Friday, May 29, 2020

Minecraft Dungeons is Okay

I'm in my mid thirties and definitely not in the targeted audience for Minecraft Dungeons so take this post with a grain of salt.

Minecraft Dungeons is just "okay" and in a world where a triple A game is released every month this is not okay. Everything screams simplicity which is perfect for kids but are leaving grown adults wanting more. It took around 8 hours to beat the main story after which I had the option to replay things at higher difficulty for better loot but at that point I already had enough.

Minecraft Dungeons promised randomly generated areas but it all feels kind of the same. Similar to Diablo 3, you have different templates with different path during each play-through but is going right, instead of left, or up, instead of down, really that different? Part of me was expecting random levels following a similar logic as the main Minecraft game where every single play-through is different. What we seem to have here is a handful of template and while it's random it's not as random as I was expecting a Minecraft game to be.

Graphic, sound, and mobs of monsters are variations of the original Minecraft. If you enjoyed the aesthetics of the original then you will feel at home here.

Minecraft Dungeons took a different approach than most ARPG when it comes to combat. There are no classes here - your abilities are based on the items you carry. Some items work better together than others and it was fun to experiment with them.
Leveling up gives you artifact points that you can use on said items to unlock special abilities such as adding fire damage.
Similar to other ARPG, no 2 items are the same and the goal of the game quickly becomes gathering the best, and rarest, of them all. Item gathering feels a bit too random since I've gotten better loot from killing regular mobs than bosses. Is it wrong for me to expect to be given better loot from harder foes?  Boss battles are a bit more frustrating when there's no proper reward attached to them and because there's no proper reward at the opportune time the gathering of items feels aimless. 

There's none of that here which means there's no clear way to build the most powerful character in the Minecraft Dungeons universe other than If I want to build the most powerful character in the Minecraft Dungeons universe I need to know which items are the best and what challenges I have to overcome to get to them. I wasn't able to find that here. 

As I said before, it's possible to beat the main game in 8 hours. The game is obviously geared towards replayability but the item system isn't interesting enough, or provide enough of a carrot, to keep going after the first playthrough. If you are looking for something to play with your kids then this is not a terrible experience just not a good one if your an adult looking for the next great ARPG experience.

It's not Bad, It's not Good but it's okay.

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