When I first discovered that Minecraft Legends was going to be a real-time strategy game, I was pretty excited. Growing up with RTS games and loving the Diablo-esque direction of Minecraft Dungeons, I kept my hopes up that developers Mojang Studios and Blackbird Interactive would introduce newcomers to an accessible, streamlined RTS that acts as yet another fun entry point into a different genre. Minecraft Legends certainly fulfills its promise but where Dungeons succeeded in being refreshingly fun, some frustration set in for this new RTS spin-off.

The story of Minecraft Legends is pretty straight-forward. Piglins are using Nether portals to invade the Overworld for some nefarious purposes and it's up to you, a wandering hero, to rally the denizens of the Overworld together to protect it from impending domination. Through the construction of forts, bases and careful resource management, you must drive out the piglins through strategic warfare and reclaim your homeland.

As far as Minecraft stories go, don't expect any award-winning narrative here. Your objective is fairly simple from the get-go and it keeps up that straight-line storytelling all the way to the end. As the wandering hero of the Overworld, your first call of order is to collect resources, construct bases and amass some reliable troops.

Your objective is fairly simple from the get-go and it keeps up that straight-line storytelling all the way to the end.

Gathering resources in Minecraft Legends, surprisingly, doesn't boil down to the the game's trademark terrain terraforming and mining. Instead, you use little fairy friends called allays to gather resources for you. This can be achieved by simply plopping one down near a deposit of resources and tasking them with collecting your desired items like wood, coal, etc. On paper, it sounds like a missed opportunity to incorporate Minecraft's standard mining for resources but there are plenty of fan-made RTS modes in the original game that already facilitate those mechanics - so it was a pretty smart move to not repeat that.



Once you've collected enough resources, you can begin constructing a base. However, Minecraft Legends also deviates from the RTS formula by not encouraging you to have one central base of operations. You can if you want to but that will severely limit your capabilities. As the "wandering" hero implies, you'll have to wander around the massive Overworld and set up numerous bases, often near enemy forts and strongholds. Due to its open-world setting, it's much wiser to simply be a nomad warrior and strategically set up vantage points near the action to make things easier for yourself.

You can rally troops of various types in the Minecraft universe after liberating them in smaller quests. These handful of troops all serve different purposes like creepers rushing into forts and exploding for big AoE damage or skeleton archers that have the upper hand in long-ranged offence. How you utilise these troops and rally them into combat is where Minecraft Legends really starts to embrace a strange hybrid style of action and real-time strategy.



Instead of being an omnipotent cursor clicking around the screen, you control your hero via a third-person persective. If this sounds like it could lead to a host of gameplay problems, it does. While I appreciate the idea - and question why so few developers attempted to more naturally blend these genres - Minecraft Legends' controls suffer as a result. This becomes a frustrating ordeal when you have to rally your troops constantly by hovering near them and making sure they're in the circle of command, then issuing the next command, rinse and repeat.

Battles can get pretty chaotic fast and I found myself frequently losing sight of troops or, thanks to AI/pathfinding issues, they'd wander off and do something else entirely.

On one hand, it means you'll have to be much more careful when blindly rushing into battle as you're now constantly aware of what your troops are doing and where they are on the battlefield. It's relatively easy to sweep in and regroup them to issue a new command, but battles can get pretty chaotic fast and I found myself frequently losing sight of troops or, thanks to AI/pathfinding issues, they'd wander off and do something else entirely. You can point them in one direction to attack a tower or a mob of enemies, but you'll still get the occasional daydreamer troop who wanders off to pick flowers or something. As you can imagine, this became quite frustrating after a while.



Thankfully, each battle requires a decent amount of strategy which is where Minecraft Legends really nestled into a good rhythm of constructing, defending/attacking, resource management, spawning troops, etc. Once all the systems eventually clicked after spending a bit of time getting used to playing on a controller (needless to say, it's much easier with a keyboard and mouse), the game really took off and became a demandingly enjoyable time.

There's a bit of a learning curve to Minecraft Legends and I'm not really sure who's the target demographic here. Younger players who aren't accustomed to real-time strategy games could find these systems overwhelming while older players might scoff at the overly simplistic and streamlined RTS mechanics. You could argue that it's an easier alternative but on some occasions, I got wrecked in Minecraft Legends and had to think up some big brain strategies on the fly and in a panic. Again, this was either down to poor AI or me simply not having a concrete strategy in place which I can imagine younger players struggling with.



Most of these grievances can be forgiven because Minecraft Legends boasts an incredible presentation, clearly made with a lot of passion for the IP by Mojang Studios and Blackbird Interactive. The blocky nature of the game is beautifully realised here and the vibrant colours of the Overworld explode on screen, from the way the setting sun paints a gorgeous picturesque landscape to the densely packed open-world begging to be explored. I found so much enjoyment simply adventuring and taking my time with the game at a relaxed pace that I sometimes forgot about the high-stakes strategy warfare parts.

Minecraft Legends boasts an incredible presentation, clearly made with a lot of passion for the IP by Mojang Studios and Blackbird Interactive.

Once you complete the main campaign which contains a few tough main bosses and strongholds, the world resets since it's procedurally generated. This means that when you return for a new campaign, the world changes and so do the locations of various points of interest on the map. This adds so much replay value to Minecraft Legends and actively encourages multiple playthroughs since things are always unpredictable and worth exploring all over again.



Like the original game, Minecraft Legends is also brimming with creativity and plenty of heart. The blocky animated world draws you in and keeps you hooked with its charming, upbeat characters and wonderful sense of adventure. Despite my issues with the game, I always dreaded stepping away from it because it's a pretty immersive world (and it made me get back into Minecraft so win-win).

Performance is where mileage may differ for Minecraft Legends depending on which platform you're playing it on. I tried it on both Xbox Series X and PC to middling results. On Xbox Series X, the game crashed a couple of times - not to mention playing with a controller isn't as intuitive as it could be. When it did work, the framerate dipped and I encountered plenty of bugs like enemies disappearing and one instance where my troops got stuck in mid-air while leading them over a small ledge. On PC, the glitches are less frequent though it still experienced framerate dips, especially with hundreds of enemies on-screen at once.



Minecraft Legends attempts to do something different and unique with the IP and I appreciate the effort that Mojang Studios and Blackbird Interactive put into this passion project. It's clearly made with love and daring ingenuity but it's a pretty tough sell. If you can get over the often daft AI, mild learning curve with systems that might be pretty complex for younger players, and few performance issues, then you might be swayed by its charm. It's got a lot of heart and that's where it shines the brightest.



*PC Review code provided by Xbox Game Studios