Minecraft Legends Review
At first glance, it can be difficult to determine exactly what it is. Minecraft Legends, or what to expect from it. It has all the familiar elements fans have come to expect from Minecraft, including the game core of resource gathering and building, the blocky but beautiful landscapes, and the methodically built underbelly that fuels the entire experience. But this is the foundation of what Mojang sees as an “action-strategy” game. Minecraft Legends.
“Action strategy” is certainly a niche genre, and there are few titles to point to as pillars. As a sort of flag bearer for this smaller subset of games, Legends of Minecraft will have players wage war against the forces of The Nether and stand side-by-side with an army of classic mobs as they build up in a series of major battles. Players will also spend ample time planning, building and strategizing their war effort to liberate the Overworld from the invading Piglins. Command and conquer. Minecraft Legends tries to do a lot with the influences it gets and manages to be a compelling action-strategy game in its own right, but it feels like it could have done more with the Minecraft basics.
Like Minecraft Dungeons before it, Minecraft Legends keeps things light regarding the story. In short, Nether forces have invaded the Overworld and it’s up to the player character to unite the citizens of the Overworld in the fight against the Piglin invaders. The story’s cast is small and consists of three main characters named Foresight, Action and Knowledge, who assist the player by giving brief descriptions and general warnings about what happens next in the Piglin invasion. As always, minecraft is about the story the player organically tells, and Minecraft Legends does a great job of getting out of the player’s way so they can focus on the storytelling moments that arise.
In order to fend off Piglin, players will need to take the fight straight to the enemy’s bases by raising an army and forming an assault front. there’s almost a Mount and Blade: Warband feel like Minecraft Legends, as players travel the world and turn old enemies into friends to recruit into their ranks. Zombies, skeletons and reptiles are available to the player after helping each group defend their respective homes against the Piglin invaders. The entire process of uniting the Overworld against a common enemy is tons of fun and provides a fun twist on how to make Minecraft fans interact with these once feared mobs. Everything comes together wonderfully when the player mobilizes this ragtag army.
Moments like leading a massive offensive against a Piglin base always make players feel like they are living a scene. Lord of the Rings. Or in other cases, players will nervously hide in a village to prepare for an incoming attack, hoping that everything they’ve built to fortify that village will withstand an attempted Piglin raid. Moments like this are constantly in Minecraft Legends and regularly ground the player in the world without the need for a narrator or NPC to tell players that the risk is high.
As our time in the game progressed, we realized that we really cared about these now-familiar villages that we helped build, fortify and defend every day. Along the way, we traveled between these towns and passed through old battlefields where the friends we made helped us carry the fight to the Piglin bases. There are times in Minecraft Legends that felt truly epic in every sense of the word, and these moments are punctuated by moments that will make players feel proud and accomplished when they look back on the work they put in to save the Overworld. It’s a very satisfying game to play and especially when the credits roll and players are able to capitalize on their time with the game.
In terms of strategy, Legends of Minecraft relies on the series’ core gameplay cycle of resource gathering, crafting, and base building to defeat the Piglin invaders. The Piglins are a cunning group of three distinct swarms with different enemy types and architectural styles that players must consider when planning an attack. Players won’t approach the towering towers of the Horde of the Spore the way they approach the multi-walled fortresses of the Horde of the Bastion, forcing players to think creatively about how and where to build, while also considering the strengths and weaknesses of their militia. Players win by building the right things in the right spots and sending the right mobs to the right enemies. Discovering what works and what doesn’t, and getting into the strategic groove in Minecraft Legends felt as good as any other real-time strategy game can do.
As the in-game days pass and players battle against the Piglin hordes, the invasion of The Nether slowly begins to escalate. Attacking bases becomes increasingly difficult, and nighttime invasions become longer and longer with more challenging enemies spawning in the tree lines. Minecraft Legends This constant back-and-forth loop of enemy escalation and player reaction does a great job of keeping the game fresh and interesting throughout the first half. However, by the closing chapters, it felt as if Legends of Minecraft had exhausted everything it had to offer and the game was moving forward with what it had taught the player in the opening hours.
While the core gameplay loop of Minecraft Legends boils down to building walls, making sure those walls don’t break, and then directing an army to destroy a base and kill a boss. While the core of Minecraft’s traditional building and crafting mechanics, Legends DNA, everything felt very limited and as if the development team could have dug deeper to make an even better strategy game. Once all the tools were unlocked and the full scale of the game became clear, there was such a feeling that Legends missed the opportunity to include some of Minecraft’s rich array of blocks, weapons and Redstone mechanics to flesh out the game’s systems and create more things to build, see, do and strategize with. All of this could have added layers of complexity and replayability to what feels like a very simple single-player experience.
Moreover, Minecraft Legends always felt like it was on the verge of improving its mechanics as players began to master them, but it never happened. Players can’t actually build any structure without walls, doors or ramps, and minecraft is missing staples like various Redstone assemblies and terraforming – effectively killing off much of the imagination for which the franchise is known. Given how traditional the minecraft experience is, and how simply bringing the name minecraft evokes the idea of an infinitely playable platform where anything is possible, the limited scope of Legends feels off
However, Minecraft Legends’ strategy mechanics manage to flex their muscles in the game’s PvP offering. Multiplayer is where the strategy elements of the game evolve from being a slower affair to a building and gathering frenzy where players basically engage in a full-blown arms race between two teams. In our time with the multiplayer section, we saw players strategizing and developing metas as they quickly split into roles. Some players were designated as resource gatherers, others as base defenders, and others as general chaos creators in an attempt to impede the other team’s progress. Here the wheels began to turn in ways that the single player campaign never inspired.
Suddenly, some of the blander parts of the single-player game, like automated resource farming, became crucial to success as both teams worked like well-oiled machines in a race to build fortifications and destroy each other with everything they had. It was a lot of fun learning how to divide and conquer as a team while planning both immediate and long-term strategies – even if there are some balancing issues currently present in PvP, such as the dreaded Redstone Launcher. Minecraft Legends’ multiplayer will undoubtedly improve in the coming months, but it’s in a good spot and is the highlight of the whole package.
But despite its few shortcomings, Minecraft Legends is still a bold and exciting new direction for a franchise that continues to stand the test of time. A game that understands why Minecraft is so appealing in the first place and then turns those elements into an action strategy experience that can be hard to put down. Its only misstep comes from the fact that its limited scope and basic gameplay loop is so good that it leaves players wanting more. Minecraft Legends is approachable, charming and a really good time.
Minecraft Legends is coming out on April 18th for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S. Today Technology was provided with an Xbox code for the purposes of this review.