Minecraft Dungeons is a fun game when played with friends, but playing it alone is a completely different experience for me. I originally bought it specifically to play with friends, and that is where I think the game works best. The gameplay itself is not bad, the progression and amount of content are actually quite good, but the way the maps are designed takes a lot of the fun out of the experience.
The maps are simply too large for what they contain. When exploring everything, it is common to spend 30 minutes or even an hour moving back and forth through areas that contain almost nothing. Large sections of the map are just empty paths with no chests, Easter Eggs or anything else that makes exploration feel worthwhile. There are extra dungeons and areas to discover, but they are often scattered around the map, which can turn exploration into a long search rather than something genuinely rewarding.
This is especially noticeable when compared to Path of Exile. Even though Path of Exile is a much more complex game, I find its smaller maps much more enjoyable because the gameplay stays focused. Minecraft Dungeons has the basic gameplay needed for a good dungeon crawler, but when you spend so much time walking through empty areas, the combat and progression become less enjoyable.
The progression itself is decent, but the structure also becomes repetitive. You have to complete levels to unlock the next ones, and while there are different locations and missions, the general gameplay loop remains very similar. I would have preferred smaller, more focused maps with more objectives, more enemies and more combat arenas instead of simply making the maps larger.
This is also why the difference between playing alone and playing with friends is so important. With friends, exploring and fighting through the maps can be fun because you are sharing the experience. Alone, the same empty spaces and long distances become much more noticeable, and I simply do not find enough here to justify playing it by myself when I have so many other games available.
Minecraft Dungeons has good progression and plenty of content, and I can understand why it works for people who enjoy playing it with others. For me, however, the oversized maps, empty exploration and repetitive structure eventually outweigh those positives. I bought it to play with friends, and that is still the way I would play it if they ever wanted to come back, but I have no real interest in continuing it alone.
[b]Score: 5/10[/b]
(1) Trash(2) Horrible(3) Very Bad(4) Bad(5) Average
(6) Fine(7) Good(8) Very Good(9) Great(10) Masterpiece
