A long time ago a little indie game came along and took over the internet for what should have been a couple months, but turned out to be almost a couple of decades instead. Minecraft has kept on growing since its 2009 release, only just recently clearing lifetime sales of a truly ridiculous 425 million. It's had a truly terrible but popular movie, there's a theme park under construction complete with an original roller coaster, merchandise is still sold everywhere, and in general the franchise endlessly prints money. For all the merchandising, though, it's been conservative with the spin-off games, and of the handful that have been released only Minecraft Dungeons could be considered a hit. Maybe not to the same level of "set the world on fire" as its namesake, but certainly enough to justify a Minecraft Dungeons 2.
Minecraft Dungeons II is, like its predecessor, an action-RPG that's basically a Diablo-lite, rather than the Dragon Quest Builders type of game one might expect. There's no building or crafting involved, but rather endless combat from an isometric perspective as you travel across the map from one quest marker to the next. Each monster, both familiar Minecraft staples like the zombie, skeleton archers, spiders, creepers, etc, or the new ones created for the game has a chance of dropping loot when defeated, and it's up to you to decide whether to go for a nice thematically-matching set or mix and match for as much power as possible.
To get you started, Minecraft Dungeons II opens with the classic "...and then everything you did in Minecraft Dungeons was little more than delaying the inevitable as its baddies rose up again, driving everyone out of the peaceful home they'd worked so hard to secure." While you can reasonably ask what the point of the first game was, the villainous Illagers are rampaging again so it's up to you to stop them. This is done by taking a series of quests from the villagers in the new land, heading out across the blocky landscape to beat up every monster in your path.
The heart of the game is its combat, with everything else being a justification to tear through the hordes. Your hero has both a melee and ranged weapon at all times, using two different attack buttons to instantly change between them. Each piece of equipment, whether it be weapon, armor, or artifact has a simple power ranking, starting at one and working its way up as new loot is earned. A choice in switching from a fifteen-power fast weapon to a sixteen power slow one is down to personal preference in combat style, while armor is much easier to swap out depending on its bonuses.
Each item comes not only with its standard capabilities but also bonus perks, with the number and strength of the perks being determined by rarity. Better defense is all very nice, but when the difference between two pieces of armor is low and the weaker one has increased healing and cuts down on time between artifact usage and the newer one is a no-bonus common item, it's an easy choice to make. This also holds true for artifacts, which provide a short-term boost of combat abilities like scatter bombs, electric attacks, a simple but powerful attack increase, and many more, and you can hold three of them at a time to customize your combat style. Finally, talismans give more passive upgrades, and while they're much rarer than the other equipment types they also level up with usage.
There's no building or crafting involved in Minecraft Dungeons II, but rather endless combat from an isometric perspective as you travel across the map from one quest marker to the next.
It's a good setup, which is why it's so odd that combat just kind of lies there feeling like a thing that's sometimes entertaining, but mostly just ok. It's something you can do, not unenjoyable, but also only mildly engaging. Fire a few arrows into the crowd, beat on the rest with your current weapon of choice, repeat. Sometimes a miniboss enemy shows up, like an Enderman or blue-glowing corrupted monster that's much tougher than the normal ones, and they take a mild bit of effort to defeat. It doesn't help that the dodge roll has a recovery time that's just a tiny bit too long, and enemy hits feel like they carry no impact even as the health bar says otherwise. The combat is the whole focus of Minecraft Dungeons II, and as often as not it ends up just being something for your hands to do while your brain ambles off elsewhere.
The oddest design aspect, though, is with item enchantments, which completely undercuts the loot system once it appears. Enchantments are abilities you can have grafted on to your equipment, both melee and bow plus all four pieces of armor. A nice fire spell on sword/axe/pole/scythe adds a nice finisher to a three-swing combo or jump attack, adding burn damage to anything in its path. Ricochet is practically indispensable for the bow, letting one arrow do the job of several by pinging off multiple enemies, or maybe it's better to drop a few area bombs on a hit instead. There's a lot of choice as you discover new books of enchantments, and you can add and remove them at will in any town with only minimal expense. And once an enchantment is on a weapon, that removes all motivation to experiment with any cool new gear you may turn up in a dungeon. Run across a new weapon type? Well, whatever it may be it doesn't add an air vortex at the end of its attack chain so into inventory it goes. A big part of the fun of this type of game is constantly switching up gear on the fly, and while the enchantments add some incredibly helpful effects, once they show up the combat experimentation drops off significantly.
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