A good strategy game is ultimately one about choice. Which units to create, where to allocate resources, which strategies to implement. The right decisions lead to victory, while the wrong ones force you to adapt and adjust or else suffer bitter defeat. I found myself at the crossroads of these decisions time and again as I played Minecraft Legends, Mojang and Blackbird Interactive’s simplified take on an action-RTS. It doesn’t always do a perfect job opening the door of this often intimidating genre to a wider audience, but the way it largely manages to streamline things without losing most of those important tactical moments is what makes Minecraft Legends work.
Simplicity is one of Minecraft Legends greatest strengths. Evil Piglins from the Nether are invading, because that’s what evil Piglins do, and it’s your job to build up the forces needed to drive them back. You’ll do that by exploring a procedurally generated continent for resources, allies, and secrets to discover, destroying Piglin bases and defending friendly settlements from the invaders as you do. There are no levels, and the minimalistic story is mostly just cutscenes announcing the arrival of larger Piglin forces. Once you’ve cleared all the Piglins out, victory is yours, and you can start another run from scratch on a brand new map.
Minecraft’s iconic blocky style has been well established across its many spin-offs and adaptations by now, but it’s still extremely well implemented here. The entire world looks like it was pulled straight from the main Minecraft series, with landscapes, NPCs, and blocks of ore that are identical to their counterparts. It all looks great thanks to a vibrant color palette and some excellent lighting – as is Minecraft tradition, nights bring added danger from aggressive enemies, but it’s hard to dread their arrival when it’s preceded by gorgeous sunsets over stunning vistas.
Unlike Starcraft or Command and Conquer, where you occupy the seat of some far off overseer commanding a complex legion of forces from above that landscape, Legends puts on you the field of battle directly similar to the Overlord series, giving you control of a warrior fighting alongside a small squad of summonable units. There’s a handful of interesting unit types, each with a very clear niche that they fill. Cobblestone Golems have a lot of health but aren’t great at dealing damage quickly, Plank Golems are the opposite, Mossy Golems heal, etc. The fact that it is so straightforward is great, as it makes it easy to jump right into the action without a steep learning curve or thick manual to memorize.
Smaller army sizes help keep things manageable.
The commands you give your soldiers tend to boil down to “go kill things over there” or “follow me” and are equally easy to issue whether you’re using a gamepad or mouse controls. That’s partly thanks to armies being made of dozens of units rather than hundreds, which keeps things manageable. It’s genuinely fun to smash the gate of a Piglin Fort and send in a horde of your own to run roughshod over everything in its path.
There are some drawbacks to that simplicity, however. In theory, certain units work great as counters to specific enemies – Skeleton Archers, for example, should be the go-to choice for dealing damage to the massive flail-wielding Portal Guards from a distance. But abundant resources and the ability to instantly spawn forces sometimes makes it easier to just overwhelm enemies with pure numbers, taking a lot of the thought out of certain battles.
It’s also disappointing that there’s no way to create battle groups of specific units – you can command all of a certain unit type at once, but not custom groups of mixed troops. It would have been great fun to be able to quickly issue orders to a squad of damage spongy zombies mixed with healing units to push the front line, supporting them with a group of archers protected by Plank Golems raining pain upon the Piglins. But that level of fine control isn’t really feasible, and that’s a shame.
Fortunately, the fact that you participate directly in battles brings with it a chance to make some clever choices. As the hero, you are significantly more powerful than any individual soldier in your army, always mounted and armed with a sword that swings in wide arcs. This opens up opportunities to do things like create swarms of Cobblestone Golems for an invasion, then tell them to focus on destroying buildings while you protect them, or send units to guard one side of a friendly settlement while you cover the other. It’s the kind of mental push-pull that makes strategy games so much fun.
Figuring out the best way to build each base is a lot of fun.
This wouldn’t be a Minecraft game without gathering resources and building, and that’s translated in a slick and intuitive way. Allays are small fairy-like creatures that assist with these tasks – one type focuses on resource gathering, letting you point them at a grove of trees or a quarry filled with ore and strip the resources completely independently, while the other carries out building instructions, quickly assembling structures like golem spawners or arrow towers, provided the resources are available. It’s an exceptionally easy system to use that works in a very natural way, letting you go from idea to construction with just two button presses or mouse clicks.
