Minecraft Legends – not really that legendary (pic: Microsoft)



The latest Minecraft spin-off is Mojang’s take on a real-time strategy, as you battle an army of Piglins in a brand new adventure.



The minute The Super Mario Bros. Movie became a success one of the first rumours of a new video game movie was the revival of a long-planned for Minecraft adaptation. It’s been in development hell for almost a decade, but Hollywood execs realised that if there was any game property that could match the appeal of Mario it was Minecraft. It might not appeal across all generations yet, but in a couple of decades it’s likely that Steve and Alex will be viewed in much the same way as Mario and Peach are today. So it’s only surprising that it’s taken Microsoft this long to start to expand the franchise.



Minecraft Dungeons was released in 2020 and, as the name suggests, is a simple dungeon crawler, somewhat in the style of Diablo. It has nothing to do with Minecraft in terms of gameplay, but it does use the same graphical style and offers similarly family friendly entertainment. There’s already rumours of additional spin-offs , including one by the makers of Hitman, but the next one on the list is Minecraft Legends: what could be roughly be described as a real-time strategy game.



We got quite excited at that prospect, as we miss the real-time strategy genre, but it’s immediately obvious that this isn’t going to be reviving interest in Command & Conquer and its ilk. Unlike Dungeons, it does have a lot more in common with actual Minecraft but we’re not sure its fans are going to enjoy it much either.



The background lore of Minecraft has long since passed us by and we don’t really understand anything about what’s going on in Minecraft Legends. As far as we can tell the three godlike beings that introduce the game – Foresight, Action, and Knowledge – are new characters but the enemy Piglins are not, and are an existing opponent from the Nether area. The story is presented in a very confusing manner, but all it boils down to is that the Piglins are invading from their Hell dimension and you have to stop them.



Rather than following the Command & Conquer formula, Legends is much more of an action game – more akin to something like the late 90s Battlezone games . You control a nameless knight on a horse and have the ability to slice through hordes of Pilglins using just your sword. The threat quickly becomes too much for you to handle on your own though and so you’re encouraged to build fortifications to protect specific areas and to summon allies to help out.



Construction is handled in a similar manner to Minecraft, as you mine resources and use them to build and reinforce buildings; these are primarily used to summon more powerful allies, create defences, and unlock new abilities. However, it’s all done through third parties – you don’t mine anything personally, you just get little fairy like creatures to do it within a certain area – so it all feels a lot more hands-off than actual Minecraft.



At first this is all very straightforward and easy but as the game progresses you’re forced to take on bigger threats, and larger Piglin fortresses, and so the inherent problems become very obvious. For a start the standard Minecraft art style is very badly suited to a game where there’s dozens of different units milling about in close proximity.









Developer Blackbird Interactive try to compensate for this by putting an ugly black outline around everyone, but it doesn’t work and, thanks to the series’ traditionally stilted animation, everything begins to look like an ugly visual mess as soon as any reasonably sized battle begins.



Another big problem is also a legacy issue from Minecraft, in that there’s absolutely no sense of feedback when attacking anything. That didn’t matter in the original game, where combat wasn’t a focus, but here there’s no sense that you and the enemy are at all connecting, which leaves the whole action element a complete chore. Although that’s somewhat mitigated by the fact that there’s nothing much you can do against anything other than Piglins anyway.



The other issues are old problems that real-time strategy games have been struggling with for decades, but it’s very disappointing that Legends handles them worse than usual, despite all the money and resources that Microsoft presumably put towards this. For a start, the artificial intelligence is absolutely terrible, to the point where it can barely be said to exist at all.



Not only is the pathfinding awful but your troops completely ignore enemies unless they’re standing right on top of them, as they exhibit absolutely no agency of their own. This is combined with not only a horribly fiddly control system, in terms of using a gamepad, but the limited methods you have to order your troops around. Other than just having them follow you, your only other practical option is an incredibly imprecise charge that almost always seems to see allies running off in slightly the wrong direction.



Minecraft Legends – Smash Bros. is still the best Minecraft spin-off (pic: Microsoft)



There is a way to focus them on a specific building or enemy but you almost have to be double-jointed to make it work on a console controller. The whole thing is a clumsy mess and it’s hard to imagine it will be of any interest to either younger Minecraft enthusiasts or real-time strategy fans.



The overriding issue is that Legends is an incredibly shallow experience. The combat is a bust but there’s also very little strategy involved, as you set up towers to fight hordes of Piglins that spawn at random and tank rush larger enemies with your own more powerful allies. Not only is this not interesting the first time round but it quickly becomes highly repetitive as you end up doing the same thing across all the villages in the open world.







That said, the open world element is the most interesting part, as it does look quite pretty and there are lots of secrets, but all it really does is make you want to go and play proper Minecraft. There are also co-op and competitive options, and the former in particular will no doubt hold some appeal, but none of it helps the core gameplay seem any more interesting.



If the wider plan here is to create Minecraft-ified versions of existing genres Microsoft and Mojang should remind themselves that the appeal of the main game is how deep and complex it is, and so far these spin-offs are proving to be the opposite.






Minecraft Legends review summary In Short: A failed attempt to turn Minecraft into a real-time strategy game, that goes out of its way to be as shallow as possible and is made worse by fiddly controls and terrible AI.
Pros: The open world looks quite nice and there are plenty of options, including co-op and competitive modes. Not too expensive (but more so than Dungeons).
Cons: Extremely shallow gameplay. Awkward controls and almost non-existent artificial intelligence. Very repetitive and battles quickly become a visual mess.
Score: 5/10





Formats: Xbox Series X/S (reviewed), Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, and PC Price: £34.99 Publisher: Xbox Game Studios Developer: Blackbird Interactive and Mojang Studios Release Date: 18th April 2023 Age Rating: 7









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