A good strategy game is ultimately a game of choices. What units to create, where to allocate resources, what strategies to implement. Right decisions lead to victory, while wrong ones force you to adapt and adjust, or suffer a bitter defeat. Time and time again I found myself at the crossroads of these decisions while playing Minecraft Legends, Mojang and Blackbird Interactive’s stripped-down takes on action RTS. It doesn’t always do a perfect job of opening the doors of this often intimidating genre to a wider audience, but the way Minecraft Legends streamlines things without losing most of its crucial tactical moments function.
Simplicity is one of Minecraft Legends’ greatest strengths. Evil piglins have invaded from the Nether because that’s what evil piglins do. Your job is to build the necessary power to drive them back. You do so by exploring procedurally generated continents to discover resources, allies, and secrets, destroying Piglin bases, and defending friendly settlements from invaders. There are no levels, and most of the minimalist story is just cutscenes announcing the arrival of a larger Piglin army. Once you’ve wiped out all the Piglins, victory is yours. You can start another run from the beginning on a brand new map.
Minecraft’s iconic blocky style has been established in many spin-offs and adaptations before, and it’s also very well implemented here. The entire world looks like it was pulled directly from his main Minecraft series, with the landscape, NPCs and ore blocks identical to their counterparts. Everything looks great thanks to a vibrant color palette and some good lighting. As in Minecraft tradition, the night brings additional danger from aggressive enemies, but with a gorgeous sunset over the stunning scenery, you can’t fear their arrival.
Unlike StarCraft or Command and Conquer, where you occupy a remote overseer’s seat commanding intricate legions from the top of the landscape, Legends gives you a battlefield exactly like the Overlord series, giving you control over your warriors to fight. Gives along with a small troop of summonable units. There are several interesting unit types, each filling a very distinct niche. Cobblestone Golems have a lot of health, but are not very good at dealing damage quickly. Plank Golems are the opposite and Mossy Golems heal. The fact that it’s so simple is great because you can easily jump into the action. No steep learning curve or thick manuals to memorize.
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The commands you give your soldiers tend to boil down to ‘go kill that thing over there’ or ‘follow me’, and can be issued regardless of whether you’re using gamepad or mouse control. This is partly because armies consist of dozens instead of hundreds of units, which makes things easier to manage. Breaking down the gates of Piglin Fort and sending your own hordes out to rampage everything in its path is really fun.
However, its simplicity has some drawbacks. In theory, there are certain units that act as counters against certain enemies. The Skeleton Archer, for example, is a go-to choice for dealing damage from a distance to massive flail-wielding portal guards. However, abundant resources and the ability to spawn armies instantly make it easier to overwhelm your opponents in sheer numbers, keeping you from having to think too much out of a given battle.
It’s also a shame that there is no way to create battlegroups for specific units. Certain units he can command all types at once, but cannot create custom groups of mixed units. Support them with a group of archers guarded by plank golems that rain pain on the piglins, and quickly issue orders to a mix of damaging spongy zombies and healing his units to push the front lines. It would have been a lot of fun if I could. But that level of fine-grained control isn’t really feasible, which is a shame.
Luckily, the fact of being directly involved in combat gives you the chance to make some smart choices. As a hero, you are far more powerful than an individual soldier in your army, and are always armed with a wide arcing sword. This allows you to create a swarm of cobblestone golems for an invasion, directing them to focus on destroying buildings while protecting them, or sending units to protect one side of a friendly settlement and destroying the other. It’s the kind of mental push-pull that makes strategy games so fun.
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This is not a Minecraft game without collecting and building resources. Alleys are little fairy-like creatures that help you with these tasks. One type focuses on collecting resources, directing them into thickets of trees and ore-filled quarries where they can strip resources completely independently. Quickly assemble structures such as golem spawners and arrow towers if resources are available. It’s a very easy-to-use system that works in a very natural way, allowing him to go from idea to construction with just a double press of a button or a click of the mouse.
Piglin armies attack settlements almost every night, and each new attack is highlighted on the world map, but thanks to diligent alleys, it’s easy to quickly build walls and gates to stop them. It’s a lot of fun figuring out how best to build a . Adding structures such as builder sheds to repair buildings and masonry to convert wooden defensive structures to stone is a constant drain on resources, but can lead to more fortified ones. I have. A town that can withstand a rampaging Nether army. The choice between finding more resources to continue building or hiding for the next battle was very important and I enjoyed the opportunity to plan and execute.
The independent operation of alleys also influences the strategic elements of combat in interesting ways. I often found myself defending settlements from invading Piglin armies, building command walls as we fought. If your wood supply runs low, you’ll need to ride into the nearby forest to start the gathering process, and both sets of alleys will work while you continue fighting. Go out of your way to target and don’t let this in-fight backup get too overwhelming.
A structure called the Well of Fate serves as the main home base. This is your default respawn location when you die and where you do most of your upgrades. Destroyed piglin structures drop prismarine. Prismarine is used to build upgrade structures, allowing you to command more troops or store more materials in general. I was sweating over decisions about whether to increase the size of my army, open up opportunities to mine special ores like coal or redstone, or add more alleyways to facilitate resource gathering.
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Piglins themselves aren’t waiting for you to raise an army and crush them. They spawn their own bases and outposts and grow in complexity over time. It starts with quickly looting a few buildings and ends up in a long siege of a complex fortress that takes several in-game days. It is a constant mental struggle that creates tension.
Unfortunately, the difficulty curve has some kinks. The final hours of our 16-hour playthrough slowly slowed down as enemies with massive amounts of health joined the fray, like his heavily armored Pigmadillos. Enemies with unique designs and attacks continue to appear, which is great, but the size of the army they fill becomes a slog. It’s frustrating just to build up an assault force and find half fell off a cliff during a questionable pathfinding during your march. Legends loses some of its potential as an onboarding opportunity for the strategy genre because of these endgame struggles.
Fortunately, good construction options can alleviate some of these pain points. Siege tools like redstone launchers that act like long-range artillery fixtures can help clear landing spots, and it’s easy to create bridges and stairs to cross gaps and climb hills. Cure Netherrack’s ability to slowly transform the rotting ground beneath his base also makes a big difference, allowing him to construct buildings and golem spawners within enemy territory. These are fun ways to turn the tide, but maxing out all of the belt’s tools becomes a little uncharacteristically difficult, as it’s the only viable option for clearing the highest-level outposts. There is a possibility that
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Minecraft Legends is fun solo, but excels in multiplayer. The entire campaign can be played cooperatively with up to 3 other friends. Resources are divided, but everyone has full autonomy to act independently. Dividing up tasks such as gathering resources, building bases, and fighting saves a lot of frustration, and charging into battle with allies is a lot of fun. Sharing with never gets old.
On the other hand, PVP has an interesting point. Two teams go head-to-head on randomized maps, with players on each team controlling heroes while sharing resources and golems. Matchmaking games are designed for his 3v3 or 4v4, while private games allow you to freely combine up to 4 players on either side. In one game, my team focused on destroying Piglin bases early to create the most powerful army before clashing with other humans, allowing for quick upgrades. Already in one game of his, when an opponent secretly builds his launcher within range of his base with redstone and concentrates almost entirely on defending it while it destroys the structure. was wiped out. The strategic element other humans bring is far more interesting than facing off against the CPU.
