At this point, what can be said about Minecraft that hasn’t been said a million times before? One of the most important games of all time, possibly THE single most impactful game of the 21st century in terms of sheer popularity, an indie so popular it became part of mainstream pop culture to a degree very other entertainment products have ever been able to. What can a brand new Switch 2 port of the seminal survival crafting game bring to the table that its many, MANY previous ports haven’t?

Another console, another Minecraft port.

Is it better visuals? Well, if you compare the Switch 2 port to the Switch version, then sure, it does feature vastly improved lighting effects. The quality of the textures still depends on what set you are using, on whether or not you’ve decided to import or purchase an HD texture pack to make the game’s voxels look a bit less dated. Any other new mechanics? Not really. At the end of the day, it’s the same Minecraft you’ve been playing for the literal past fifteen years, with the only main difference other non-Nintendo ports being the free access to a Mario-themed texture pack, soundtrack and map. Then again, if you’re returning from the Switch version, you were already aware of this freebie.

They haven’t modelled the entirety of Peach’s castle. You need to do your own work, lazy bum.

The only new improvements are the aforementioned visual enhancements and some improved loading times. Since Minecraft is still a CPU-heavy game, way more than a GPU-demanding title, the framerate will suffer or not depending on how large is your map, how much you’ve already built in it, and how much you’ve tinkered with the game’s option menu. There is no mouse support, which sounds borderline absurd for a game like this. This was, to be honest, the main reason I wanted to test out this particular port, and finding out it is devoid of the one feature which would make it stand out from, say, the Switch version, sounds like an immensely missed opportunity, to be honest.

Lighting effects have been improved. Is it worth the paid admission? That remains to be seen.

So who is this port for? I can only think on people who haven’t purchased the older Switch version of Minecraft in the past. I’m not saying it’s a bad game – it’s Minecraft, after all. But I guess this could have received a few more interesting control options and quality of life improvements to make its existence as a Switch 2 version on the eShop warranted. As it stands, it’s just another port of Minecraft, with all of the good and ‘meh’ that might come from said statement.

Minecraft is available now on pretty much every single platform since the Xbox 360. And now it’s available on Switch 2 as well…

Reviewed on Switch 2.