Minecraft Legends is more exciting proof that Minecraft can be anything

Minecraft Legends has all the beautiful, blocky visuals and wacky humor you’d expect. But much like Minecraft dungeons, Legends transplants those comforting images into a whole new genre. Instead of freeform mining and building or dungeon crawling, Legends mount a mighty horse to command an army of allied golems, monsters and Creepers in a combination of strategy and adventure.

The player is recruited as the protector of the overworld. Piglins swarm from the Nether, attacking poor villagers and corrupting the land around them. The catch is that while I can take down Piglins with my diamond sword, I can’t touch their structures. To stop the Nether from corrupting the overworld, I need to find allies to tear down those structures – which requires resources. Fortunately, the world is ripe for looting, and each village I save rewards me for my efforts with a large chest of goodies.

The campaign begins by digging a tunnel, only to be recruited by Foresight, Action, and Knowledge. These three extra-dimensional hosts are meant to represent the pillars of play Minecraft, and they guide you through several tutorial battles to showcase the game’s clashing genres. Then they give you some tools to deal with the Piglin threat. I have a diamond sword, a beautiful lute and several helpful golems.

These golems are critical to my success. I can create spawning centers for them and then collect them under my banner. Since I don’t have many methods for fighting the Piglins directly – other than riding my horse and swinging my sword – I divide most of the work among my new allies. There are golems called the “allay” that help me mine resources and convert them into defensive structures. If I encounter more advanced forts and army camps, my starting troops may not be up to the task. Fortunately, I can find more soldiers and even get enemies on my side, including explosive Creepers.

It can be a bit unintuitive to actually use my army, and it takes several steps to execute a strategy. I have to create spawn centers for the helpers, stand by and manually spawn each ally, rally them to my side and lead them into battle. It’s much like a real-time strategy game, but understated. It provides an accessible combination of strategy and action — Minecraft Legends is on consoles and, like most things in this universe, is meant to be a game for kids to enjoy – but it does mean I have to carefully repeat a series of small and easily forgettable actions to get a large army on the move. to make .

While my new friends are the star of the show, the structures I can create also prove to be useful. If a Piglin camp is on the other side of a lava moat, I can simply build a stone bridge to let me through. If I find a mysterious chest full of resources on a cliff, I can build a ramp there to enjoy those riches. I can also strengthen villages by raising defensive towers, walls and gates. Over time, the Piglins become more advanced in their technology, and so do I – we’re now in a blocky arms race. Minecraft Legends starts out as a very simple challenge, but the battlefields are getting busier and I have to come up with new ways to drive my armies through enemy territory like lemmings.

As it turns out, there are almost no concrete consequences if you let the overworld battles go for a while. There’s even plenty of time to explore the wilderness, discover treasures, and generally mess around. I found that rushing to an outpost and taking your time had exactly the same effect; there are no penalties for arriving late.

Image: Mojang Studios, Blackbird Interactive/Xbox Game Studios

The problem is that my three hosts would rather I stick to the task. So they incessantly hammer on the fact that another village is under attack. This nagging gets easier as you progress through the campaign, but it was frustrating for the game systems to allow me to explore a forest and enjoy the light falling through voxel branches, only for the overseers who consistently berate me.

The campaign of Minecraft Legends is about 20 hours long, give or take, so it doesn’t feel like too much of a Sisyphean task to explore the world, defend villages, and take down the biomes for ores and gems. There is also a cooperative option. But Minecraft Legendslegs come from the multiplayer mode, where two teams of four players compete to destroy the other’s base.

Multiplayer matches take place in procedural worlds, so players must learn the landscape each time, collect wood and stone, move to the correct biomes to find prismarine and other valuable ores, and fend off attacks while launching their own. This is true Minecraft Legends feels most like an RTS, and while communication was paramount during my sessions, there’s no in-game voice chat. Discord was enough, but it’s a pity that the developers did not offer their own way.

Minecraft Legends is a charming fusion of genres that manages to simplify the RTS formula while still requiring a fair amount of concentration and strategy. I’m curious to see where the game goes in the future; players can use its mechanics to create truly terrifying multiplayer strategies that escalate in amazing ways. Or they just enjoy the campaign and then go back to their own realm, to tame their own wilderness, away from the chimes of seekers. Legends is a charming and colorful adventure, and it’s nice to finally befriend the humble Creeper.

Minecraft Legends comes out on April 18 Nintendo switch, Playstation 4, PlayStation5, Xbox One, Xbox Series XAnd Windows PC. The game was reviewed on a Windows PC using a pre-release download code from Mojang. Vox Media has partnerships. These do not affect editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased through affiliate links. You can find additional information on Polygon’s Ethics Policy here.