a hack-and-slash dungeon crawler featuring lots of enemies, a large open-world environment, and lots of loot to uncover.
At the start of the game, your items and weapons are pretty basic and weak. It's not until you explore more dungeons and kill many enemies that your inventory becomes much better. The further your progress, the better your weapons, tools, and armour will become.
What I like most about Minecraft Dungeon II's combat is the variety of different weapons you can wield. The game includes one-handed swords, two-handed swords, dual daggers, spears, axes, scythes, Wolverine-like claws, and even huge hammers.
Each of the weapons has its own strengths and weaknesses, so it pays to experiment with each one to suit your personal playing style. For example, hammers have a lot of power, but their only downside is that they're slow. On the flip side of this, the Wolverine-claws are fast, but you need to attack more times to do more damage to enemies.
Melee weapons aren't the only thing you can use in this game. This is because there are a combination of bows and arrows and crossbows you can wield, too. By pressing the right trigger, you can kill enemies from afar using bows, and they're also really helpful during some boss battles.
When you kill enemies or find chests, you can also grab lots of useful armour to wear, such as helmets, chest plates, leggings and boots. Much like weapons, the armour has some status effects that can increase the percentage of damage you can do on enemies.
Another cool thing in your inventory is artifacts, and these are special items that can help you during heavy combat. One of the first artifacts I discovered was the firework arrow, and this allowed me to wield the power of TNT at bad guys from a distance. However, the best part of the game is a dog that you find that helps you fight off every enemy in the game.
The last things you can collect are talismans. These can be collected to either increase your health, carry more ammo, or more. You can even visit towns in the game to upgrade the ability of your weapons to make them stronger, such as adding a fire effect at the end of a combo.
As fun as this game can be, it wasn't a perfect experience. For one thing, I didn't like that you only have one health potion. You have to wait for a cooldown in order to use it again, but this can be hectic when a boss throws so many enemies at you.
Some gamers might also be disappointed that this game doesn't have the destructive environment capabilities of the original game. When a Creeper or box of TNT explodes in this game, it doesn't deform the terrain, which is a bit of a bummer.
Another thing worth mentioning is that Minecraft Dungeons II is pretty short for an RPG. I managed to finish the main story as a solo player in around eight hours. That said, there are lots of side quests to discover if you want to prolong your experience with the game.
While Minecraft Dungeons II sadly does not have the same game engine as Minecraft, the game is still a great experience if you love dungeon crawlers. The game is easy to pick up and play, plus it introduces a whole new dimension to the Minecraft universe. This is worth picking up for both young and older kids.