I FINALLY finished Minecraft Dungeons. I say finally because the game came out all the way back in May. Albeit it was just the main story that I finished, but I’M SO HAPPY. A new DLC has come out since then, and the second piece of content comes out in early September, but I got it done!
(If you’re new here, there’s a reason I’m celebrating. Between being a mom to a VERY rambunctious toddler and working 30 hours a week in a retail setting, I don’t get a lot of time to game. Unless I wake up at 5 in the morning to do it.)
The game had some issues at times, but I loved it overall. This review will be based on my time with the game playing the Hero Edition on the Nintendo Switch! For a refresher on how I do reviews, click the link here for my 2020 update to my review scale.
(Normally, I try to keep my reviews spoiler-free, but in this case, I decided not to. Spoilers abound!)
WTF is This Game?
Minecraft Dungeons is what happens when Minecraft meets Diablo. I was in the minute it was announced. Diablo, specifically Diablo III is one of my favorite games out there. You don’t build or craft in Minecraft Dungeons, but that’s absolutely okay.
The beginning cutscene of Dungeons tells the story of an Illager named Archie, driven away from his people. He tried joining other villages, but one by one, they drove him out. On his travels to try and find a new home, he found the Orb of Dominance, which gave him magic powers but also turned him evil. He becomes known as the Arch-Illager after that and made it his mission to seek revenge on everyone who had wronged him.
You play the Hero, and it’s your job to liberate the villages the Arch-Illager took over, fighting the monsters of Minecraft like Creepers, Zombies, and Skeletons along the way. The game consists of several levels in many of the different Minecraft biomes. As you travel the levels, you’ll continually get new gear to raise your level and make you powerful enough to stand up to the Arch-Illager.
Playing the game is simple, which makes sense because of the wide array of ages that play Minecraft. You have a slot for a melee weapon, a ranged weapon, and armor. You also have three artifact slots, where you can do anything from shoot fireworks arrows, spawn a llama to help you take down enemies, or boots to make you glide faster through tough situations.
You get three chances at a level before you’re made to start over. But, unlike Diablo where your gear degrades, there’s no such penalty here, which, again, makes it great for first-timers to the dungeon crawling genre!
Graphics
Minecraft is a VERY distinctive game in terms of its visuals. Minecraft Dungeons sets things up a little differently, but aside from the top-down isometric perspective, it’s VERY faithful to what we’ve come to know and love.
In fact, there are some things I hope make their way over to regular Minecraft. Fall is one of my favorite seasons, and when I launched into the Pumpkin Pastures level early in the game, it made me think of everything Fall. There were jack-o-lanterns, bales of wheat, everything was colored like changing leaves…I felt like I could almost taste a Pumpkin Spice Latte from Starbucks. Hear that, Mojang? Give me more Fall in my Minecraft. (Please?)
One of the most striking things to me, graphically, was near the end. I was storming the castle of the Arch-Illager, and there was (of course) a big storm outside. When the lightning struck, I could see the patterns of the stained glass windows on the floor I was running on, and it was just gorgeous.
Sound
They didn’t just plop the regular Minecraft soundtrack (which is also excellent) into Dungeons, which they probably could have done and it would have been fine. Thank goodness they didn’t though. Great care was taken to keep the signature lo-fi sound, but with a dungeon-crawling twist.
Mojang put out a great video about the audio design of Minecraft Dungeons, and you can watch it by clicking here: Minecraft Dungeons Diaries: Sound.
Replay Value
I know I’ve been throwing around Diablo III a lot in this review, but that’s my gold standard when it comes to a dungeon crawling game. Diablo III has been out for something like ten years now, and I’ll still fire it up when the urge comes along. There aren’t many video games where I will still do that.
Do you want to replay Minecraft Dungeons? Yes. The game offers SEVERAL difficulty options, loot for days, and you can even unlock secret levels by uncovering their locations in the main game levels. Those spots don’t spawn every time, however, so replaying is also a MUST. I played most of the game by myself, but I do recommend doing it with friends, whether it’s on the same couch or from each other’s house.
Playability
This is where I struggle a bit. I played most of the time on my (undocked) Nintendo Switch and experienced lag and longer load times than my Xbox One X on a pretty consistent basis. I understand why that is, obviously, but it’s something I needed to mention. Especially if your only opportunity is to say, play on the Nintendo Switch.
As someone who was playing by herself, there were a few moments where I thought the game was almost too grind-ey. (There was also a period where I was just going through a rough time, and that’s probably what made me feel that way.) Ideally, you’ll play through the whole game with someone else, or multiple someones. By myself, defeating the Arch-Illager took me a couple of tries, and that’s when I went on a hunt to find all the secret areas.
End Thoughts
Minecraft Dungeons simply took the “If it’s not broke, don’t fix it” approach, and it just works. Sure, it doesn’t take into account everything that makes Minecraft, but we still have the look and the feel and the sound that screams MINECRAFT.
Between all the varied level locations, loot to find, and monsters to beat, it’s so damn fun, and I can’t want to play it with my son someday.
