Beauty lying in its simplicity, the long-running title of Minecraft has proved that high-res graphics are not a necessity for proficient gameplay. After Dominating the gaming industry with its pixels, Mojang is back with another Minecraft title, Minecraft Dungeons.

This Diablo inspired Minecraft is about to take you on a skin-crawling dungeon ride. Exploring the map, drooling over loots, and slashing your way through the enemies, the game offers you a traditional Minecraft experience set in a different story. The storyline is quite basic, and during the eight-hour gameplay, you will find yourself chasing Arch Illager who is in the possession of Orb of Power.

The first thing that you will notice as you spawn into the game is its resemblance to the original Minecraft. The graphics are as usual ‘boxy’; however, the vivid color details and other mesmerizing graphical aspects of the game really notch up the gameplay experience. Dungeon-crawler titles may lack graphical details owing to the spreading darkness, however, even under such darkness, Minecraft Dungeons outperforms its rivals in terms of graphical details. Graphical marvels ranging from the most realistic looking lava to the thunder flashes make your gaming experience worth your while.

The soundtracks are pretty generic and seem like they are straight out of the original title with a few tweaks here and there to make them sit well in the dungeon theme. Spending time in the autumn-themed village, letting the melodious rustling of leaves, and the wind whistle soothe your nerves is a pure ASMR experience.

The game offers you a wide range of customizations for your character, as well as the items it carries, including weapons. Character customizations are basically just different skins and they barely add to the performance of the character. There is no skill tree in the game, however, it is replaced by enchantment points. Depending on the item that is under consideration, you can add one or more than one power-ups using enchantment points. For example, enchantment points can make your melee attacks more vicious or have your bow shoot five arrows at a time.

You are allowed to carry two weapons into the game. One for a short-ranged target and one for the long-range ones. There is a plethora of artifacts available that you can add to your character and they all come with their own benefits. You can gather wolves, llamas and other creatures using artifacts and they will later help you in a battle where you are outnumbered by the enemy.

The game may be only eight hours long, but they might be your longest eight hours, considering the difficulty of the game. The game starts off easy and making your way through initial levels is a piece of cake, however as you level up, so does the difficulty. To make it even more challenging, you get only three lives in a level. Once you have been put down three times, you have to replay the whole level again. In case you come across a difficult boss, replaying the level becomes more of a hobby. Once you have finished with the game, the game will unlock a higher tier of difficulty. However, it is solely up to you on which difficulty you want to proceed through the game.

With your greed urging you to go exploring the map, loot is the best aspect of the game. The majority of the games will present you with a loot box at the end of a level, and it will open up the most generic items for you. However, Minecraft Dungeon’s algo for loot is slightly different but in a good way. You will find loot boxes at most unexpected, yet easy to find places and they will present you with rare loots. You can even trade in the unwanted loot for a couple of gems.

I have to admit, I do miss crafting and mining items. Both of these aspects are missing from the newer title. Other than that, the game has the potential to be a great family past time. Navigating your ‘box’ through the dungeons is an interesting experience, and it becomes even more interesting with the co-op mode. Keeping in mind its low-res graphics, it can run smoothly on budget-built PCs. It could rightly be said that this title is a more battle-oriented version of the original Minecraft.