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The best-selling game of all time (over 200 million copies sold as of May 2020) now has a spin-off. Minecraft Dungeons takes the brand of Minecraft and mashes it together with the hack and slash genre. Minecraft Dungeons lacks the depth that most hack and slash games have. This game is pretty forgiving and it serves better as an introduction to the genre. Those who are new to hack and slash should give this game a play, otherwise stay away. Pros & Cons Pros Minecraft aesthetics brought up a notchUnique items and combinations of enchantments Cons Can feel unresponsive at timesCamera doesn’t feel goodUnderwhelming boss drops Hack and Slash Minecraft Dungeons is a large departure from the brand’s original game. Dungeons is like Minecraft in that you get to fight hordes of zombies and skeletons, while finding loot with different stats and enchantments, while leveling up—minus all the building and exploring elements. So, is this just Minecraft with less? No, it’s not a lesser Minecraft. A big part of what makes this game fun is the feeling of leveling up and gearing up. Gear has levels to them and different stats and abilities. It feels good to pick up and find new gear that’s an upgrade to your current gear. And although I’ve just described your typical hack and slash game, Dungeons adds elements to the genre that make it stand out. What makes Dungeons different is the various effects and enchantments each piece of gear provides. There are also items called Artifacts which have special abilities. Combining different pieces of gear, enchantments, and artifacts to synergize with one another is where the fun is. Game Feel Running around and killing enemies felt fluid with all the particle and shader effects. Very juicy. Some things did hinder my fun, though. There’s a really long turning animation, which makes kiting (attacking after running away) very slow and gameplay unresponsive. I assume the developers made it this way to discourage this optimal style of play, but it felt really off and atypical of this genre. I would often take more damage than necessary because of this. The game features a fixed camera angle which is average for hack and slash games. So, when you or enemies are behind objects, you’ll see a silhouette. Many things, however, get obscured as it’s not clear sometimes. Often, there will be items or chests that I missed because of this camera angle. It also doesn’t help that when going up stairs, the camera angle moves at an awkward pace and you can really feel it. Difficulty There are three different main difficulties: Default, Adventure, and Apocalypse. After completing the story once, you can unlock Adventure mode, and after that, Apocalypse. There are also different difficulties that players can choose before entering a level according to their gear level. I found that since this game was somewhat easy, I’d go for the one higher difficulty. I played this game solo, and I found bosses to be much more challenging than the entire level combined. I assume this is because the bosses were balanced according to co-op instead of solo. Solo players have to prepare for a tougher fight. Towards the end of my playthrough of Default mode. I had a build that could just tank through everything and it was a breeze. This point was the most fun for me. Depth Enchantments are tied to your items. Since you only get one point of enchant per level, it’ll make you choose which items you’re going to keep to upgrade carefully. This is about as deep as the game gets. There are no skill trees, or stats that you’ll be upgrading. Everything is carried by this system. Procedural Generation Much of this game is procedurally generated, with a few core parts to lead the player through the story. This includes loot. I found boss loot to be somewhat underwhelming, especially playing on a higher difficulty than my gear level. Enchanted mobs also often drop nothing at all, which sucks! I felt that the environments were decently made, even with Minecraft’s signature sameness of blocks. There are unique set pieces that will catch your eye. The only time where procedural generation became a negative was when enemies got stuck as you can see in the picture above. Or one time, I got stuck after a dodge roll. Verdict If you’re a veteran of this genre, coming from games like Diablo or Path of Exile, I’d recommend you avoid this game because it’s not as in-depth as you would probably like. If you’re new to the genre and want to try your hand, or you have a bunch of friends to play with and mess around with, then this game is for you.

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