Baby’s First Diablo (Minecraft Dungeons)

Game: Minecraft Dungeons
Available On: Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Windows
Played On: Xbox One
Price: £16.74
Available on Xbox Game Pass or PSnow: It’s on Game Pass

Look at me being all current and trendy for a change, bit of a difference from last time when I reviewed a game made in late noughties, oh no, I’m coming right up to date and playing new a game that came out a mere few days ago. Yes it’s Minecraft Dungeons, the 2020 release developed by Majong Studios and Double Eleven and published by Xbox Game Studios. The fact that this is made by Microsoft and on so many platforms hopefully shows a bit of progress in the stupid and tiring console war, just play on whatever platform you like, it’s all good.

I never really thought I’d need a Diablo esque style game set in the universe of Minecraft but here we are and I’m playing it. I remember seeing it’s reveal at E3 and sort of taking note as that being something to look out for but not much else. A cynical part of me thought it’d be a cash grab and maybe a bit of fun and that’s about it. But seeing a little gap in the market with Diablo going mobile and no real entry level dungeon crawlers about and here we go, but let’s be honest you’re not here for me rambling, you’re here to see if it’s actually any good.

First up we get the back story for the game, which is something I won’t really be getting into as it’s merely there to progress the game, rather than give it narrative, and this is our first look of the game. It looks good, we see vast worlds full of colour but with its traditional blocky Minecraft signature that you would expect. And this doesn’t change when you’re in the game, it’s stunning so extra points for making it so good considering the limitations of having everything be sort of square. So visuals are good and we get into our tutorial, see how the game moves. Again it’s very good. I personally find the button mapping quite odd but you can personalise it to hearts content in the settings so no problem there.

As said it moves nicely and smoothly however like any game it does take a short while to get used to, I will say the character speed is a touch on the slow side but overall we have another success. So combat, it is that going to bring this game down. No. It’s satisfying, quick, fun and most importantly engaging, you do have to concentrate or indeed risk being swarmed by the various mobs of the game (which all make an appearance). Extra points as well for giving the enemies rag doll physics, it’s fun to see these blocky bodies fly around the maps. There is no pause in this game, so be warned once you’re in a level, there’s no having a breather by pausing, you will be attacked by mobs in both the pause menu and inventory menu.

Speaking about inventory, let’s discuss how to build one. You have three slots, one for you melee weapon, one for armour and one for your ranged weapon. After the tutorial (where you’re given the basics) there are only a few ways to acquire weapons, unlike actual Minecraft there is no crafting. Instead you gain weapons and armour through drops or chests that you find around the maps. It sticks true to the dungeon crawler genre. There is a third way and that’s when you gain the ‘blacksmith’ in your base world. With this you can trade the in game currency (which is emeralds) for a random item. You also have three slots for artefacts that are special skills you can use and they can be gained the same way by loot drops or trading emeralds to the ‘wandering tradesman’ in the base.

With each weapon (ranged or melee) and armour comes with random enchantments for you to put in, these essentially buff your weapons to be better. You gain enchantment points with every level to build different combinations of weaponry and set ups for you to get used to. This is helped even more with the games salvage mechanic where you can get rid of old weapons or things you don’t like for emeralds, and any enchantment points you put into weapons, you get them right back, so you can really try various different builds with no risk at all. It’s fun but most importantly doesn’t punish you for attempting different things.

My main praise for the game is it’s accessibility for players of all skill sets. To fully perfect the game you have to complete it 3 times in each difficulty (default, intermediate and apocalypse) but in each difficulty there is a sliding scale of how hard you want that to be, the higher the level the better loot you get but it doesn’t effect the XP you gain. This really gives the opportunity for everyone to enjoy this game and find a difficulty that suits them best.

I think the biggest praise I can give this game is it’s not Minecraft attempting a dungeon crawler, it’s a very good dungeon crawler set in the world of Minecraft. I can see people who love Diablo or similar games not liking this because it’s a lot easier than traditional games of the genre but to me that’s good, this is a challenge if you want it to be, but if you just want to try an easier game then this is it too. It’s accessibility is it’s best feature and one I can’t heap more praise on allowing most people to pick up a game and have a good time with it. Either by themselves, couch Co-op or online, the game will make things fair.

Is this game perfect, no. As I said walking is slow and the rolling can be a little unpredictable but knowing DLC is on the way makes me think these things can only be improved upon. For me it’s fairly priced (base game and gold edition) and also available on game pass for Xbox users so it’s definitely worth picking up. With 2020 seemingly being the year of the remaster, this is a new title that can be picked up and enjoyed for hours, and does have a good replayability factor. So perfect?? No. But this dungeon crawler is building up to be something special.

9/10

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