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In my books, the most satisfying part of any action role-playing game (ARPG) like Diablo or Titan Quest is the constant feeling of progression. Nothing quite compares to watching your little on-screen hero grow from a tiny ant that can barely bash their way through a pack of lowly wolves to a maxed-out bringer of destruction that mows through entire armies without breaking a sweat.

Review info

Platform reviewed: PC
Available on: PC, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2
Release date: September 29, 2026

Minecraft Dungeons 2’s aggressive level scaling robs the player of that experience. In the more than 12 hours it took for me to beat the story campaign, I never felt more powerful. Sure, I unlocked more interesting abilities and got to try a variety of weapons, but the amount of time required to take down each newly spawned foe remained near-constant throughout.

A friend even joined my game towards the end of my playthrough, with their level 1 character effortlessly keeping pace with my level 40 one throughout the final encounters, really underscoring the system’s ridiculousness. I’m sure the intention here is to make it easy for friends to jump into the same lobbies and play together without having to worry about their respective levels, but it left me wondering what the point of all the grinding actually is.

Blocky buddies

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(Image credit: Mojang)

It’s a shame, because there is still some good in Minecraft Dungeons 2. This standalone spinoff recreates the blocky look of the popular Minecraft survival game expertly, with its own more stylized twists that make the world instantly recognizable, yet refreshingly new thanks to more expressive lighting and Pixar-like character animations that make everything pop even from the distant isometric perspective.

I may have lamented the fact that I couldn’t wow my friend with my character’s power, but the co-op experience is otherwise well done. Creating a group with up to three companions is impressively straightforward no matter where they play, thanks to seamless cross-platform connectivity. There’s even couch co-op, which is quite rare in 2026 and worth praising. The ability to play with others easily goes a long way in making Minecraft Dungeons 2 genuinely worthwhile for younger players.

For everyone else, however, everything here is just too straightforward to appeal. The enemy variety is sorely lacking for starters. The expected Minecraft favorites like the Creepers, Zombies, Skeletons, and, of course, the iconic Chicken Jockey are all present and accounted for, along with the evil grey-skinned Illagers from the first Minecraft Dungeons game. Unfortunately, most enemies function indistinguishably. Those with projectile weapons spray arrows at you from afar, while the rest just rush towards you in a big group.

The strategy in every encounter is to simply mash the attack button and occasionally dodge, even as more powerful Illagers with magic attacks are introduced. The boss fights are equally bland, forcing you to whittle down gigantic health bars for minutes at a time while waves of low-level enemies spawn in. To make matters worse, many of them are repeated throughout the campaign with little variation.

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(Image credit: Mojang)

It’s frustrating because, on paper, the combat does have some depth: you have a melee and ranged attack, plus three equipped abilities granted by items that you’ve managed to find.

The weapon selection is decently varied, with scooping shovels and fast-attacking double daggers performing very differently from slow-swinging war hammers or claymores, and a steady trickle of new gear encourages you to experiment. They can be upgraded too, with unlockable enchantments that add little mechanics such as a lightning strike that triggers at the end of a chain attack.

Your abilities are powered by a blue soul-meter, which fills up a little with each defeated foe. I think the intention is to create some form of rhythm, with you alternating between melee, ranged, and your abilities, but the fundamental problem is that there’s just no real strategy to any of it.

Sure, you could probably spend ages creating a build with complementary gear – though there’s no real reason to bother when the aforementioned enemy scaling wipes out any real power gain.

Lacking craft

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(Image credit: Mojang)

Much was made of Minecraft Dungeons 2’s world in its marketing. It’s much more open than the previous game, though I wouldn’t exactly call it a true open-world.

The map is designed like a linear corridor that funnels you from one story mission to another with no real room for exploration. Yes, there are side quests and optional dungeons scattered around, but none of the ones that I sampled offered anything that felt meaningfully distinct from the main story.

Best bit

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(Image credit: Mojang)

The world of Minecraft Dungeons 2 looks fantastic. The art direction is a more stylized take on the universe from the regular Minecraft game, with bright, popping colors and expressive animations.

Regarding the story, the most polite way to describe it would be ‘functional’. It’s presented entirely in second person through a narrator that is devoid of personality. There are no memorable non-player characters (NPCs), no charming companions, no real atmosphere at all — just a bland summary of events.

The game also serves as the Minecraft community’s introduction to The Sift — a new dimension that’s being added to the main game sometime next year. It shows up a few times in the campaign in both procedurally generated encounters and a hand-crafted map. It's got a very distinct aesthetic and its own unique enemies, though it's sadly mechanically indistinguishable from the normal world as you navigate through it spamming attacks.

