After having played the first Minecraft Dungeons, I had high hopes. When the game came out, I flew to GameStop and blew $50, which I should have saved for groceries. Rushing home, I loaded the game and hopped on. The first thing that caught my eye was the recycled Minecraft Legends art style. If you haven’t played Minecraft Legends good for you. It is a complete waste of $30, which Mojang cancelled support for roughly a year after its release. However, it appears Mojang couldn’t let one of its worst ideas slides, as they brought the janky and softer art style to a game which is meant to be dark and brooding.
Just comparing the artwork reveals a major flaw in the games design. In my opinion it is similar to the art style difference between the original Ducktales, and the Disney Channel Ducktales remake from a few years back. The soul which embodied the original game just isn’t there anymore.
In addition to my complaints about art style the game itself is full of bugs, from broken collisions to a roll system which only works 50% of the time. Now, this problem may be exclusive to the Switch 2, but with how well the console has handled much bigger games, such as Resident Evil Requiem, Mojang has no excuse for the 15gb Minecraft spinoff, causing much stress on the console at all. I played the original on the Switch and had little to no issues with the game. During one of the boss fights in the game, I encountered a collision with nothing, which would prevent my bow from hitting the enemy. As a result, my arrows would collect in a pile floating in the air as if they had hit a wall. I know most game companies these days release half-baked games, and count on updates to make them better, but when I shell out my grocery budget for the week, I expect something of quality.
Apart from a derpy art style and infuriating bugs the game itself is also excessively spammy. The best way to deal damage is by spamming the jump attack. Even heavy items take multiple hits to kill low level mobs, so jump attacks are the only way to feel even remotely powerful against the 10-15 mobs the game sends at you at a time. I remember playing the original and slaying hundreds of zombies in swarm after swarm, using my daggers, it was tough, but it was rewarding. In this game everything feels redundant, with little to no reason to return to areas for more. The dungeons that appear on the map appear to be largely recycled, meaning you get 3-4 varieties before you just run the same loop indefinitely. The map itself is impressive, but quickly grows old, as mobs keep respawning in unpredictable levels and quantities. If you struggle in one area, die respawn, and pray the enemies are easier it often works.
My short summary of this game is that Mojang has a lot of patches to do before I feel like I got my money’s worth. Many of my issues with the game could easily be fixed had they just put a little more effort into the game. If my opinion changes upon beating the full campaign I will update this post, but for now, I would argue that you should save your money and put it towards the Ocarina of Time Remake, that is coming out next month.
