Minecraft Dungeons hands-on: A shameless Diablo clone—and better for it

Enlarge / Gather some friends, kill some mobs, get some loot. (credit: Mojang / Xbox Game Studios)

LOS ANGELES—The years between Diablo II and Diablo III were ripe with isometric, dungeon-action clones, all trying to feed gamers’ next-gen hunger for click-and-loot adventures. That era has long passed, but now that I’ve played Minecraft Dungeons, I wish I could go back in time and drop Mojang’s very solid Diablo-like game into that late-’00s fray.

There’s really no getting around it: this is Diablo through a Minecraft prism. The 20-person team behind this Windows 10, Xbox One, Switch, and PS4 game admits as much, calling Blizzard’s legendary series “one source of inspiration, certainly.” But after name-dropping other modern co-op games like Vermintide and Left 4 Dead, the Mojang developers at E3 2019 made one point emphatic to Ars Technica: “We want to make sure this is Minecraft.”

No classes—and it’s classy

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  It sure looks like Diablo, and Mojang doesn’t seem to mind. [credit:
  Mojang
  ]

Stop me if you’ve heard this Diablo-like sales pitch before. Players control a warrior as seen from an isometric, top-down perspective, then either click a mouse or move a joystick to explore procedurally generated dungeons. Defeat waves of enemies, contend with traps, solve simple puzzles, and pick up oodles of loot along the way. Play solo or team up with up to three other friends; the more players, the higher the difficulty.