If this was just for early Minecraft this would easily be 5 stars. I put so many hours into this game both single player and multiplayer as a kid. That being said the last time I played was when horses was added and that's when I fell off of it. Coming back to it now there is just way too much stuff in the game that it's overwhelming. It feels like a modpack you'd see in a mod showcase video back in the day, except it's all official. The over complication made the game lose it's magic for me. I can't say I didn't have many great memories with this game though.

Minecraft é tipo um clássico que nunca sai de moda, sabe? Já tá aí há 13 anos, atravessando gerações e fazendo a galera soltar a imaginação. O jogo é um verdadeiro playground, tipo o Lego dessa galera atual. Você pode fazer o que quiser, só depende da criatividade.

A sacada legal do Minecraft é essa simplicidade e facilidade de jogar. É aquele game que qualquer um pode curtir. E quando entram os mods, aí é que a coisa fica doida, porque a comunidade começa a criar mundos totalmente malucos e personalizados.

Só que nem tudo são flores nessa evolução toda. A Mojang, que tá lá desenvolvendo o jogo, às vezes parece que tá meio perdida na comunicação. A gente ama o Minecraft, mas as decisões deles deixam a gente meio confuso, sabe?

Às vezes, demora um tempão pra colocar ideias simples em prática, criando um abismo entre o que a galera espera e o que realmente acontece. Mesmo com promessas de atualizações incríveis, algumas coisas parecem ficar pela metade, e a gente queria uma experiência mais redondinha.

E essa falta de transparência da Mojang, especialmente quando fazem escolhas que não caem bem pra galera, cria uma tensão. A votação da comunidade e as razões por trás das decisões ainda são pontos meio nebulosos.

Mas, apesar de tudo isso, o amor pelo Minecraft tá lá firme e forte. Os mundos gigantes, a liberdade total de criar e a vibe de jogar com os amigos continuam sendo top. A gente só queria que a Mojang fosse mais de boas, mais transparente, e que escutasse mais a galera que realmente ama o jogo.

man, minecraft USED to be a great game in my opinion but mojang have really, really soured the experience in my opinion.

i still play both modern and older versions of minecraft, and i tend to play modern versions more just because it's most convenient usually (to find mods for, servers for, friends play it, etc.), but man, modern minecraft and what came before just aren't the same games. somewhere along the line their vision changed and the additions they added aren't as great or impactful as they once were. i can understand since adding features to the world's biggest game must be quite a daunting task. but they just don't do it like they used to.

the game's entire atmosphere has shifted too, with it being less focused on surviving and mining than it is just finding some generated structures and making farms to recover all of your shit once you die (although this could just be due to me knowing more about the inner workings of the game's mechanics now).

i much prefer the older more lonely feeling minecraft where there weren't much goals besides just building whatever the fuck you wanted and not everything needed a purpose, of course i'm aware you can still do that in modern versions it just seems a lot less efficient when there are a bunch of other micro things i could be working on like automating stuff.

the slow, subtle erasure of C418's great soundtrack is also quite depressing but hey ho what can you do? overall i'd give the newer versions 3.5 stars and probably give the older versions a very high 4.5 teetering on 5 stars, it's for this reason i gave the game 4 stars, just in the middle; again i visit both versions fairly frequently and love both, i just think the direction the game has been headed in for a while now isn't great - but at it's core, minecraft is still there, and that's what matters.

Very much been in the mode recently (that happens 1 a year or so) where Minecraft ends up getting a surprisingly amount of time committed from me for 2-4 weeks & then I drop it like a rock. I'm starting to get out of such a phase again, but why not review it while leaving this time?

My experience with Minecraft is not anything special compared to other people's experience with it. I got into it early during the Yogscast days & played it very consistently until 2014-ish where I just grew bored of it & just 1 day stopped logging in. Assume this is a quite normal experience for people - considering it's also around the same time the game had its first official ”Playerbase decline”, even if it's weird to think about something you had been intertwined with socially for years just suddenly got left behind. I spent a lot of time on multiplayer servers during those years & experienced “regulars”/”friends” suddenly disappearing without trace, but also realizing in hindsight I did the exact same thing by suddenly deciding not to play anymore without any heads up about it.

Hence It’s likely not a shock either that somebody who used 4-5 years on a game still swings by once in a while to check up on it sometimes. See what’s been implemented - perhaps play on a new server where nobody knows you or with friends briefly. That’s pretty much been my experience every time I’ve returned to Minecraft years after. See/Learn the new mechanics, have some fun & dip when bored, rinse/repeat months later.
This most recent playthrough I decided to attempt beating the game on hardcore though. Definitely more of a challenge for somebody who truly hasn’t fully committed to ”understand” all the new stuff since downgrading from playing daily/weekly to maybe yearly almost a decade ago…But I managed it! Only to then get bored… But I’ll probably return to Minecraft once again when somebody from my friend group wants to play at some point in the future!

It probably has been noted I haven’t really talked about the game yet - but honestly I think for somebody in my position it's hard to attempt rating a game objectively when it also comes with personal memories & experiences associated. Which my experience with Minecraft does - It could’ve been any multiplayer game, but for me Minecraft ended up being one of those titles. Which also is why I keep returning to it over time. Even if it doesn’t hold the same importance today it did leave a really strong impression on me that’s stuck through the ages.

Is there any point in me reviewing this game? Is there anybody in the year 2023 who doesn't know what a Minecraft is? Am I going to sway anybody's opinion on this game by talking about it? Minecraft is either long-form poetry about building mud huts or the ultimate foundation for a sandbox game, and if your perception of it lands anywhere between those two points you probably have an equally ambivalent opinion on its gameplay. Either way, it's a comically obvious basis for a game and it's shocking that it took until 2009 for somebody to grab the idea and run with it (Zachtronics gets immortal cool points for technically doing it first, though). Of course, back then, it was about placing blocks and literally nothing else. You couldn't do anything with them, just place them. Didn't stop people from obsessing over it. If you build it, they will... Also build it. And build it they have, for while the formal Minecraft experience has evolved at a glacial pace since its first full release in 2011, people have made mods for it that can do basically everything else. Even add spheres to the game, you freak of nature. I spent a few good summers with it, and I still pop my head back in every now and again to kill a little bit of time. Its appeal is self-explanatory. It demands nothing of you. It can only give.

People frequently compare Minecraft to playing with LEGO. Now, every game where you place blocks will forever be compared to Minecraft. This game cannot be replaced. You cannot kill it. It's an idea. An idea that has since made billions of dollars and spun out into a massive franchise, and now people won't shut up about it. You can hate it for that if you want. Some people might hate you for it in turn. However, cubes do not have feelings and will never heed you.

Not much else I can say. Bring Java back, quit micro-monetizing the game, and for the love of the gods stop doing whatever the hell this is. And thank you again to Jens Bergensten and Hatsune Miku for keeping the dream alive.