Minecraft Legends Review

Is there a genre Minecraft cannot blend into? There’s a choose your own adventure Minecraft, a dungeon-crawler Minecraft (not referring to the Cliffs & Caves update last year), and the original sandbox we all know and love — well, I love in moderation. And now Mojang have released an open-world, real time strategy videogame with fancy new graphics and mobs — all of them I want implemented in the base game sometime soon.

The premise of Minecraft Legends is that the Overworld has been invaded by the Piglins under the banner of three bosses. To repel the forces of the Nether, three ethereal beings, Foresight, Knowledge, and Action task the Hero (you) — mounted on your trusty steed — to unite the citizens and fauna of the world and wage war on the invaders. Wielding a lute, the knowledge of how to construct various defensive structures, and a squad of Allays to build it, the fate of the natural world rests on you. To assist you, and fill your numbers, golems, other inanimate beings, as well as recurring mobs like Zombie villagers, Skeletons — and the face of Minecraft — Creepers will fight alongside you.

However, spawning them will cost you resources, but luckily the world is filled with them. Collecting resources is as simple as moving your cursor over the type of block you want and clicking in the general direction for the allays to scavenge and mine. With a starting cap of 1000 for wood and stone, you eventually build power shrines that grant you abilities to your foraging, types of building and lowering costs, as well as the ability to remove netherite left by dilapidated Piglin structures.  

The foes and main antagonists of Minecraft Legends are the Piglins. Ranging from basic, spear-throwing grunts to over-sized, mini-boss oinks, they spread across the wilderness, defending their territory while attacking yours as they attempt to overwhelm you. Above them are the three bosses, the Beast, the Unbreakable, and the Devourer, who control their themed faction, as well as each having three strongholds grouped together. Other smaller bases litter the Overworld with all Piglin-occupied areas both marked out on the map and plain to see when travelling around. They are industrial camps with lava moats situated on fiery, glowing red netherite ground — totally blend into vibrant green grasslands, sandy savannahs, and frosty white tundras.

The main objective of Minecraft Legends’ campaign — and the only thing you’ll really be doing in the game — is to wipe out the Piglin bases, and their purple portals used to travel between worlds. To do so, you command allies to battle with each one having their own strengths and weaknesses, but it mainly comes down to ranged groups quickly taking down enemies while the golems destroy infrastructure. In return, the Piglins will target villages at night, which incorporates the building aspect of Minecraft. Walls and gates can hold off the attackering waves for a brief time, so you’ll need arrow towers in and outside the walls, and carpenter’s huts to repair damages, as well as more mob spawners. All structures consume a lot of resources eventually.

Which wouldn’t be an issue if the resources you collect from the world could replenish. In a theoretically decent decision, every collectable source will deplete after being gathered. The Overworld is bountiful around the villages in the beginning, but in a long campaign, it becomes a barren wasteland, making you travel further and further just to get resupplied. It helps at times that the villages — and allays — have chests containing resources specific to the biome you’re in. The game’s conflict becomes more of a war of attrition than troop numbers which could entice a challenge for teen and older players, however I don’t think children gamers could win on their own, which is where multiplayer comes in. Playing with up to three other ‘heroes’, a hard difficulty portal becomes a blitzkrieg with a total of 100 golems battering down anything in their way.

As the franchise is aimed squarely at a family audience, it would be imperative for Minecraft Legends to be easy to play, which I’m happy to say that it is. The simple controls that anyone can master along with one button commands in battle won’t bog down gameplay for someone not experienced with playing videogames. For specific orders or telling where you want the Allays to go, it is as simple as holding down a trigger, moving a blue circle to where you want and holding down the ‘charge’ or ‘focus’ button; or in relation to the Allays spamming the right trigger to gather quicker. In the trickier parts of the game where you have to besiege large strongholds, you can either plan out your attacks or just rush the gates with a cheeky creeper like baby’s first Helm’s Deep.

Playing Minecraft Legends, the visuals, ambience and sounds the mobs make show that a lot of work has been done while sticking to the vibe of the original game, especially re-using sound effects. Beginning with the visual art style and graphics, the absolutely gorgeous textures and character models stick to familiar features while updating them, such as the swaying tall grass and glowing speed grass and mushrooms that give you a damage buff, the water is blue and crisp, biomes blend seamlessly, and nothing is out of place or for show. Pulling you into the immersive world is the music and sound effects. The ambient soundtrack depends on the biome and what’s happening in the game, elevating the action of Piglins getting cut down by a wall of arrow towers up to 11. Sound effects like the grunts of Piglins and villagers, as well as foley work is done well enough to say the least. They work well but — knowingly sounding pedantic — it’s too videogame-y. Not everything needs a sound effect on it. On a few occasions, I was really taking a beating, and every sound effect was playing over each other which made me turn it off due to overstimulation.

I like Minecraft Legends as a fan of Minecraft, but I do not like it as a strategy game fan. If you like the Xbox 360 title Overlord, you’ll most likely be playing it already, but for me, I want to make the Maginot line out of grindstone golems on one end of the map and march them to the other side. For a game where the Piglins can make their own bases and move around the map in groups, but none of your allies can do the same. You can’t leave regiments in the villages or find other armies except the Piglins running about in groups. It almost seems like you’re the only person in the Overworld who wants to fight.  

And another thing! Your hero is meant to be from the world of base Minecraft, but never reacts to mobs like creepers the way they should. When saving the creeper village, I was waiting for my hero to get rushed by cheerful creepers; only to have him run or build a dirt spire away from them. Beside the point, it’s just a game, and trying to make sense of Minecraft lore is irrelevant when the game barely has any to begin with.