Minecraft Story Mode Season 2 Review

"Episode 1: Hero in Residence"

Campaign (Spoiler Free)

The first season of Minecraft Story Mode had its ups and downs with my overall thoughts on it being positive. Many question why there needs to be a story for the game, but I felt that this series greatly adds to the lore while providing an entertaining story. Time has passed in this second season with the core group of heroes having gone their own ways. Things start off with a simple festival as Jesse runs the town now. You get to move around the area saying hello to those that live there and running into Youtube cameos if that's something you like. The core of the episode kicks-off when you meet up with Petra for a smaller adventure to find a mystical creature and then things go wrong as usual. This first episode was solid presenting a new direction and expanding the scope of the world. It's no longer just a small group of friends and there's now a lot more going on. I also wanted to give a quick mention to the addition of newer items in Minecraft and the parrots were awesome.

Gameplay

Everything looks and plays in exact detail to what their Minecraft counterparts would be like. It was so great seeing the many Minecraft creatures they were able to stuff into this episode and fans of regular Minecraft will love that. The second season opened strong with showcasing a wide range of items from the series' expanded lore. The voice acting was well done with every character feeling absolutely unique though in this episode some lip syncing was off. The game does look more akin to animated Minecraft videos which I'm sure many of you have seen before which was fine. This was yet another well done episode in terms of polish as it ran smoothly without any issues. Finally would like to mention that the game has some neat side crafting areas where you can decide what to build in order to complete tasks.

The Conclusion

Hero in Residence is a solid start to the second season and another great episode. It's got a good length to it being one of the longer episodes and there was a nice pace to it. It ran clean which Telltale occasionally has problems delivering and this one was smooth aside from some block lip syncing. That aside, everything looked shiny and I was surprised by the variety of locations we got to visit in a single episode. I'm not sure where the rest of the series is headed, but I'm certainly looking forward to it as this is a fun series. Fans of Minecraft will enjoy the game if they haven't seen it before and it's something that's perfect for the younger audience.

Minecraft Story Mode for PC
Review Code Provided by Sandbox Strat

Rating Overall: 8.4