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Minecraft Dungeons is a great (couch-coop) game for introducing new players to Diablo-like action-RPGs, as it’s engaging enough to showcase the basics in an enjoyable way but also simple enough to not be overbearing. However, a lack of base game content, the overall simplicity paired with repetitiveness and questionable endgame should discourage more experienced players from buying
Since the success of 1997’s Diablo - or more specifically the iconic Diablo II from 2000, which is frequently counted among the best games of all time - there has been a large variety of games promising a similar gameplay loop. Notably, despite many franchises such as Path of Exile, Titan Quest, Torchlight, Grim Dawn or Last Epoch competing with the still ongoing Diablo titles, all of these games are aimed at players experienced with the gameplay basics: Offering a lot of stats, equipment, skill trees and more in order to allow for in-depth character builds, tailor-made and farmed by each player to suit their own needs. What the subgenre is severely lacking however, are entry-experiences that can be enjoyed by players entirely new to these types of games or videogames in general, maybe because they’re of young age.
Enter Minecraft Dungeons, originally released in 2020 as the first spin-off game for the best-selling videogame of all time: Minecraft. Admittedly, “spin-off” might be too much of a word here: Minecraft Dungeons does not implement anything from Minecraft besides the visuals for its levels, enemies and items. While the visuals do make for a surprisingly great action-RPG fit - even though there’s a little too much going when multiple players are involved - it’s a bit strange that Minecraft Dungeons is completely disconnected from the main game otherwise; resource gathering or a crafting system for example, which play a prominent role in Minecraft, have already been used in other Diablo-like games as well after all.
The main appeal of Minecraft Dungeons lies in it’s simplicity, which makes it a great pick for players new to Diablo-like action-RPGs or with comparatively little videogame experience in general. The controls are simple and the isometric camera perspective automatically following the player makes navigating the various missions, most of them set in a different Minecraft biome, quite easy. Additionally, while the progression system is centred around new equipment obtained from various sources in order to make the player characters stronger, as expected from the sub-genre, it’s far from complicated and allows for an easy understanding of how to optimize the player character.
As a result, the first story playthrough should be quite an easy-going affair, which lasts around 4 to 6 hours depending on the amount of side content done (“secret missions” that can be unlocked by first discovering them during main missions). The “story” itself is only paper-thin however, only told through short narrations at the beginning and end of each main mission – a missed opportunity. As a result, most of the time missions also only request you to survive until the end of a level, with small puzzles or little parkour sections only rarely mixing things up. Regardless, effortlessly slaying hordes of Minecraft enemies and obtaining increasing better equipment is a simple but entertaining experience, especially if played in (couch) co-op constellations with a mix of more and less experienced players (such as a parent and a child).
Things take a turn for the worse if you want to spend more time with Minecraft Dungeons however, especially if you’re constantly raising the difficulty for better rewards. After finishing the story for the first time, a new difficulty level (“adventure”) is unlocked, which features stronger enemies and new items to obtain. Beating the final level again on the new difficulty unlocks “apocalypse” as the final difficulty, with similar benefits on offer. Notably, each of the three difficulty levels also feature “threat levels” (from I to VII), which allows you to lower or raise the difficulty more precisely to dynamically pinpoint the optimal mix of enemy strength and power level of the possible rewards for you. On the “apocalypse” difficulty, the threat level can even be raised up to twenty-five additional times, which in theory should allow for a sizeable endgame experience.
However, in practice Minecraft Dungeons noticeably falls apart on higher difficulty + threat levels. Not only does the enemy balance feel off, with some enemies killing you in one hit while others barely scratch you, the level generation also breaks. Sometimes invisible walls prevent you from reaching certain chests (!) or even progressing in general (!!), because the random level generator bugged out. Sometimes hundreds of enemies seemingly spawn in one spot instead of being spread out, which can be quite deadly depending on the enemy type.
But what’s probably the worst part is the repetitiveness. This is mainly caused due to the simplicity of the equipment system – it offers player comparatively little choice when it comes to creating optimal item synergies. You’ll soon discover which few combinations work significantly better than others and at that point, Minecraft Dungeons is all about just increasing the specific item levels. Of course, grinding has always been a huge part of Diablo-like games but in this case, I feel that the character build limitations make it a much more tedious affair, since there’s little to experiment with.
As such, you’ll routinely repeat missions in order to improve the stats of your favourite equipment. Unfortunately, the base game edition of Minecraft Dungeons offers surprisingly few of them, which can make the repetition even worse. If you want to spend more time with Minecraft Dungeons, I heavily recommend buying the “Ultimate Edition” of the game from the get-go, as it significantly expands the number of available missions. With all DLC missions played, as long as you’re continuously increasing the difficulty and threat levels as I did, you can easily get 35+h of content out of the game. However, development of Minecraft Dungeons has already been concluded, which means no additional content updates are to be expected.
Lastly, as hinted at before, the best way to play Minecraft Dungeons is with other players, be it through couch or online coop. Not only is the option to revive other players really helpful when dealing with some of the oddities that come with the higher difficulty levels, the game also does a great job at distributing the loot in a fair way.
Concluding, Minecraft Dungeons is a decent entry experience into Diablo-like games, best suited for coop play with players of mixed experience. It’s robust enough to be enjoyable during the first story playthrough but it starts falling apart on higher difficulty levels, making it less recommendable to players familiar with this style of games. The game frequently becomes 50% cheaper during big Steam sales, so I recommend waiting if you’re interested in buying the game.