Reviews & Scores

The review embargo for Minecraft Dungeons II lifted on September 28, 2026 at 9am ET, and scores landed a day later with the launch. Critics were warm, players were cooler — here is the full record of scores, player sentiment, and launch numbers.

Critic scores

On the morning of September 29, Metacritic showed 76 from 26 critics (16 positive, 10 mixed, 0 negative); by that evening the Xbox page settled at 75 from 27 critics (16 positive, 11 mixed) and the PC page at 73 from 16. Both scores sit above the first Minecraft Dungeons' 74 (Xbox One) and 70 (PC). OpenCritic's top-critic average was 85 from 21 critics, with 86% recommending — a "Mighty" rating. Individual scores ranged from 6 to 10 out of 10, with IGN's 6/10 the lowest major review.

Critic praise centered on flashier and harder combat (jump attacks, combos), more varied builds, a larger connected world, and co-op. Criticisms included repetition, conservative design choices, and Xbox technical issues noted in one review. The consensus: it improves the original almost everywhere, but remains a deliberately shallow action-RPG. It suits co-op groups, younger players, and fans of the first game; it is less aimed at Diablo or Path of Exile players looking for build depth.

Player reception

Players were noticeably cooler. Steam reviews opened at 51% positive (858 of 1,672, "Mixed") on launch evening, climbed to 57% the next morning (1,777 of 3,137), 62% by October 3 (4,524 of 7,271), and 63% by October 5 (5,168 of 8,215) — still Mixed. Among the 100 most recent negative reviews, the top complaints were keyboard/mouse controls (26 — the PC version shipped click-to-move only, with no WASD), Microsoft sign-in failures (24), crashes (11), and performance (10). Creative director Måns Olson said before launch that the team knows many players want WASD but that it does not map naturally to a gamepad; nothing was announced.

One completionist data point: demonjoeTV finished all 32 Steam achievements in about 20 hours on a review copy, noted that Soul Storms dropped only rare (green) gear in his runs, and found fewer than half of the unique weapons.

Launch numbers

The game launched September 29, 2026 at $29.99 Standard and $49.99 Deluxe, day one on Game Pass. It peaked at 32,476 concurrent Steam players on launch day, topped Steam's game top-sellers on September 30 (behind only Valve hardware), and finished 7th in global top sellers for launch week (September 29–October 6). Note these are Steam-only figures — Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, and Game Pass numbers were not published.