Like many elements of Minecraft Dungeons 2, it feels like a missed opportunity. Everything here is perfectly functional, but it’s just bland to the point of tedium. If the pitch was a skimmed-down version of Diablo for kids, then developers Mojang and Double Eleven have delivered a serviceable product.

Creativity is a core part of the Minecraft brand, and here I wish the team had been more adventurous.

Should I play Minecraft Dungeons 2?Play it if…

You want an easy co-op experience
The seamless co-op play is one of the best parts of Minecraft Dungeons 2, as you can easily team up with friends no matter what platform they’re playing on.

Don't play it if...

You’re an action RPG die-hard
Minecraft Dungeons 2 simply does not have the depth you find in other action RPG games. Avoid it if you’re familiar with the genre already and are looking for your next Diablo-like fix.

You want a game to occupy you for a long time
The main story here is short, and while there is some side content and even a post-game on offer, you’re unlikely to want to stick around for long given how repetitive the action is.

Accessibility features

Minecraft Dungeons 2 has some accessibility options. The game features a guidance trail that is enabled by default. Subtitles are used throughout, with customizable sizing, color, and background opacity.

There are two font options: the default stylized font and a simplified, easier-to-read version. There are also multiple color blind modes, a high-contrast mode, and the ability to set your own HUD colors.

How I reviewed Minecraft Dungeons 2

I played more than 13 hours of Minecraft Dungeons 2 on my RTX 4090-powered PC using the Turtle Beach Pacific Skyline Wireless Controller as my main peripheral, along with a 1080P Lenovo monitor and Logitech computer speakers.

I completed all missions of the single-player campaign and experienced a decent amount of side content both solo and with a friend.

First reviewed October 2026

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(Image credit: RONALDO SCHEMIDT)

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The debate surrounding AI sovereignty may be unfolding at the governmental, boardroom and national media level, but these discussions are taking place at a distance from the people who use and rely on AI in the day-to-day.

Governments debate regulation, while technology companies consider where to build and host their models. Founders and investors assess geopolitical risk, infrastructure and access to computing power, while regulators consider how AI systems should be developed and deployed. For people who use AI every day, like students, changes in AI sovereignty and regulation can affect whether the tools they rely on remain available.

Today’s students can be dependent on AI while having little visibility into the infrastructure and policy decisions that determine whether they can continue using it. The digital sovereignty debate has the potential to become an undeniable accessibility barrier for students.

Digital sovereignty casts a shadow over students’ access to AI tools

The European Union has a history of depending on technology and infrastructure from outside the economic and political bloc. More than 80% of the technology used in Europe and around 70% of its cloud computing comes from non-EU countries. AI adoption has increased Europe’s dependence on other countries, with the United States and China accounting for the overwhelming majority of global AI computing infrastructure.

This year, Europe has made strides to regulate AI usage, which by necessity means regulating foreign corporations. This kind of regulation can easily end up affecting which services students can access. The regulatory objective is understandable. Powerful AI systems create genuine questions around safety, accountability, privacy and intellectual property, but the consequences for daily users can nevertheless extend beyond compliance.

Not so long ago, the US government restricted access to Anthropic's most powerful models, citing concerns over its cybersecurity applications. It was the first time that businesses and politicians in Europe had to face the reality that the US government can effectively cut off foreign access to American AI systems. The implications extend beyond any one LLM.

For students, that can mean a study tool works perfectly for a classmate in one country while being unavailable to another student sitting a hundred miles away.

If education systems become dependent on AI services developed and controlled elsewhere, a change in regulation, commercial strategy or international relations could affect the availability of tools students have come to regard as part of their everyday learning environment.

Students could face immediate exposure if AI regulations shift

AI in education is expanding rapidly. AI tools are being embedded into tutoring, content creation, assessment, study assistance and interactive learning. Just like with any widely-adopted digital tool, however, dependency on a single product from a single company poses huge potential issues.

Going back to 2021, an albeit brief global outage that affected WhatsApp had devastating, widespread consequences, from cutting off vital telemedicine from migrant refugees in Mexico to disrupting livestock farming in Pakistan. It was clear at the time that overreliance on a single technology platform can massively impact life for people around the world.

The same is true for students using AI tools that rely on a single model or are otherwise vulnerable to a regulatory change. A student who uses an AI-powered study platform every day may have no idea whether the service depends on one model or several. They may not know whether their data is stored locally or internationally. They may not know whether the provider has a contingency plan if a model becomes unavailable.

