Is Minecraft Dungeons II Worth It? Critics vs Players

Evidence-based review · scores read on 2 October 2026. This is a synthesis of published criticism and Steam player reviews, not a hands-on review: AFK Journal has not played the game, and every claim below links to its source.

Minecraft Dungeons II is a good, uneven sequel: critics like it more than Steam players do, but the gap is narrowing. Top critics average 77 on OpenCritic, 61% of 6,165 Steam reviews are positive, and our score is 7.3 out of 10: Good.

The score blends the OpenCritic Top Critic Average (70%) with Steam's share of positive reviews (30%), the same formula behind our EA Sports FC 27 review. Mojang's action RPG launched on 29 September 2026 for Windows, Steam, Xbox Series X|S, PS5, Switch and Switch 2, according to the official FAQ. It costs $29.99 or £24.99 on Steam and was on Game Pass from day one, as covered in our launch news.

What do critics agree on?

The world is the biggest step up. The sequel swaps the first game's menu of separate missions for an interconnected overworld, plus a new dimension called the Sift. Even IGN, the harshest major outlet, credits the Sift with fresh colour and creatures and welcomes the new ability to jump. Destructoid says the open map makes exploration meaningful, and GameSpot likes the stronger link to the wider Minecraft universe.

Gear runs deeper than in 2020. GameSpot points to multiple armour pieces and Talismans, Shacknews calls the ability to level up gear you already like a substantial advance, and Destructoid says the game improves on the original in most conceivable ways.

Co-op on one screen is where it shines. Mojang supports couch co-op, online cross-play and a mixed mode that combines both. GamesRadar+ praises how the game handles players at different levels, and Shacknews sums it up: wonderful with loved ones at home, problematic online.

The story is not the reason to play. IGN says the cutscenes are barely an outline, GamesRadar+ finds the plot repetitive after about five hours, and Destructoid calls it uninspired despite scoring the game 9/10.

Where do critics split?

On depth. Destructoid (9/10) sees a sequel that expands the original in almost every direction. IGN (6/10) calls it a shallow ARPG good for a few evenings, noting that without classes you and your co-op partners all play the same way. GamingBolt (5/10) goes further, describing stingy unique drops, a thin upgrade-and-reroll crafting system and a single timed endgame activity.

On loot, the complaints point in opposite directions: GamesRadar+ finds there is so much of it that you live in menus, while GameSpot (7/10) says Enchantment Books are too scarce to experiment during the campaign and that the 9,999 emerald cap wasted currency. Mojang has since raised that cap (see below).

On length, nobody agrees, which usually means it depends on how much side content you do. IGN puts the story at roughly seven hours, GamesRadar+ at 10–12, GameSpot at about 15 plus post-game, and GamingBolt at around 25.

What do Steam players say?

They are cooler than critics, and split sharply by language. At 09:10 UTC on 2 October, 3,788 of 6,165 Steam reviews were positive (61%, Mixed). English-language reviews stood at 65% of 3,661, but only 30% of 858 Simplified Chinese reviews were positive, and that group alone pulls the total down by several points. Steam already filters off-topic review bombs, so these are reviews about the game.

The mood is improving. In our sample of the latest 1,000 English reviews, written between late 30 September and the morning of 2 October, 70% were positive, five points above the English total. The game also had 10,574 players on Steam at 09:11 UTC, a fair crowd for a Game Pass title.

Read in full, the negative reviews repeat a handful of points. Fans of the 2020 game miss its replayable mission structure and enchantment tuning. Mouse players dislike click-to-move with no WASD option. Others report bugs that lock artifacts or stall quests, disconnects that cost progress, and the fact that heroes made online cannot be used offline (and vice versa). Chinese-language negatives add server lag and price. The median negative reviewer had played 4.9 hours, against 6.7 for positive ones, so many verdicts come from the first evening.

Is it better than the first Minecraft Dungeons?

Critics mostly say yes; players are not convinced yet. The 2020 game has 90% positive reviews from 19,866 Steam users, almost 30 points above the sequel's current total, and comparisons with it appear in more than a third of the negative English reviews we read. That gap is not entirely fair: the original's rating was built over years of updates and expansions, while the sequel's comes from its first four days on sale.

What returning players miss is specific. Several negative reviews say the old mission-select structure made it easy to replay favourite levels at higher difficulties, and that the first game's enchantment points gave more control over a build. Critics who prefer the sequel point to the opposite strengths: an open world that rewards wandering, more armour slots and Talismans, and jumping, which adds light platforming. IGN, which liked the changes least, still calls the improvements welcome.

In short, newcomers who never played the original have less to lose: the strongest complaints come from fans who sank dozens of hours into the 2020 game and wanted the same structure with more content. If that is you, the reviews suggest waiting for the first bug-fix patches, and for the post-launch content Destructoid says is planned, before paying full price. If you are choosing between the two, our Minecraft Dungeons vs Minecraft Dungeons II comparison sets prices, content and co-op side by side.

How does it run, and what has been patched?

Critics report few technical problems on capable hardware: GamingBolt ran it at 1440p on Ultra with DLSS Quality without trouble, and GamesRadar+ saw minimal slowdown on Xbox Series X. The bugs are the issue. GameSpot hit a persistent teleporting state that broke traversal, Destructoid had quests that needed full restarts, and Shacknews describes rubber-banding in boss fights online. On 1 October, Mojang's first Steam update made the game playable on Steam Deck, where it had launched broken, and raised the emerald cap from 9,999 to 99,999 on every platform. Mojang says full Steam Deck verification needs more work; it has not dated a bug-fix patch.

How we got to 7.3

We considered a downward adjustment for the launch bugs and online instability, which at least three outlets document. We did not apply it, because those problems already sit at the heart of the Steam half of the score, and counting them twice would be unfair. The method is the same one used in our Control Resonant review. We will re-read the numbers after Mojang's next bug-fix update and at 30 days, and change the score if it moves by 0.3 or more.

Should you buy Minecraft Dungeons II?

• Families and couch co-op groups: yes. This is the use case every review agrees on, and $29.99 is fair for it.
• Game Pass subscribers: try it there first, since it is included at no extra cost.
• Online-only groups: consider waiting for a bug-fix patch, given the disconnect reports.
• ARPG veterans who want a long endgame: skip it for now; IGN and GamingBolt both found little to chase after the credits.

If you mainly want more Minecraft, note that the Sift is coming to Java and Bedrock next year, as Mojang confirmed at Minecraft Live in September. Everything else we publish on the game lives on our Minecraft Dungeons II hub.