Minecraft's Pikmin-style spin-off game | First Impressions - Minecraft Legends

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Minecraft Legends is a refreshing new take on the Minecraft brand with its shift into a third person action-strategy gameplay. It’s not the OG Minecraft gameplay we know and love, but it is STILL distinctively Minecraft in both the looks and the tone.

Piglins from the Nether have invaded the world, and are trying to spread corruption across the land. The mobs have banded together and contacted the player controlled hero, to carry the banner and lead the mobs — friendly and hostile alike — in driving out the forces of Piglins.

The gameplay mostly centers on controlling your hero on a mount, gathering resources, and building structures to summon new units and defend the land. You have to liberate and defend villages across the open-world map, and try to clamp down the enemy foothold one base, at a time. There is an optional cooperative multiplayer to invite your friends to your campaign, and versus multiplayer, where the format mostly follows the general strategy element of the game.

Starting the game I was immediately introduced to the resource gathering system where I commanded the Alloys mobs to gather Stones and Wood. Then I was able to build out structures called spawners to summon my first few golems mobs that followed me — mostly divided into two categories: Melee and Ranged. Since the Piglins that have invaded the land are terrorizing a nearby village, I was sent out to defend them.

In between building and combat consists of traveling around the gorgeous looking open world map with different biomes from grasslands, swamplands, to even ice cold snowy regions, filled with familiar mobs Minecraft players will instantly recognize. The design of the world feels very much like a Minecraft one, never really deviating from the established aesthetic. The hero’s mount is swappable, and there are quite a few of them available in the game. Some can fly and some can crawl up walls.

The combat is simplistic in nature, the character only has one attack move, so the focus of the gameplay is more gravitated towards tactical decision-making and leading your units as opposed to actual moment to moment combat. Different units are more suited to different tasks like absorbing damage, taking down buildings, or killing enemies, and it's up to the player, or players in cooperative mode, to utilize them.

When defending villages, the game feels a lot like a tower defense game, where you are free to build out defensive structures, as well as walls to hold off waves of enemy attacks. When attacking, the game will feel like sieges in games most similar to Mount and Blade, where you need to force yourself into enemy strongholds and destroy key structures.

I haven't had much experience with the game's multiplayer aspect yet, so my experience is mostly from the first few hours of singleplayer gameplay. Having said that, Minecraft Legends appears to be enjoyable for fans of action-strategy and Minecraft, who will find themselves at home with its lighthearted tone, and refreshed with its new gameplay direction.