Minecraft is a household name at this point and something that I swear everyone has played at least once. It’s just one of those games that is everywhere!
When the original Minecraft Dungeons came out, we played a fair bit of the game, but it didn’t seem to connect with our household in the same way that Minecraft did. The characters and visual style were similar, but the playing of the game was completely different. Now that the children are older, however, we’ve found that the aRPG genre is much more popular, and as such the newly released Minecraft Dungeons II has become incredibly popular over the past few weeks.
Minecraft Dungeons II is all about adventuring together, full of action and fighting mobs. We often play in couch co-op, four player, with Amelia, Kai, Robin and I all loading in our characters. I do love how you can choose the character you’ve made from the side bar and do not need to remember the order you all first played in. At the bottom of the screen, each player is their own color, which very much helps with keeping track of who is who.
It’s also got crossplay built in from the get-go, which does mean that one of the kids can ping into the game from their Switch while one of their friends (who tend to play on PlayStation) dials in remotely. On the subject of PlayStation, there’s a physical version of that available: There is a Standard edition, which just features the game, and a Deluxe edition, which has a soul cape, four Hero Skins, a Blub pet, and both of the upcoming DLC expansions.
Gameplay will be incredibly familiar if you played the first game, or if you’re familiar with other aRPGs such as Diablo or Path of Exile. You’ll fight through hordes of enemies, following quests as part of an overarching storyline, gaining bigger weapons and growing stronger as you bounce to and from a central hub area.
You do get a lot of weapons and a lot of enchantments that you can use, and an impressive variety. Kai was particularly excited about enchantments, especially as they aren’t single use and can be used on lots of weapons as long as you have the currency to do so.
The map is heaving with mobs, emerald chests and food that you can use to heal… its completely packed and its rare that you’re walking through empty screens. It’s even loaded with a day-night cycle, which helps the areas nearest to your hub feel different. We spend most of the day traveling around the map, hunting through mobs and doing quests!
Minecraft Dungeons II’s main storyline revolves around the new biome, Sift, and the various enemies that are coming from it, although you’ll likely spend longer dealing with sidequests, which’ll just as likely have you finding lost villagers as building bee hives. It’s fun to jump between these smaller quests and the larger quest, especially when we aren’t quite at a high enough level as a group to take on a story boss.
As a choice, we don’t use the fast-travel features that are built in, instead always moving around the map fighting everything we can so that we can continue to level up and unlock new items. The item spawns, as with the previous entry, are highlighted in the colour of the player that gets to pick them up, which is nice, giving people a window of time to gather their items, saving them from other players vacuuming up their stuff.
When it comes to combat, it really shines when you build complimentary teams and focus on teamwork – as with Minecraft itself. We all have our different weapons and styles: I like ranged weapons, favouring the bow and arrow. Robin always has some sort of defensive buff item that she’ll regularly drop to keep us stronger. Kai instead focuses on DPS or tanking and kiting enemies around. Amelia rounds us out by being especially good at moving around the field, communicating about new enemies and utilising the TNT that litters the world – often causing massive explosions. When someone is low in health, and someone else spots it, we remind them to heal or remind them to hang back so that their health potion reloads and they can use it. We all do revive each other when we die as well, which is grand. The systems all thrive when its played co-operatively like this.
While there’s nothing that really stands out as putting Minecraft Dungeons II further than the first, the feeling of successful teamwork and the enemy flow feels much more balanced. It feels like they’ve added a bit more of everything, and by restructuring the story as they have, it’s made it all feel much more cohesive. We have also really enjoyed checking out the Sift biome ahead of its launch in Minecraft.
Minecraft Dungeons II is available now for PC, Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo Switch consoles.
