Minecraft Dungeons is back! The original Minecraft Dungeons came out back in 2020 and quickly spread to every system. While it wasn’t perfect, it managed to be a pretty solid mission-based Diablo knock-off that scratched that combat itch with some creative isometric design work. Now Mojang Studios and Xbox Game Studios are back with Minecraft Dungeons II and it’s bigger and better than ever!
The new game takes everything that was good about the first one, shakes it up a bit, and then lets it settle out into a new experience that seems both familiar and new at the same time. Let’s start with the story because there’s a whole new dimension to explore! Illagers have been corrupted by the Sift, a rift into another dimension that is accessed through the Deep Dark portal and through rifts throughout the land. Soul corruption is leaking out of the Sift and infecting the mobs in the land, threatening all the Villagers in Minecraft. It’s your job as a hero to brave the Sift, defeat the corrupted Illagers, and, you know, save the day!
As you’re likely aware, Minecraft isn’t big on exposition. However, there are plenty of cinema sequences in the game and they’re fantastically fun. On top of that, there’s a surprising amount of dialogue included with each mission given to you by the villagers, but we’ll get to that in a moment. Suffice it to say that there’s enough new content here to make things pretty exciting for any Minecraft fan, with new blocks, new creatures, and a whole new (and pretty) dimension to explore!
Combat hasn’t really changed in Minecraft Dungeons II. This is an isometric game with action combat and light RPG elements (gear only). Think Diablo II lite and you won’t be far off. Combat consists of randomly generated mobs but in a significant departure from the first game, there’s an open world aspect to Minecraft Dungeons II. The first game had you going through portals to each mission but here you start in the town of Brave Haven and slowly expand outward with the main story. After about 10 hours, I’d still only seen about 7% of the map or so, but that’s partly because I was playing with my 11 year old son (I’ll cover co-op play later). Walking around on the overworld lets you grind mobs for experience to level up, find more gear, and discover dungeons and rifts where you can find stronger gear, unique items, and enchantments.
Your character’s loadout is fairly substantial with options for two weapons, three items, and an assortment of armor. You have a large inventory you can store gear in as well, so you can keep a variety of powerful items as backups or sell them to fund other upgrades. There are common, uncommon, rare, special, and unique items available and each tier has more powerful bonuses attached to it. The higher your level, the better the swag you get from kills and chests, and some comes with impressive stats like huge percentage boosts to damage, automatic idle healing, and shot multipliers (both number and power). Gear can be upgraded by the Blacksmith once he’s unlocked and raised to match your current max weapon level if you have enough gems, so if you’ve got a weaker unique item, hang onto it! The Blacksmith can also be upgraded three times with special shards gained from defeating soul corrupted mobs.
The Enchanter is easily just as important as the Blacksmith here. My son ignored the Enchanter because he was in a hurry to play and then turned to me in open-mouthed amazement when my character did something like five times the damage his did in couch co-op. That’s because when you explore rifts and dungeons, you can get enchantments. These can be bonded to your weapons and armor by the Enchanter, modifying their abilities and adding to them. Every power your gear had remains, and you then add the enchantment on top. If you get a solid build with complementary abilities, you can wipe out huge mobs in a matter of seconds. The Enchanter also has three upgrade tiers and each one lets you multiply the power of the enchantments, so when every enchantment is level 3, you’re exponentially more powerful, assuming your loadout is well-chosen. I ended up with a unique bow that does 60% extra damage to wounded mobs, gear that lowered the refresh time of arrows (they slowly replenish thankfully!), gear that multiplied the number of arrows I fire (up to five), a fire damage modifier, and high powered fire arrows. As a result of the combination of enchantments and gear, I could activate fire arrows, fire four times with five arrows each in a wide spread, and utterly lay waste to an entire mob of 10-20 enemies, though even at level 50, a soul corrupted Enderman still absolutely wipes the floor with me.
With the ability to grind dungeons and rifts, then jump in and out of quests whenever you want, Minecraft Dungeons II really comes into its own. The flow between quest and dungeon and the added elements of exploration make the game seem more complete. The load times are minimal on the PS5, a spectacular improvement from the horrendous Switch load times of the first game, easily the worst version of that title. I found that wandering around and just fighting in random areas and dungeons significantly boosted my power level as compared with simply playing through the main story. Grinding is absolutely essential if you really want to power up and jumping a number of levels quickly is much easier solo than in a party. Striking off by myself for an hour or two resulted in a ten level jump and a massive boost to my states and equipment.
By comparison, co-op significantly slows down your progression but makes the early game much easier with a friend to double team some of the tougher mobs and bosses. Falling behind is a bit of a hassle but if you get far enough away at the edge of the screen, you’ll suddenly be whisked back to your companions. I only had the opportunity to play offline co-op but it’s a very fun game to play with a friend (or your kid). Weirdly, playing in offline mode means that co-op play is linked to the main player’s character and a guest player can only create a subordinate character that isn’t accessible independently. If you play online, which requires a Playstation Plus membership, you can then create characters that can be played independently. There’s no other way around this, which is awfully disappointing for those of us that do not pay for Plus.
