Minecraft Legends Review
The Unexpected Fusion of RTS, Pikmen, and Mount and Blade
Minecraft Legends Review
Introduction
So I saw this video by SkillUp reviewing the new Minecraft spinoff game Minecraft Legends.
Before I saw the review I had no idea this game even existed.
This game absolutely checked all of my boxes.
Some weird genre mash that I can’t explain — Check
Single player with co-op campaign support — Check
Built to work well on a controller — Check
So I made a pact with my roomies that we would buy it and play through it together. Unfortunately for me, my roommates had the commitment level of friends trying to goad each other into jumping into the pool at the same time.
That is to say, I was the only one that jumped.
Alone, lost, but enthusiastically I set out into the world of Minecraft Legends.
What is it?
So what is Minecraft Legends? Well…. its a blend of RTS, Pikmen, and Mount and Blade.
Moment to moment gameplay copies the homework of Tooth and Tail a distilled RTS experience from 2017. Another game I failed to convince friends to play with me.
This means that you rally troops around a player character that you control. You give the troops you rally commands from your “commander” character.
Typically in RTS games you have a birds eye, god view of the map and can do things wherever you want, whenever you want. This works well for a mouse and keyboard, but works very poorly if you are trying to play with say, a controller.
In an attempt to modernize, RTS games have converted to having you control a specific commander character in order to make the game more immersive, and to level the playing field for using a joy-stick.
Minecraft legends does this very well. You can rally troops, give commands, build, and collect resources from your commander character. It all happens automatically after you give the command so there really is no need to micromanage anything. Its a system that I really like.
The larger game loop works a lot like the heavy simulation of Mount and Blade. There are three enemy factions that have bases on the “Overworld” that you have to fight. You also have friendly bases, and ally camps around the world that it is your job to defend.
Each day the piglins plan some sort of attack, and at night they execute it. Those attacks can range from attempting to take control of some of your bases, to upgrading their own bases, or setting up new satellite bases. This active level of simulation on top of the game is what really interested me, and what draws the comparison to Mount and Blade.
Combat
The combat in Minecraft Legends is… light. It’s perhaps too light for me. I’ve been enjoying my time with the game, but as I continue to upgrade my home base it fails to change the way that I interact with the game. I am allowed to carry more of certain resources, or have more troops around me but at the moment that really seems like it.
I feel like this is kind of a shame since the game has a lot going for it. The lack of reasonable upgrades keeps my playthrough feeling samey.
The most interesting the game gets is with units that you unlock by freeing them from the piglin hoard. This includes zombies, skeletons, and creepers. Who are much stronger than the base units, but you have to free and defend their camps for the privilege to use them.
This is a system that I really like. However, I can’t help but feel like it was underutilized. I feel as if they had lots of other more interesting systems planned, but never got around to implementing them.
By far the place that the game shines the most is when defending. The vast majority of the buildings that the player has access to are only good for defense. This makes planning how to build up a town to defend itself really fun and engaging.
The opposite is when you are on offense. Which surprisingly is the position you are in most of the time. The enemies have camps strewn around the map. In order to upgrade your powers you have to destroy enemy buildings. So the systems really have you lean into pushing enemy camps as much as possible.
However the only strategy that I’m able to really get going with respect to offense is to spawn as many units as I have access to. Which is not many. Than charging into the base. Before I said that it was nice that you don’t have to micro-manage the resource collection. The same can not be said for offensive combat. On offense your units are absolutely hopeless. They have no pathfinding ability whatsoever.
In a Minecraft style game world with PITS OF LAVA, and thin platforms the ai has to coordinate to stay on top of. Your units more often then not will just walk directly into danger. If you’ve built a bridge over a pit of lava, then send your units to patrol on the other side of that bridge. The units will often walk off the bridge and fall into the lava. The AI only path finds when following you. So as much as I would love to send sets of troops to different parts of the enemy camp while maintaining and growing my forward base. I literally can’t because I have to personally babysit all the units everywhere. This system infuriates me to no end.
Story
The game has a story certainly. They try to do a very “Lego” style story where the comedy comes mostly from pantomiming. I won’t lie to you I skipped most of the cutscenes. They fail to capture my interest because they have nothing to do with gameplay at all, or at least they rarely do.
Not that the story really matters much anyway, your objective is clear from the start. Defeat all the bad guys from bad-guy land.
Conclusion
Who is Minecraft Legends for? I don’t know really. It feels like its for me. I am certainly someone who appreciates the level of genre-mashing that the game aims for. Despite the horrible unit AI and the lack of progression I’ve still been enjoying my time with it. I only wish it were better so I could convince my friends to play it with me.
If you are interested in playing this game, get it on game-pass. Its not really worth the $40 price tag in my opinion. Its a fun game to give a shot and play through. Minecraft legends just doesn’t contain the depth or staying power to hold my interest for longer periods of playtime.
This has been a tough review for me to write because I love the developers, BlackBird Interactive. They made Hardspace Shipbreaker, a game I absolutely adore. They also have a lot of experience making RTS games. I’m excited to see if they get to work on a sequel to this because I think that there is so much room to improve to make a game like this really shine. However dull the current game may be.
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