The Piglin army will attack a settlement most nights, with each new assault highlighted on the world map, but quickly assembling walls and gates to hold them back is a breeze thanks to those industrious Allays. Figuring out the best way to build each base is a lot of fun – adding structures like an Architect Hut to repair buildings or a Masonry to convert wooden defensive structures to stone is a constant drain on resources, but they can lead to a much more fortified town that’s better able to withstand the rampaging armies of the Nether. The choice of whether to forage for more resources to keep building or hunker down for the coming battle is compelling, and I relished each opportunity to make and execute a plan.
The independent operation of your Allays feeds into the strategy elements of combat in interesting ways, too. I would often find myself defending a settlement from an invading force of Piglins and command walls be built as I fought. If wood supplies ran low, I would have to ride to a nearby forest and start the collection process, letting both sets of Allays work while I continued the fight. But Piglins will go out of their way to target the fragile Allays, keeping this mid-battle backup from being too overpowered by forcing me to think twice before leaving them unprotected.
A structure called the Well of Fates acts as your primary home base. This is where you start, the default respawn location when you die, and where you do most of your upgrading. Destroyed Piglin structures drop Prismarine, which is used to construct upgrade structures that allow you to do things like command more troops or store more materials in general. There’s a limited number of places these can be built, and I found myself sweating the decisions about whether to increase the size of my army, open up opportunities to mine specialty ores like coal and redstone, or add more Allays to expedite resource gathering.
Unfortunately, the difficulty curve has a few kinks in it.
The Piglins themselves don’t sit on their hands (hooves?) waiting for you to build up armies to come smash them, either. They produce bases and outposts of their own, with increasing complexity as time goes on. What begins as some quick pillaging of a few buildings at the start eventually becomes long sieges of intricate fortresses that can take multiple in-game days. Whether to press the advantage or turn your attention toward defending vulnerable areas elsewhere is a constant mental struggle that creates a nice sense of tension.
Unfortunately, the difficulty curve has a few kinks in it. The last few hours of my 16-hour playthrough slowed to a crawl as enemies with massive amounts of health joined the fray, like the heavily armored Pigmadillos. It’s great that enemies with unique designs and attacks still continue to show up, but the size of the armies they fill becomes a slog. This is an even bigger problem when attacking an enemy base on a high plateau – assembling an attack force only to realize half of them fell off a cliff on the march up due to suspect pathfinding is frustrating. Legends loses some of its potential as an onboarding opportunity for the strategy genre because of these endgame struggles.
Microtransaction Reaction
There is a premium currency that can be purchased with real world money in Minecraft Legends. There will be cosmetic items and new “experiences” available, but nothing that affects the competitive multiplayer landscape or player progress. The experiences will be tied to either Lost Legends and Myths. Lost Legends are free, and represent monthly challenges for players that give as-of-yet undisclosed rewards upon completion. Myths, on the other hand, will be set up similar to the Minecraft Marketplace available in Minecraft Bedrock, where partnered creators earn revenue by creating paid experiences that players can opt into purchasing. Time will tell how well the system works, but on paper it’s fairly innocuous as far as microtransactions go.
Fortunately, good construction options can mitigate some of those pain points. Siege tools like the Redstone Launcher, which acts somewhat like a long range cannon fixture, can help clear a landing point, and crafting bridges or stairs to cross gaps and ascend hills is a snap. The Cure Netherrack ability that slowly transforms the corrupted ground under Piglin bases is a standout difference maker, too, allowing the assembly of buildings and golem spawners inside enemy territory. These are fun ways to turn the tide, but it can be a little uncharacteristically daunting that making the most of every single tool in your belt feels like the only viable option to clear the highest level outposts.
Minecraft Legends is fun solo, but it excels in multiplayer.
Minecraft Legends is fun solo, but it excels in multiplayer. The entire campaign can be played in co-op with up to three other friends, where resources are split but everyone has full autonomy to act independently. Dividing tasks like resource gathering, base building, and combat alleviates many frustrations, and it’s just a lot of fun to charge into battle with your allies. It’s the best way to play, and sharing the elation of victory with friends doesn’t get old.
PVP, meanwhile, has an interesting wrinkle to it: two teams go head-to-head on a randomized map, with players on each team controlling a hero while sharing resources and golems. Matchmade games are designed for 3v3 or 4v4, but private games can have any mix of up to four players on either side. One game my team worked to destroy Piglin bases early so we could afford upgrades quickly, focusing on making the most powerful army possible before clashing with other humans. Another game we were wiped out when our opponents stealthily built a Redstone Launcher within range of our base, focusing almost entirely on defending that while it crushed our structures. The strategic elements that other humans can bring are much more interesting than facing the CPU.
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