The issue becomes particularly important as AI tools move from being occasional conveniences to becoming embedded in study routines. Imagine a student preparing for an exam who has spent months using an AI tutor to explain concepts and generate practice questions. If the underlying model suddenly becomes inaccessible in that student's country, it can affect the student's established way of learning at a critical moment in their educational journey.

Designing AI educational tools for resilience

A resilient AI education platform needs to consider what happens when a particular model becomes unavailable due to regulatory changes or widespread outage.

One approach is model diversity. Because different AI models have different strengths, a platform can end up using one model for a particular type of reasoning, another for optical character recognition, and another for audio processing. Model diversity is therefore usually driven by a need for better performance when tackling different educational tasks.

Diversifying models can also provide resilience. If one model becomes unavailable, a platform using several models may be able to redirect certain workloads. Backup workflows can provide an additional layer of continuity, although switching between systems can take time and the alternatives may not always provide identical capabilities.

Going EU-first (and what’s next for students and AI literacy)

It’s called the Brussels effect. From sustainability regulations to consumer right to repair, the European Union’s size and economic weight often means that regulations within its borders often shape corporate behavior without them as well.

Taking an EU-first approach to an AI education platform means locating the majority of the platform's data within the European Union, supporting considerations around data sovereignty, privacy, and regulatory compliance. Some reliance on services and infrastructure originating outside Europe may remain unavoidable, particularly in a technology ecosystem where many of the leading AI providers are headquartered in the United States.

An education platform that depends entirely on one external model provider effectively inherits that provider's availability and exposure to regulatory changes. A platform with several model options and fallback processes has greater room to adapt.

By aligning that platform’s data management practices with the most stringent global regulations (which currently happen to be the EU’s framework), educational AI companies can do a lot of the necessary work to maintain access to critical AI tools for their students.

From the students’ side, there needs to be a new chapter when it comes to AI literacy in education, which should include a basic understanding of AI dependency.

Students should be encouraged to ask which AI systems power the tools they use; what happens if one of those systems becomes unavailable; where their data is stored and processed; and could regulation in another country affect their access. They don’t need to become experts in cloud infrastructure or AI policy, but do need to understand that an AI application is part of a wider technological ecosystem.

Students in the AI era will depend on systems whose underlying architecture they cannot see. The education sector therefore has a responsibility to make those dependencies more visible and mitigate them where possible. AI literacy should extend beyond knowing how to prompt a model or assess its answer. It should include an understanding of where AI comes from, what it depends on and what happens when access is disrupted.

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This article was produced as part of TechRadar Pro Perspectives, our channel to feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today.

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• Microsoft is adding impersonation and deepfake detection to Teams in November 2026
• A third-party platform will be behind detecting AI-generated video and audio
• Attackers are still targeting voice phishing on Teams

Microsoft is adding two new security features to Teams designed to combat increasingly sophisticated impersonation attacks in an AI-first era.

First and foremost, Microsoft is opening up its platform to enable third-party deepfake detection in the hope of stamping out AI-generated video and audio.

The second of two important security features coming to the video conferencing platform warns users when meeting participants could be misrepresenting their identities to hopefully help participants validate their authenticity.

Teams will soon tell you if the person you're talking to is fake

"Third-party detection solutions analyze meeting media for signs of synthetic or manipulated audio and video and send detection signals to Teams, enabling integrated in-meeting experiences and controls," the company wrote in a roadmap entry.

"When Teams detects a potential impersonation attempt, it surfaces warnings and risk indicators to help users recognize suspicious identities," another entry added.

While both are slated for a November 2026 launch, the finer details including which third-party platforms can support deepfake detection aren't yet public.

What we do know, though, is that Teams has become a hotspot for impersonation attacks, and AI has made it easier for criminals to exploit vulnerabilities. Microsoft has already been on a roll introducing other features like file extension blocking.

And the problem is very real – in a July 2026 report, Microsoft revealed a near 10x increase in weekly malicious Teams voice call attempts in just one year, and an 80% increase in voice phishing attempts.

Still, meaningful progress has been achieved and the company managed to cut phishing activity related to Tycoon2FA, a major phishing-as-a-service platform, by 92% in a year. Looking ahead, the company's roadmap is full of plenty of other Teams announcements, split into some new features and plenty more security updates.

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Raspberry Pi has announced another round of price hikes as the rising cost of memory continues to affect its popular single-board computers. For IT professionals, developers, and enthusiasts planning new projects, the higher prices make choosing the right hardware trickier than ever.

