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A charming and fun action-strategy Minecraft spin-off | Full Review - Minecraft Legends

3K View2023-04-21

Minecraft Legends

8.0

TacticalPsychological HorrorCo-op CampaignActionStrategyHorrorOnline Co-OpFamily Friendly

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Minecraft Legends is an action strategy game set in the Minecraft universe of video games. Released for Windows, Playstation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch.

🟩Pros

+Refreshing new take with its action strategy gameplay

+Keeps the Minecraft feel and tone intact

+Cooperative gameplay mode for the whole campaign

🟥Cons

-Main campaign is very short

-Asking price is a bit high

-Versus multiplayer needs a lot of work

Minecraft with another spin-off

An addition to the growing roster of Minecraft spin-offs like the Diablo-esque Minecraft Dungeons and the narratively focused Minecraft: Story Mode, Minecraft Legends is a refreshing new take on the Minecraft brand with its shift into a third person action-strategy gameplay. It’s not the OG Minecraft gameplay we know and love, but it is STILL distinctively Minecraft in both the looks and the tone.

Piglins from the Nether have invaded the world, and are trying to spread corruption across the land. The mobs have banded together and contacted the player controller hero, to carry the banner and lead the mobs — friendly and hostile alike — in driving out the forces of Piglins.

Keeps the Minecraft feel and tone intact

The story is a typical good vs evil conflict but in a lighthearted, classic Minecraft aesthetic. The stakes are high and the overall tone of the story sinister, but the game never fails to make fun of the situation with the silly animations and interactions between the characters. It’s obviously primarily made for kids, but that’s not to say it isn’t for everyone.

In traditional Minecraft fashion, resource gathering and building are still an important part of gameplay, albeit in a more strategy game fashion where you now just build full structures instead of individual blocks. Gathering resources are still present, but is now a charming musical command for your Allays mobs to do. For those used to Minecraft’s first person building experience, this is an entirely fresh new experience that more resembles Fortnite style of building.

Gameplay Analysis

The gameplay mostly centers on controlling your hero on a mount, gathering resources, and building structures to summon new units and defend the land. You have to liberate and defend villages across the open-world map, and try to clamp down the enemy foothold one base, at a time. There is an optional cooperative multiplayer to invite your friends to your campaign, and versus multiplayer, where the format mostly follows the general strategy element of the game.

It is indeed a real time strategy game; where you build structures, units, and commend them, an action one since you can control your hero and participate in battle yourself. The gameplay is mostly reminiscent of Pikmin from Nintendo, or for more Medieval game oriented players, the game Mount and Blade.

Starting the game I was immediately introduced to the resource gathering system where I commanded the Alloys Mobs to gather Stones and Wood. Then I was able to build out structures called spawners to summon my first few golems that followed me — mostly divided into two categories: Melee and Ranged. Since the Piglins that have invaded the land are terrorizing a nearby village, I was sent out to defend them.

That’s basically the whole gameplay cycle of Minecraft Legends, defend and liberate villages, take out enemy bases and outposts to reclaim the land. In between building and combat consists of traveling around the gorgeous looking open world map with different biomes from grasslands, swamplands, to even ice cold snowy regions, filled with familiar mobs Minecraft players will instantly recognize.

The design of the world feels very much like a Minecraft one, never really deviating from the established aesthetic. The hero’s mount is swappable, and there are quite a few of them available in the game. Some can fly and some can crawl up walls.

As you play the game, you will be able to unlock new types of resources, and in turn new types of units to use, so there’s an added RTS building element, but drawn out and stretched throughout the entirety of the story campaign. In addition, your ability to rally and control mobs will be upgraded, increasing their capacity to support an increasingly bigger army.

The combat is simplistic in nature, the character only has one attack move, so the focus of the gameplay is more gravitated towards tactical decision-making and leading your units as opposed to actual moment to moment combat. Different units are more suited to different tasks like absorbing damage, taking down buildings, or killing enemies, and it's up to the player, or players in cooperative mode, to utilize them.

When defending villages, the game feels a lot like a tower defense game, where you are free to build out defensive structures, as well as walls to hold off waves of enemy attacks. When attacking, the game will feel like sieges in games most similar to Mount and Blade, where you need to force yourself into enemy strongholds and destroy key structures.

The basic controls are highly intuitive and even when using controllers on PC, they are well designed — Easy and straightforward enough to be picked up and played by anyone who has played modern third person action titles. However, control issues arise when using the more advanced banner view to command individual units and group types. It’s masquerading as a complex control system when in fact it's more chaotic and confusing to use.

Speaking of gripes, the versus multiplayer mode still needs a lot of work. There is no way to do matchmaking with friends, so there is no concrete way to play with friends this way. However, the co-op works fine and ultimately is an extremely superior experience over playing this game in singleplayer.

Conclusion:

The campaign overall is extremely short, only beatable in under 10 hours. That and the disappointing state of versus multiplayer, makes the $40 price offering a bit too steep despite being fun as a game. The only saving grace is the fun to be had in cooperative mode, but that also means spending twice or quad the price overall. Overall, Minecraft Legends is charming and fun in its own right, but I can only recommend it at a discounted price, or if you have willing friends to play the rather short campaign.

Mentioned games

Minecraft Legends

8.0

TacticalPsychological HorrorCo-op CampaignActionStrategyHorrorOnline Co-OpFamily Friendly

Get

Minecraft's Pikmin-style spin-off game | First Impressions - Minecraft Legends

Minecraft Legends is a refreshing new take on the Minecraft brand with its shift into a third person action-strategy gameplay. It’s not the OG Minecraft gameplay we know and love, but it is STILL distinctively Minecraft in both the looks and the tone. Piglins from the Nether have invaded the world, and are trying to spread corruption across the land. The mobs have banded together and contacted the player controlled hero, to carry the banner and lead the mobs — friendly and hostile alike — in driving out the forces of Piglins.

lyndonguitar1K2023-04-20