Reviews have started pouring in for Mojang Studios and Blackbird Interactive’s new Minecraft spin-off game, Minecraft Legends, and the results are decidedly mixed. Average review score on a review aggregator website Metacritic is 74 based on 25 critical reviews. Minecraft Legends will be available on Nintendo Switch and other platforms on Tuesday, April 18. Here’s an overview of some notable reviews:
“Minecraft Legends is a very accessible strategy game that will not challenge fans of this genre. However, for those who have never been very familiar with it before, this is an excellent introduction. Online co-op is a fun diversion, but it’s the PvP games that will give you the variety you need to keep coming back for more.”
“Minecraft Legends struggles to blend its open-world adventure with the intricacies of real-time strategy, a war that sometimes detracts from the overall fun you can have. Even so, its beautiful setting and clever world-building inspire familiar creativity that offsets its growing problems. While other strategy games have a deeper complexity, Minecraft Legends has a heart and its charm is hard to resist. Mojang’s first foray into the genre occasionally holds your hand too tightly. But when its grip loosens, there’s a vibrant world of combat challenges to discover, ultimately making it an enticing endeavor.”
“Minecraft Legends is an engaging strategy game that does a great job of simplifying the notoriously complex genre without sacrificing the ever-important element of choice and consequence. However, some genre elements like assigning custom groups of units fall victim to this simplification, which is bad because it slightly limits your strategic options in the heat of battle. But Legends uses other signature elements like its Allays worker unit to great effect and blends Minecraft’s iconic aesthetic with some of the most beautiful blocks around. The difficulty curve does have the potential to make the late game frustrating, but the stellar co-op and PVP gameplay still make this RTS very rewarding.”
“Minecraft Legends has good ideas, but is ultimately held back by the decision to root its strategic action around a central hero. With a limited field of view, little command input, and uninteresting AI, Legends fails to generate compelling combat cycles or opportunities for creative thinking.”
