Minecraft x Dungeons & Dragons is a new collaborative DLC between Everbloom Games and Wizards of the Coast. With its dungeon-crawling gameplay and iconic locations from the Forgotten Realms, it's a surprisingly immersive experience that actually feels like DnD. It also works as a nice family-friendly alternative to Baldur's Gate 3.

The Dungeons & Dragons DLC for Minecraft is fully voice-acted and will take adventurers through locations like Candlekeep and Icewind Dale. With four playable classes and a host of recognizable monsters like beholders, the DNA of DnD runs through pretty much every aspect of the DLC. It's all coated in the blocky Minecraft aesthetic, and combined with its dungeon-crawling elements, this means it at times feels like classic RPGs like Wizardry or Ultima - factors that certainly work in its favor.

Minecraft x Dungeons & Dragons' Classes & Gameplay Overview

There are four playable classes in Minecraft's DnD DLC: Barbarian, Rogue, Wizard, and Paladin. Each class offers something unique but will affect how someone plays through the content. For example, Barbarians are fairly sturdy and can dive right into combat while Wizards cast spells from afar and remain fairly squishy. Along the way, adventurers will encounter a range of NPCs and enemies, delve into dungeons, and fight bosses straight from the pages of The Monster Manual.

Interactions are mostly set up as they are in tabletop DnD, with successes and failures determined by the roll of a die. This adds an extra role-playing element to the DLC, which works quite well. This makes interacting with NPCs enjoyable, albeit frustrating when a persuasion or intimidation roll fails (just like in tabletop DnD). The dialogue can also be quite humorous and helps to keep the whole affair light-hearted.

How Minecraft's D&D DLC Is Different From Regular Minecraft

The Minecraft x Dungeons & Dragons DLC is story-driven, meaning fans of Minecraft's sandbox may feel too constrained. Even for a DnD session, it sometimes feels a bit too on the rails, but this is likely by design. The DLC itself is fairly meaty - offering around 10 hours of gameplay - but because it's not a massive or full game like Minecraft Legends or Baldur's Gate 3, there are some limitations to what players can do - and how much exploring can be done. Still, the DLC strikes a nice balance of randomness (like with skill checks) and exploration (seeing all these locations from the Forgotten Realms is still memorable).

So, while players shouldn't expect to be creating entire kingdoms within the DLC, what they have instead is an enjoyable dungeon-delving adventure that feels true to its source material. From the DM's narration to the inside jokes, this feels like content made for DnD players by DnD players. As someone who played this with their young kids, I found the DLC also served as a decent crash course into how Dungeons & Dragons works and may inspire newcomers to check out the tabletop game.

Minecraft x Dungeons & Dragons Final Thoughts

The class choices, combat, and gameplay of Minecraft x Dungeons & Dragons are all solid but do feel a bit limited at times because of this being DLC. However, it makes a great case for a fully-fledged Minecraft DnD game. What's here is a ton of fun and feels impressively like DnD. Fans of the tabletop RPG, or even fans of old-school dungeon crawlers, should find something to love about Minecraft x Dungeons & Dragons.

A code for Minecraft x Dungeons & Dragons was provided to Screen Rant and used for this review.