The 8GB Raspberry Pi 5 is currently listed at $199.95 on Amazon, but the CanaKit Raspberry Pi 5 Starter Kit Pro costs just $60 more. It includes the same 8GB board, along with a case, cooling system, storage, power supply, and cables.

8GB Raspberry Pi 5 board: $199.95
This single-board computer features a 2.4GHz quad-core Cortex-A76 processor, 8GB LPDDR4X RAM, VideoCore VII graphics, dual 4K HDMI outputs, USB 3.0, Gigabit Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, PCIe expansion, and microSD storage support.

UK price: now £168View Deal

Canakit 8GB Raspberry Pi 5 Starter Kit Pro: $259.95
This kit includes an 8GB Raspberry Pi 5, 128GB microSD card with Raspberry Pi OS, Turbine Black case, cooling fan, heatsink, USB-C power supply, two display cables, and card reader.

UK price: now £243View Deal

Raspberry Pi prices continue to rise

Because memory costs have risen steeply over the past two years, Raspberry Pi has been forced to increase prices to cover production expenses. Most recently, the price of the 2GB versions of the Raspberry Pi 4 and Raspberry Pi 5 were upped to $67.50 and $77.50 respectively.

The price increases have led to the company encouraging customers to think carefully about how much memory their projects actually require, and to consider older hardware, including the Raspberry Pi 3B, 3A+, and 3B+, where the additional performance of newer models isn't necessary.

The 8GB Raspberry 5 features a quad-core Arm Cortex-A76 processor running at 2.4GHz, 8GB of LPDDR4X memory, and a VideoCore VII GPU. It includes dual micro-HDMI outputs capable of driving two 4K displays at 60Hz, USB 3.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, wireless networking, and PCIe expansion support.

It sells for $199.95 on Amazon, and while that sounds expensive, I've found a better option. The Canakit Raspberry Pi 5 Starter Kit Pro kit costs $60 more and in addition to the 8GB Raspberry Pi 5, it includes a Turbine Black case, a low-noise cooling fan, a large aluminum heatsink, a USB-C power supply, two six-foot display cables, a microSD card reader, and a GPIO reference card. It also comes with a 128GB microSD card preloaded with the 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS.

Is the CanaKit bundle better value?

For just $60 more, the CanaKit bundle gives you everything needed to power, cool, protect, and boot the 8GB Raspberry Pi 5 computer, plus the cables for connecting displays.

The CanaKit bundle won't suit every project. If you already have a compatible power supply, case, cooling solution, and storage, buying the board separately will be the better and cheaper option. Also, if you're planning to use NVMe storage, a specialized enclosure, or a custom cooling system, buying those components individually will be the way to go.

That said, for IT professionals and enthusiasts who want to start a new Raspberry Pi 5 project running without sourcing all the extras individually, the $259.99 CanaKit Starter Kit Pro is an easy recommendation.

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• The Stengrönska is an affordable new alarm clock from IKEA
• It can charge your phone and display temperature and humidity data
• For now it's only available in IKEA stores in Japan and China

On top of all its other home goods, IKEA has a new alarm clock for your consideration — and the gadget goes beyond the standard duties of telling the time and making sure you drag yourself out of bed in the mornings.

It's called the IKEA Stengrönska (via Notebookcheck), and it's wide and short and flat: 17 cm x 16 cm x 3.6 cm (6.7 inches x 6.3 inches 1.4 x inches). That's partly so you can put your phone on the alarm clock and use the Stengrönska as a wireless charger.

Two other cool party tricks that the device brings with it are temperature and humidity readings, so you can keep tabs on your bedroom environment and make sure everything is set up just right for the best sleep possible.

The screen comes with an adjustable backlight and shows the time in a 24-hour or 12-hour format, with the date and day of the week also on display. You can set up to three alarms, with volume settings you can configure as needed.

More well-being

Up to three alarms can be configured (Image credit: IKEA)

There's an all-important snooze function here, though it seems to be fixed at nine minutes. If you know you absolutely have to get up at a certain time you'll need to do some quick math to work out how many nine-minute intervals you've got left.

Around the back we've got toggles for the alarms and the volume dial, as well as a USB-C port, so you can charge up a nearby gadget with a cable as well as using the top of the Stengrönska as a wireless charger.

IKEA is positioning it as a preferable alternative to using your phone for alarms and checking the time: "you can reduce your reliance on your mobile phone," reads the official blurb, which means "less screen time — more well-being!"

The only downside is that the device is only on sale in Japan and China for now (the Japan price is ¥4,999, about $32 / £24 / AU$45). We've asked IKEA about international availability, and will update this article if we hear back.