Once you’re in the saddle and taking your first steps in Minecraft Legends, you’ll instantly recognize your surroundings. The third-person view might be a little weird at first, depending on how you play regular Minecraft, but there are plenty of changes in Legendary that are immediately noticeable. For everything that’s familiar, this new RTS spin puts something fresh on the blocky formula we’re all too familiar with.
In Minecraft Legends, you take on the role of a hero who is brought to a world to save it from the Piglin’s invasion. A fairly simple setup, but also comes with a lot of info on how this legend differs from the usual Minecraft experience, the first major separation is in this “legend” aspect of Minecraft Legends. There’s a clear narrative here, and you’re a hero, not just making up your own story in a survival world. When talking to the developers, they described it as not necessarily a classic Minecraft story, but rather a myth that might exist in the world, a story that villagers could tell before sending their children to bed.
The narrative in Minecraft Legends – at least for the first hour or so – isn’t anything special, but it doesn’t have to be. This is your excuse to roam the world and fight the Pigliners. The early levels mostly involve you and your golem army traveling to different settlements, stopping the Pigeon invasion, and building better defenses for the next time the cute evil creatures run. You can also go on the offensive in Minecraft Legends and stop further attacks by taking out the Piglin outpost. The gameplay here marks another major departure from the Minecraft formula, as your traditional tools, picks, swords, axes and shovels are swapped for your lute, which you use to send allay to collect materials for you, your Flags to control your units and your firepower to summon them. With these tools, especially the lute, you don’t need to spend hours hammering down the tree and spending time building the base piece by piece. Instead, you can build ramps, walls, archer towers, and more in seconds by simply gathering a bunch of resources from a given area. This simplified gameplay may not suit those who want the simple life of a log cabin on top of a mountain, but that’s what traditional Minecraft is for. Minecraft Legends’ faster method of mining and crafting allows you to better focus on the meat of the game, in combat and strategy, of which there are many.
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On your side, the battle is very simple. Hitting enemies and trying not to get hit is the only rule you need to follow. You can order your units to knock down piglins or their buildings, though, and every unit you can create is better at one thing than another. For example, stone golems are better at breaking down buildings, while zombies can be the front line of tanks to stop enemy troops. In Minecraft Legends, there are a lot of simple things you can pick up quickly, but there also seems to be a good amount of depth. Maybe not as big of a ceiling as other popular RTS games, but it’s higher than you might first think. This is especially evident in the time spent in Minecraft Legends’ PvP mode.
PvP is probably where Minecraft Legends is at its strongest, as it turns into a very engaging party game. It’s designed as 4v4, but 3v3 and 2v2 are available in private games. No matter how many players you have, the goal is the same: destroy the enemy’s tower. How you try to accomplish this is up to you. Build a base strong enough to consume enemies, create a redstone cannon to destroy their fortress, or swap out your horse for a giant beetle, jump over enemy walls, and lead a group of creepers to their tower (that’s my personal favourite). For Minecraft Legends, communication is pretty critical in PvP, as it’s good to know who’s collecting resources, who’s building a base, and who’s scouting enemies on the map and engaging in guerrilla warfare. Compared to the single-player game, people began to worry that fighting piglins would become monotonous, and PvP provides extra depth to the game.
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Minecraft Legends seems like a rather niche title at first glance. While it might be hard to convince RTS fans to jump over to the cute, charming world of Minecraft, the average Minecraft player might not have much interest in the gameplay this new game has to offer. But if you’re looking for a fun third-person adventure that looks to have an interesting story and a cracking PvP mode, then there’s no reason to ignore Minecraft Legends.
