I like piglins. They have that anarchic goblin underdog vibe that makes me think they’d be cool if it weren’t for the dastardly boss types letting them invade the overworld. It’s a pity they’re the bad guys of Minecraft Legends, because I’d much rather lead them in a revolution against their oppressive overlords. Instead, I’ve been protecting Minecraft’s weird, flesh-colored Squidward villagers from their attacks.
I chose to start with my thoughts on the piggies in the game, because I’ve been taught to always start with praise before any criticism, and, honestly, piglins are by far the best thing in Minecraft Legends.
Surprisingly, Minecraft Legends is a spin-off of the hugely successful phallic object and computer build simulator Minecraft. You have been called by the Lord of Foresight, Knowledge, and Action to defend the Overworld from the aforementioned piglin invasion. It’s been described as an “action-strategy” game, and the best way I can describe it is like a fairly rudimentary RTS game, where the bird’s-eye view and cursor have been replaced by a third-person view of a Minecraft character riding a horse. You can swing your sword at things, and I guess that’s where the action bit comes into play, but it’s pretty ineffective against anything other than basic piglins, so it doesn’t make much sense.
All that’s left is the RTS staple of gathering resources and building things with them. Provides a condensed set of Minecraft materials, starting with wood and stone and slowly expanding to include iron, redstone, and more. Buildings are divided into three types: defensive structures such as walls and turrets, generators for combat units, and improvements you can build around the Well of Fate (the central hub of the map) to unlock new abilities. These include acquiring new materials, improving the ability to carry and spawn minions, and ways to interact with various points of interest scattered throughout the map.
You’re not actually doing any of this yourself. Unlike Minecraft Cool Original Flavor, Legends is a hands-off experience. All mining and crafting work is delegated to wisps, sprites who can be assigned to build structures or collect all resources of a given type in a small area. Buildings and party types are limited in number, so there’s a limit to what you can do at once.
All you can do is lead your troops into battle, which is very important, since they’re not much smarter than the rocks and trees from which they’re made. Your basic minions are little golems with various melee, ranged, and healing abilities. As you earn the trust of the world’s inhabitants, you can add classic Minecraft zombies, skeletons and creepers to your troops. The first two are like improved versions of your golems, serving melee and ranged roles respectively, but the creeper works exactly as you’d expect it to, charging at enemy structures and detonating them, dealing massive damage in the process.
Unfortunately, the only thing any of them can do is attack anyone within range. Melee troops, in particular, will happily sit around doing nothing while piglins a few yards away attack your fortifications. You can order them to follow you, stop following you, and charge forward a short distance. With some finger-twisting controller input (more on that later), you can have them focus their attack on a specific target, or make another charge that does exactly the same thing, except you can specify which unit to issue the command to.
It’s incredibly rude, a comb ination of constant babysitting and frustrating imprecise meaning that combat consists of spawning a mob of various troops, running them to the front line, and then targeting them at the nearest building or enemy groups. Once your target is destroyed, you gather your forces again, head to the next target and repeat. Occasionally you’ll drive it back to the nearest monster spawner, make a few more units and head back to the front. it’s not a big deal.
Piglins aside, one of the best things about Minecraft Legends is the structure. Riding around the Overworld in search of rare resources and various secrets is very enjoyable. Minecraft’s day-night cycle remains the same, with each night seeing piglins either fortify existing strongholds, build new outposts, or launch attacks on villages. Since villages passively generate resources, act as fast travel points, or, like skeletons, zombies, and creepers, get you better troops, it’s in your best interest to defend them when piglins visit. Their goal is the spring in the center of each village. If they destroy it, the village falls under their control and you must retake it.
There’s potential here, but the game’s simplicity means it gets old quickly. The timer starts and the piglins will spawn at random points around the village and travel towards the center, attacking anything in their path. All you need to do is build a wall and a few defensive towers around the village, then run around with a squad of soldiers and take out hordes of piglins that appear. When the timer runs out, just clean up the remaining piggies and the victory is yours. You do unlock more defensive structures that automatically repair buildings, or slowly upgrade them from wood to stone, but none of that adds any variety to the programming. The randomness with which piglins spawn and their literal immediate attack means there is no way to really plan attacks, strategize, or construct traps.
Offense is the same. Piglins have poisoned the ground around their base, turning it into netherrack, on which you can’t build except for the ramps needed to reach elevated structures. This means that each attack simply transports your troops from the spawners outside your base to the buildings you want to destroy. While you do eventually unlock the ability to clear the neterrack, all it does is get you closer to building spawners on top of it. The piglins are divided into three tribes with different units and structures, but this doesn’t have any noticeable effect on how you approach them.
The basic and repetitive nature of Minecraft Legends is forgivable if it means you have room to experiment, play and create your own fun putting crafting in Minecraft. Sadly, you just don’t get that chance. All the tools at your disposal are purely functional, making it impossible to build impressive fortifications or beautiful bases even if you wanted to. Any possible enjoyment is further hampered by the absolutely terrible controls, including gamepad, mouse and keyboard. I started playing Minecraft Legends on the former and found it almost unplayable. Placing structures was a chore, and I had to fumble with multiple inputs to perform even basic tasks. Moving to the mouse and keyboard made things better thanks to keyboard shortcuts, but the third-person view and controls still made things harder than they had to be. I gave up on trying to give orders to individual troop types because doing so required nearly simultaneous use of WASD, mouse, and arrow keys.
It feels amateurish, and that extends to multiple aspects of the game. Unit pathfinding is terrible, and your units will constantly fall off bridges and ramps, making some of the more vertically sloping piglin bases a frustrating exercise. There’s no way to pause the game, and the action doesn’t even stop during cutscenes. At one point, I returned from a cutscene triggered by the destruction of a piglin base to find myself dead, hacked down by a survivor while I was motionless.
The game does have competitive and co-op multiplayer modes, and it does elevate the experience somewhat, purely because the game is more fun to play with friends. Coordinating your defense and delegating duties via voice chat is a little ridiculous, but the truth is there are better games that let you do similar things. Heck, just playing minecraft!
The entire time I played Minecraft Legends I was trying to figure out who this game was for. It feels too incomprehensible and poorly explained for kids, too sketchy for older players, and too frustrating for both parties. Minecraft, at least to me, is about creativity and experimentation, and there’s no room here. There’s a superficial story that ends on a dissonantly dark note about the toll of war, and the community feels distinctly uncomfortable turning creepers from the original’s mindless monsters into apparently intelligent suicide bombers.
Sadly, the answer seems to be that Minecraft Legends is selling DLC for Microsoft. There are four big bold buttons on the menu screen, the last one is the market button, there are already £10 skin packs available on the market, this is the only way to customize your hero, other than the 10 skins available at the start, or by Define your mount. Engage kids with the brand and sell them as many things as you can before they realize there’s nothing here that makes Minecraft special.
Still, piglins are pretty neat.
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