Minecraft Dungeons 2 review: "This family friendly take on Diablo embraces old school vibes in the best ways"

There's still no mining. Or crafting. But the Dungeon aspect? Well, that's going great guns. Bigger, better, yet impressively streamlined for younger players to get started, Minecraft Dungeons 2 is one of the best-made loot-based dungeon crawlers you can buy. If you're looking for classic video gamey fun, you've come to the right place.

You're thrust straight into the story in which three Illagers have opened up a portal to the Sift – an all-new dimension in the Minecraft universe. This new dimension enables the game to feature some genuinely new scenery (even if it does look a bit cellophaney, like 1960s Star Trek). It also brings time-limited, global modifiers called 'Sift Tides'. These bring harder mobs, decreased cooldown timers, or cessation of passive soul generation, affecting your magic, though it still feels the same to actually play. There are new enemies too, which is a good thing because the Overworld's mobs look way too familiar if you've played the original.

Hitting the arcade

The other genuinely new thing is the ability to jump. What do you mean, I'm scraping the barrel already? It does make a difference, allowing for some basic 3D platforming (thankfully with forgiving collision detection) and, accordingly, fun new jump attacks. Some modifiers even turn these into special moves, scorching the land ahead of you with fire, for example. It also means you can jump over some projectiles during boss fights, which makes everything feel more arcadey. It's a good thing; this is giving old school video game vibes and I love that.

The movement is super-solid with only a precious few instances of slowdown on Xbox Series X when you're at a Storm Tower, making the game feel like Minecraft Dungeons Arcade – all chunky and super-assured. It's also noticeably easier to see what's happening compared to the first game, making for clearer gameplay decisions. The action can still become overwhelming when you find yourself in the middle of a mob, but that just makes it all the more satisfying to use firebomb magic or a soul explosion to knock back a score of enemies.

Co-op can be played locally, online, or a mixture of both, but characters created as 'offline' cannot go online and vice versa. It's plausible for two players with a large disparity in character level to enjoy a game together. The game splits currency 50/50 and loot is dropped for specific players, so a newbie can't pick up a Level 100 pickaxe – they'll have to wait for their own, low level drop instead. A more experienced player may have to revive the less-experienced player more often, but it works really well. Co-op is a lot of fun as you shout to each other to heal up, or NOT EAT THE FOOD UNTIL WE NEED IT. OK?!

That said, there is so much loot on offer, you'll soon spend almost as much time in the menus equipping new weapons and armor (which now has chest, legs, and head separation for extra depth) as you will playing. You can easily spend a few minutes buying, upgrading, and enchanting (and now non-destructively disenchanting) a full set of weapons, armor, artifacts and talismans only to blast through a dungeon and have 70% of it to do again 15 minutes later.

There is a new quick inventory feature allowing players to change their gear without using the whole screen, but you'll likely take turns to do it full screen anyway because sharing the experience of equipping great gear is such a big part of the fun.

The main story rattles along nicely and is a little longer than the first game's campaign, clocking it at around 10 hours. But even though it gets a bit samey after 5 hours or so, I still wish the story lasted longer. Further side quests continue some plot lines and keep things focused, but it never quite feels as convincing once you hit endgame.

Weathering the soul storms

The biggest endgame feature is the appearance of Soul Storms, which occur in random locations and are time-limited. In these storms, you get harder mobs to beat, along with three storm towers which are real damage sponges. These are best tackled in co-op, though you can take them on solo too. Things do get a lot harder at this point, especially when prior bosses spawn in the middle of the maelstrom, and the forthcoming DLC promises even greater tests of your skills.

But with greater difficulty comes increased frustration, and you may start to lose interest if completionism or maxing out your character doesn't appeal to you. Combat also changes from pleasantly skill-centric early on to keeping your health above zero while you alternate magic attacks.

There are a few bugs and rough edges that surprised me. I got stuck in the scenery by jumping where I wasn't supposed to, forcing me to fast travel to escape, and I had far too many instances of keys disappearing and characters vanishing when they were supposed to be following me. Quitting the game and reloading always fixed the issue, respawning everything, but if you don't realize it's bugged out, you can spend quite a while wondering what you're doing wrong.

Despite its few irritations, Minecraft Dungeons 2 is a classic example of 'how the first game should have been done'. It's impressively balanced, and rewards experimentation and careful enchantments, while still feeling like a Minecraft game. There's depth there for those who seek it, but younger siblings will have just as much fun spamming the attack button and screaming when Enderman randomly shows up.

Minecraft Dungeons 2 isn't quite as clever or flashy as, say, LEGO Horizon Adventures (which is very similar to play and likely cheaper too at this point), and Diablo fans are likely to stick with Diablo 4. But there's honest fun here for any type of gamer, which is quite the achievement.

No need to mine for games if you want more like this. Our games like Diablo and games like Minecraft recommendation lists have plenty for you to enjoy!