As a result, my son was unable to grind or play without me at all and had to start a separate solo game if he wanted to play alone. That being said, co-op is incredibly fun and most of our time with Minecraft Dungeons II has been co-op, even though single player is entirely playable once you get the hang of the slightly more tactical approach needed for larger battles. With two players, healing support and player resurrection make tougher boss fights more palatable and the tension rachets up. Irritatingly, the game takes its enemy power scaling cues from the strongest player, not the weakest one, which means that if you’ve been playing the game to review it and suddenly end up ten levels above your son, he gets trashed by regular mobs until you can help him catch back up.
Whether you’re playing alone, via local co-op, or online with friends, Minecraft Dungeons II looks fantastic. The game looks incredibly polished and the Sift is particularly pretty, filled with Blubs, giant spiked centipedes, and other weird creatures along with plenty of new blocks. The cinema visuals are particularly dramatic but since everything is voxel based, they don’t look any better than the game itself. Audio is also solid, but nothing new if you’ve played Minecraft or Minecraft Dungeons before. The sound effects are pretty standard and the music bursts into a crescendo whenever there’s an ambush or a boss fight. Speaking of boss fights, the bosses are particularly neat to look at, with all kinds of dramatic special attacks and equally excellent sound effects that really drive home how powerful bosses are. The design work here builds on the standard Minecraft aesthetic, but the Sift twists on characters and backgrounds, especially in rifts is excellent and there are a few new sounds to get used to.
I was fortunate enough to get a physical copy of the deluxe edition of the game and it’s time for me to tell you all about it! The physical game comes packaged with two DLCs, four additional hero skins, a Soul Cape and a Blub Pet. As of release, neither DLC is available and there is no information about what they will contain. The hero skins are neat enough, but there is little to distinguish them from the wealth of other options available. Prior to redemption, they simply appear locked at the bottom of the character selection screen. The Soul Cape is a cosmetic which is neat and matches the logo of the game in the PS5 menu system. The Blub pet just kind of wanders about and looks cute, which is perfectly fine because it’s definitely cute, but it would have been nice to have it replace your regular pet skin. What I’m really looking forward to is what the DLCs will contain, but with no ETA on those, we’ll all just have to wait.
As for negatives, there aren’t very many here. The GUI is excellent here and you can control font styles and sizes, as well as tweaking a variety of other options. But offline mode for co-op is flawed as we talked about earlier and it would be great if they patched that. Power ramping is a bit odd too and occasionally a massively overpowered enemy will be generated which will almost instantly kill you. Going back to the same area after you die, return to Brave Haven, and take the portal back to the combat area sometimes clears the overly strong enemy and sometimes does not. Soul corrupted Endermen are particularly powerful, more than any other enemy I encountered and honestly, it’s just better to go somewhere else when they show up and wait for them to disappear. There’s probably an algorithm that governs their appearance but be warned. The guiding pathways are also a bit finicky and sometimes take you on roundabout paths or try to guide you directly through walls, but it’s only occasionally and can usually be resolved. Other than those issues, everything is roses here. There’s very little handholding once you get the hang of the game, and the set level design and limited dungeon options make exploring fun and easy. There’s a bit of repetition there, but it’s honestly minimal.
Minecraft Dungeons II Deluxe Edition is absolutely worth your time. As a Minecraft Diablo-lite, it is easier to play and more fun than the original and it’s clear that the developers listened to feedback on the first game and improved as much as possible. While we don’t know what’s in the DLC yet, chances are good that it’ll be enough to warrant buying the Deluxe Edition or the very nice physical deluxe edition, which installs quickly and runs smoothly. At $50 (and $30 for the standard edition), that’s a heck of a deal and Minecraft Dungeons II is going to be worth every penny for the massive amount of playtime you’ll get out of it, both solo and with friends!
This review is based on a physical copy of Minecraft Dungeons II Deluxe Edition provided by the publisher. It was played on a PS5 using a 1080p 55” TV and on the Playstation Portal where it played equally well. Minecraft Dungeons II is also available for Switch 2, Xbox, and PC on Steam and Windows.
Nate Van Lindt has been a gamer since the days of yore (aka Commodore 64), and has played a bit of virtually everything out there. He's also an avid comic book collector, both vintage and current, and reads a fair amount of sci-fi and fantasy. On top of that, he watches a fair number of movies and TV shows as well. Oh, and he has a family, a full-time job, and lives somewhere in the urban wilds of Southwestern Ontario, Canada, foraging for old video cables and forgotten game soundtracks.