IGN Game Review: Minecraft Dungeons 2

0:00This is IGN. A payday candy bar is miles and miles of peanuts. Salty crunchy peanut, sweet sweet caramel ravine you up with every bite. Enjoy the tasty journey my friend. Payday, P-N-U-T-K-R-M-L-B-R. This shallow sequel provides some peaceful button mashing, but does little to stand out. This is your IGN review of Minecraft Dungeons 2 by Travis Northrup. One of the reasons Minecraft is my favorite game of all time is how alluring its world of endless possibilities is. So it's a little strange that the Minecraft Dungeons series seems to represent the exact opposite. Minecraft Dungeons 2 is a brief, forgettable ARPG that's as thin as they come from its bare bone story to its shallow gameplay, and you can see almost all it has to offer in the span of an afternoon. Simple, easy-going action is kind of the whole point here, but while there's nothing

1:03actively offensive about this humdrum adventure, there's also very little worth getting excited about either. The good news is that the minor improvements this sequel makes over the original are quite welcome, including more customizable characters and the added ability to jump. Unless the new realm of the sift adds some fresh color and creatures to the Minecraft universe. So if you're looking to spend a mindless night or two swinging swords with your friends, you could do a lot worse than this. If you didn't play the first one, Minecraft Dungeons 2 takes the pixelated items and goofy mobs from Minecraft and throws them into an extremely light and noticeably less gory version of Diablo. Little delve into Dungeons, smack around swarms of monsters, and tackle big ol' slobbery bosses while hoovering up as much loot as you can along the way. But where most ARPGs lean hard into dizzying skill trees and loot with so many different stats you need a degree in mathematics to comprehend them, Minecraft Dungeons strips away

2:04most of that in favor of a much simpler framework. That makes it both more approachable and almost equally less interesting. All this sequel expands on the ideas from the first and modest ways, like increasing the armor slots you've got from 1 to 4, it mostly maintains that stripped down build crafting philosophy. The roughly 7 hour story has your unnamed heroes, squaring off against an evil cabal of illagers who gain access to a new dimension, called the sift. And actually, look at that, I just about covered it all. The cutscenes and conversations to be found here are basically just a vague outline of a story that sends you too unfroated, kill things and save the world, and that's about as deep as it ever gets. It's not like I was expecting some kind of emotional drama from my Minecraft meets Diablo game, but like most things in this adventure, there's still very little to it. The action is thankfully more developed than the story, adding some key features to the mix that make battling through the blocky world more enjoyable.

3:06I had completely forgotten, for example, that the original didn't have a jump button, and having one here adds some needed platforming and light puzzles to solve, plus it gives you access to a new jump attack so you can drop a bow on these filthy ads. You also have more options for enchanting your weapons and armor with special effects, which you unlock by conquering dungeons and completing quests throughout the world, as well as new artifacts that offer passive buffs, like increased damage with ranged weapons. All of these things are a decent step up from the original, but the vast majority of the moment to moment gameplay remains largely unchanged, and smacking semi-Zombies and illagers tends to run thin quite quickly. The best part of Minecraft Dungeons 2 is the new area called the Sift, a magical, soul-powered realm filled with goat things, poisonous water, and more teal landscapes than was previously thought possible with the science of our day. This isn't a game with a whole lot of personality, and it often feels like it merely wears a thin

4:07Minecraft skin, but this new dimension is one of the few ways in which it branches out to do its own thing, and it mostly succeeds at being an interesting place to explore. It's got some new creatures and a super distinct vibe, with souls floating everywhere and dancing automatons roaming about. Unfortunately this isn't the best showcase of the new realm, since you're mostly just plowing through areas killing things, so it really just made me wish I could wander around it in regular Minecraft. But in a game with not a whole lot of exciting stuff going on, getting to explore this new slice of the Minecraft universe was definitely a highlight. Minecraft Dungeons 2 is a shallow ARPG that provides a few evenings of mindless dungeon delving fun, but not a lot beyond that. Aside from the new Sift realm, which has some cool new ideas and creatures to admire as you and your friends carve your way through it, there's just not much to make this sequel stand out. It makes poor use of Minecraft's iconic world, feeling light little more than a skin

5:08slapped onto a generic Diablo-like, with a bare-bone story and skin deep hack and slash combat. The slow-stakes action isn't a bad way to pass the time, especially if you're intimidated by the hilariously crunchy menus and build crafting of more serious ARPGs, but there also aren't a ton of compelling reasons to play this one beyond that. Fift dungeon 2's IGN score? Six out of ten. Thanks for listening to IGN. My name is Tony Jackson, and for the latest updates on Minecraft Dungeons 2, visit us at IGN.com.