Upon learning of the existence of a second season Minecraft: Story Mode, fans The Wolf Among Us were very upset – Telltale, as they said, pays attention to all sorts of nonsense. But now they can rest easy, as Bigby Wolf will be back next year with new adventures. In the meantime, you can once again take control of square-headed Jesse and see what the writers have prepared in the new Minecraft. The main thing is not to fall asleep from boredom during the first hour.
Cubism
The very idea of coming up with a whole story, having only a plotless source in hand, seemed crazy at first, but Telltale managed to bring it to life. And the audience loved the first season so much that the developers added three more short episodes before leaving Jesse and his friends alone for a while. In the second season, the hero almost immediately says goodbye to his comrades – after defeating the Withering Storm, they and the rest of the residents of the town of Mayaki are preparing for the holiday.
Jesse goes to meet her friend Petra, since she is the only one who is still eager to travel and look for new adventures. It turns out that she is calling her friend for a reason – Stella from the neighboring City of Champions has taken her sword and is forcing the girl to perform stupid tasks. The moments associated with this storyline are so drawn out and full of stupid scenes that you want to end it all as quickly as possible and move on to something more interesting.
And the authors are trying to interest the audience with the help of a new threat that suddenly hangs over the settlements. While carrying out one of Stella’s strange assignments, Jesse and her friend find themselves next to a mysterious artifact – a glove made of prismarine. This material can only be found in the depths of the ocean, which immediately raises some questions for the heroes. But the strangeness doesn’t end there – the glove says Jesse’s name several times, and then is put on his hand, and the protagonist can’t do anything about it.
Then the floor collapses under the heroes, https://moongamescasino.co.uk/mobile-app/ revealing a terrible abyss with monsters climbing out of it, and there is no point in retelling the plot any further – after that, at least something exciting finally begins. Before the heroes set off on a journey, there is no desire to wander around the Lighthouses and communicate with the inhabitants of the town, and dialogues, chases and QTEs are often so meaningless, as if they were inserted simply for longer timing.
The same thing happens with some episodes where you have to make a choice. This is a common problem in many games Telltale – sometimes you have to either choose the most obvious and logical action, or perform completely inappropriate and meaningless actions. At the beginning of the second season Minecraft: Story Mode Most dialogue and branching moments feel like this, which takes away the magic of an adventure where "all your choices have a big impact on the story". Yes and, knowing Telltale, You rarely pay attention to such a warning anymore.
Therefore, we can only hope for a more or less high-quality plot, and the developers are clearly trying to make it interesting. And not only for fans of the first season, but also for beginners. If for some strange reason you started getting acquainted with the series only now, having completely missed the previous eight episodes, you will not have any problems understanding what is happening. Most of the old heroes disappear almost immediately, and the remaining ones can quickly make a new player fall in love with them. It’s possible that some of the references will be incomprehensible, but you can easily get over it.
Brick by brick
But fans of the original will notice some changes in the gameplay. In general, the second season is very similar to both the last and other projects Telltale. This is an adventure with dialogues, simple puzzles and the need to press different buttons during action episodes. Sometimes such QTEs look appropriate and add dynamics to what is happening, but sometimes they only cause laughter – at some point you will need to press X several times in a row so that Jesse jumps from one cube to another, simply going down into the cave. But these are rather nitpicking – such episodes do not spoil the overall impression.
The updated combat system, which for some reason has been made more complicated, looks a little far-fetched. Apparently, Telltale I really wanted to make the new season different from the previous one, and therefore the simplest mechanics were stuffed with unnecessary features. When fighting spiders and skeletons, the hero can somersault to the side, but for some reason this does not always save him from damage. In addition, he now has an energy bar that runs out if he hits too many times. Of course, no one is stopping developers from deviating from the original source, but in this case such innovations do not make the gameplay better.
Also for the second season Story Mode did not get rid of one of the main shortcomings – the illogicality of what is happening. The characters are constantly discussing how they can get into this or that building or cross a crevice or abyss, but do not use the ones available in the usual Minecraft possibilities. Either they are easily ready to patch up huge holes in the floor, knocking their hands on the cubes with earth and carefully laying everything out, or they are racking their brains and trying to secretly bypass the guards, although they could destroy the wall and build it again. Hardly in Telltale they don’t understand this, but why the screenwriters fail to avoid such inconsistencies is not entirely clear.
There was a moment in the first episode where the player was allowed to create a statue in the city, using a variety of available materials and his own imagination. If you wish, you can not do this, but just put a couple of cubes and move on. But those who like to create beautiful angular creations will probably spend several tens of minutes doing this activity. Unfortunately, there is no reward for building something unusual – even the dialogues do not change in any way. But in future episodes you will probably have to pass by this statue more than once and remember how you suffered with the terribly inconvenient camera and strange controls.
Season two Minecraft: Story Mode It’s hard to give advice to those who aren’t longtime fans of the game Mojang, although they can get bored quickly. If in cases with The Wolf Among Us And Tales from the Borderlands love for the original sources was completely optional, here you literally have to adore Minecraft in order not to fall asleep due to the slow introduction, mediocre humor and drawn-out episodes with stupid QTEs. The story itself, with the gauntlet and evil rising from the depths of the earth, will certainly be at least interesting. But after completing the first episode of the second season, you only regret the time spent. Maybe it will get better.
Pros: fans will be happy to continue the story; good acting; some locations turned out very beautiful, despite their angularity.
Cons: boring introduction; changes to the combat system only made the fight scenes worse; inconvenient camera during construction; many inappropriate QTEs; illogicality of some episodes.
