Minecraft Legends Review

Microsoft is a platform holder and publisher that is frequently accused of lacking exclusive titles, and what exclusive titles they do have are often described as generic or uninspired. However, recent efforts to diversify its portfolio of games (not including buying Bethesda and attempted acquisition of Activision-Blizzard-King) are something that I have grown appreciative of. Sure, not every game sticks the landing but at least it is trying something rather than sticking to the same formula across different titles. One such game, by way of this expanded portfolio, is Minecraft Legends, Mojang Studios’ latest offering. While it doesn’t succeed in all it sets out to do, it’s still quite a unique title with a lot of enjoyment to be had.

Believe it or not, Minecraft Legends is set in the world of Minecraft. However, it isn’t exactly the world of Minecraft that you or I are used to. Instead, it feels almost like an alternate version of it where the Villagers and mobs like the Creepers and Skeletons live in harmony – weird, I know. The Piglins have amassed a powerful force from within the Nether and are opening portals all around the overworld. Naturally, this is a bad thing and the hero is whisked away from their spelunking into a world that needs their help.

I’m not going to lie; story isn’t really a strong suit of this game. Like with Minecraft Dungeons, the Diablo-style Minecraft game that Mojang made back in 2020, the story more or less exists as set dressing to contextualise why you are doing the things that you do in the game. If you are a story buff, this game is not for you. And while I do think it is a bummer that there isn’t a real story focus in this game, I also don’t think it exactly needs one. Minecraft innately attracts a younger audience, and this game is far more digestible for those players with its focus on gameplay.

If you were lost at the term “Action Strategy”, which has been used to describe Minecraft Legends by Mojang, I would not blame you. Truth be told, I was quite lost with the term as well. I know what Action games are, and I know what Strategy games are, but I could never imagine how those two genres would go together to make the unique experience that Minecraft Legends is. I find the term to be a little misleading, as it can make you feel like there is a 50/50 distribution of these genres, but it’s more like a 70/30 split, with strategy taking centre stage.

The core loop centres around building structures to attack and defend various points including occupied villages, Piglin outposts, and entire Piglin bases with their own Nether portals that  need to be shut down. The campaign takes place in one singular world as opposed to being split across various missions like strategy games tend to do. What this allows Minecraft Legends to do is to have persistent events that both punish and reward different paces of playstyle. On one hand, if you take too long, the game will become harder as the bases will upgrade and fortify. However, the reward for taking down one of these fortified bases is much larger than it is for your basic base.

With these time-based mechanics, there exists a problem. For some bizarre reason, even when you are playing by yourself, there is no proper pause function. Sure, there is a menu that you can bring up so you can finagle with your settings, leave the game etc, but it never actually pauses the game. Granted, this would be completely fine if you were to play the game online, then it would make sense that a pausing function were disabled or removed, but even when you are playing the game by yourself you will be unable to pause. Anecdotally speaking, I left the game “paused” for a time while I had some errands to run, and when I sat back down at my PC, I returned to see ALL of the Piglin bases on my map were fortified to the max, making the game much more difficult for me. Thankfully, I relished the challenge and laughed at the absurdity of the situation, but it poses a very real problem for other people.

In saying that, those moments where you are putting one of those aforementioned Piglin bases under siege are some of the best, most fun moments I have had in any strategy game. There is something to be said about physically leading an army into the battlefield, cutting through waves of Piglins and ordering the attack on various structures. Being able to walk around in battle feels far more engaging than just clicking on a spot on a map to see what is going on. The game never really goes that in-depth with its mechanics, yet it still feels far more intimate and personal than most other strategy games I have played.

The main caveat with this gameplay style is that combat lacks depth, and it is hard to envision a version of this genre blend that effectively manages to translate all the strategy genre’s nuances into a single game. Strategy games are about micromanagement, with an emphasis on swift response when it comes to controlling various groups at once. It’s hard to do that with the gameplay of Minecraft Legends as you need to physically be there to select your units. Having small forces attacking from various sides will prove to be difficult to do on your own, as it may take too long to get to a group to react to changes in battle. This is a downside that feels more pronounced when playing the game by yourself, and I can see how co-operative play would make grander battles feel more alive, as each player can handle the command of one to two smaller groups.

The thing which I probably appreciated the most about Minecraft Legends is its use of a different art style to help make the game feel distinct, while also ensuring that it runs on aging hardware (read: Xbox One S and Nintendo Switch). Unlike Minecraft Dungeons, Legends is built entirely on Mojang’s proprietary Bedrock Engine. PC players will know this engine well, as it’s the version of Minecraft on PC that virtually no one plays unless they want to play with their friends who are on console (Java supremacy). There are various benefits to using this engine which stretch from the obvious to the more subtle. The more subtle advantages are the fact that Minecraft Bedrock’s monetisation in Minecoins can translate across to Minecraft Legends as well, which is cool for those people who partake in microtransactions, though rather pointless for me. What advantage I wasn’t expecting was the graphics, more specifically the lighting. It may not be the most impressive lighting in the world, but it is sharp and crisp, and it breathes an astonishing amount of life into a world that would otherwise look like a simpler version of Minecraft. It absolutely has its moments of beauty, and I couldn’t help but wish Minecraft normally employed lighting of this kind without the use of things like shaders or the RTX beta.

Even with such good lighting and such large draw distances, the game still runs quite well. I had everything cranked to the max on my almost six-year-old PC and it handled it in stride. There were some moments where my frames would go below my beloved 60fps but that was when the scenes were pretty intense, so it is kind of forgivable. There was one technical issue I encountered, but I haven’t been able to confirm if it existed solely for me or not. My PC updated from the Windows 11 1H22 to the 2H22 update while I was playing Minecraft Legends. Before the update happened, the game was perfectly playable. After the update, the game would either  crash before it finished loading into the main menu, or if I did manage to get into the game, my entire computer would lock up, unresponsive until I physically held the power button to force a shutdown. I reinstalled the game when this issue came up and it remained, then I rolled back to 1H22 and the game was perfectly playable once again. I can’t really try this on my laptop to confirm it was the update because I refuse to update it from Windows 10, but if you are suffering from a similar issue this may be why.

Final Thoughts

Minecraft Legends is not going to be your go-to strategy game, but there is still quite a lot of fun to be had. The genre-blended interpretation of the popular voxel-based survival game makes great strides at offering a unique experience that further grows the Minecraft IP. Sure, there are issues like the lack of depth, story, or even a pause function which can be a problem with the game’s time-based mechanics, but that doesn’t mean the game isn’t worth playing. Most of these issues are pretty forgivable when you put into perspective that this game is just trying to offer a fun, quirky experience for a wide variety of people. If you’re looking for something to play for a weekend or two, this isn’t a bad choice.

Reviewed on PC // Review code supplied by publisher

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