Minecraft Dungeons Review
Do you enjoy Minecraft? Do you enjoy games like Diablo 3? This game essentially mixes these two games, being an Action RPG from a bird’s eye view set in the universe of Minecraft. You might have tried diablo and just thought it wasn’t for you, that it’s too complicated with mixing a lot of skills and runes as well as gear to make a build. If you’ve thought that, this game might just be for you. The charming, simplistic universe of Minecraft takes the core elements of diablo’s playstyle and, well, simplifies it.
You have 3 artifact slots. These artifacts seem like they’re consumable items, but are in fact your skills that run on cooldowns. That’s all they are, they don’t have modifiers to change up what they do, they are simply items that have levels to tell you how effective it’ll be compared to others of the same item. You have two slots for weapons; one for melee, one for ranged. Both weapons have 3 stats, both having power and speed. Melee weapons also have area, which determines how large an area it effects, and ranged weapons have ammo, which determines how much ammo you start with and how much you gain when you pick up ammo bundles. These stats are determined solely by what specific weapon it is, though you can upgrade some of these through enchantments. Enchantments can be used to upgrade both weapons and armour. Each piece of gear you pick up has between 2-3 enchantments you can choose from out of a large pool of possible ones. These enchantments can be anything from increasing the amount of emeralds (the games currency) you find from defeating enemies, to slowing down mobs you hit, to increasing all damage you deal while you’re at full health.
Each enchantment has 3 levels, and costs enchantment points to level up at an increasing cost per level. You might be asking how you get enchantment points, and the answer is quite simple: through levelling. Every level you gain rewards you with an enchantment point as well as the ability to equip higher level gear. You might worry about spending these points too early and hoard them throughout the whole game, but there’s no need to worry, each time you salvage a piece of gear you get your enchantment points back. Armour not only has enchantments and increases your health, but also gives you interesting bonuses such as extra melee damage, ranged damage, decreased artifact cooldown, and even doing things as awesome as burning enemies around you. That’s as complicated as this games character building gets, equipping the right 3 pieces of gear and then 3 skills.
This game has a really basic story to it, but is just so charming. The main bad guy is the Arch-Illager. He was a funny looking illager who was shunned by the villagers and ended up going on a sad little journey, until he stumbled upon the orb of dominance. With the orb he becomes a tyrannical ruler, raiding and enslaving any who disobeyed him. Your character is the hero who attempts to stop him. That’s the story. The funny thing is that he looks so doofy. You’ll see him whenever he’s spawning some boss for you to defeat, like an evil cauldron. In addition there’s a handful of other enemies, like a goo guy who spawns into smaller goo guys, an illager who throws potions, illagers that’ll chase you with axes, and then your standard zombies, skeletons and of course… creepers. Oh, and can’t forget Enderman!
This is a neat little game and is something that’s really good for helping to pass time. It even has a fair amount of replayability, with 3 different difficulties, the 2nd and 3rd requiring a completion of the last to unlock. Overall this game is just loads of fun, plus how can you not wanna play this game when it has something so… doofy, right?
Review by Joshua Braham
