Minecraft Legends review: action, adventure, and strategy intertwine

Minecraft Legends has all of the beautiful, blocky visuals and goofy humor you’d expect. It’s a lot like Minecraft Dungeons, Legends The comforting images are transformed into an entirely new genre. In place of dungeon-crawling or free-form building and mining, Legends In this strategy/adventure mixup, you ride a powerful steed and control a group of golems.

A player is hired to protect the Overworld. Piglins are attacking poor villagers in the Nether. They also corrupt the land around them. The catch is that, while I can mow down Piglins with my diamond sword, I can’t touch their structures. In order to stop the Nether from corrupting the overworld, I’ll need to find allies to break down those structures — which requires resources. The world is full of loot, so I can get a lot for free.

Image: Mojang Studios, Blackbird Interactive/Xbox Game Studios

This campaign begins with the player digging a trench, and then being recruited by Foresight, Action, and Knowledge. Three extradimensional characters are supposed to be the three pillars that make up playing. Minecraft, and they guide you through several tutorial battles to demonstrate the game’s colliding genres. You are then given some tools for dealing with the Piglin. I own a diamond saber, a lovely golem, and a lute.

The golems I have created are crucial to my future success. My golems can be spawned in my spawning center, then I can rally them around me. Because I don’t have many methods for fighting the Piglins directly — besides riding my horse and swinging my sword — I distribute most of the work among my new allies. There are golems called the “allay,” which help me mine resources and turn them into defensive structures. My starting troops might not be able to handle more advanced fortresses or army camps. I’m able to find additional soldiers, and can even convince enemies, such as explosive Creepers, to join my cause.

The strategy can seem a little unintuitive, as it requires several steps. To use the army I must create spawning centres, manually summon each of my allies, then rally them and send them into battle. It’s a lot like a real-time strategy game, but pared down. It makes for an approachable strategy/action mashup — Minecraft Legends is on consoles and, like most things set in this universe, is meant to be a game children can enjoy — but it does mean I have to carefully repeat a sequence of small and easy-to-forget actions to set a big army in motion.

My new friends may be the stars, but the structures that I create are also very useful. If a Piglin’s camp is located on the opposite side of a lava moat, creating a bridge will allow me to pass. When I discover a treasure chest on a steep cliff, I can construct a ramp that will allow me to access it. I can strengthen villages with defensive towers and walls. Over time, the Piglins get more sophisticated in their tech, and so do I — we’re now embroiled in a blocky arms race. Minecraft LegendsIt starts off as a relatively simple game, but soon the battlefields become crowded and I need to find ways to move my troops through enemy territory like lemmings.

In the end, it seems that quitting overworld combat for a little while has almost no tangible consequences. In fact, there’s ample time to explore the wilderness, discover treasure, and generally screw around. The same result was achieved by rushing and taking my time to reach an outpost. There are no penalties for tardiness.

Image: Mojang Studios, Blackbird Interactive/Xbox Game Studios

It’s just that my hosts want me to focus on the current task. The hosts are constantly harping on how another village is being attacked. This nagging eases up the further you progress in the campaign — but it was frustrating for the game’s The following systems are available: To allow me to wander through the forest with its light shining on voxel leaves, then have their overseers constantly criticize me.

The Campaign for Minecraft Legends is around 20 hours long, give or take, so it doesn’t feel like too Sisyphean a task to explore the world, defend villages, and shake the biomes down for ores and gems. There’s also a cooperative option. There is also a cooperative option. Minecraft Legends’ legs come from its multiplayer mode, in which two teams of four players vie to destroy the other’s base.

The worlds in multiplayer matches are procedurally generated, which means players must learn the terrain each time. They also have to collect stone and wood, find the correct biomes for prismarine, as well as other valuable ore, while fighting off enemy attacks and making their own. Here’s where Minecraft Legends feels the most like an RTS, and although communication was paramount during my sessions, there’s no in-game voice chat. Discord sufficed, but it’s a bummer that the developers didn’t provide an avenue of their own.

Minecraft LegendsIt’s a delightful portmanteau that simplifies the RTS formula, while still requiring a good deal of strategy and concentration. I’m interested to see where the game goes in the future; players might use its mechanics to create truly terrifying multiplayer strategies that escalate in amazing ways. The players might also enjoy the game’s campaign, and then return to their home realm to manage their own wildlands away from any quest-giver chimes. Legends is a charming and colorful adventure, and it’s nice to finally befriend the humble Creeper.

Minecraft LegendsReleased on April 18, 2019 Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X” Windows PC. This game was tested on Windows PC with a Mojang pre-release download. Vox Media is affiliated with other companies. Vox Media earns commissions from affiliate products, although this doesn’t influence the editorial content. This is where you can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.