MINECRAFT Legends is the latest spinoff from the most popular game of all time.
Previous spin-offs such as Minecraft Dungeons, and Minecraft Story Mode have not offered much to fans of the original game.
It’s Minecraft but not as we know it.
However, Legends bucks this trend by bringing Minecraft to a new genre, but it still suffers from many of the same issues as other spin-offs.
Real-time strategy is a difficult genre for beginners, but Legends does its best to strip away the more complex parts of the style.
RTS fans will find it less challenging and therefore interesting than the games they’re used to, but it’s made with Minecraft fans in mind.
You can spawn a number of different units to take down the Piglins that are invading from the Nether.
They can attack in three styles. The first is The Horde of the Hunt which tries to overwhelm with the number of units.
The Bastion will hide behind its strong defences, and the Spore wears your side slowly with chip damage.
This gives a lot of variety across the eight-hour campaign as you have to face each faction with a different approach.
Sometimes you can rush the portal and destroy the base, but for others you need to keep the pace slow, and chip away at their resources.
You also have to protect your various villages based around the map by constructing a variety of buildings to prevent invasions.
However, once you’ve found your rhythm you will quickly find yourself defaulting to the same tactics.
We continued to launch waves of creepers at bases, and while fun at first, became overpowered and mundane.
You won’t get information on HP, strength or defence, which strips away a layer of tactics.
More, you base your strategy on which unit is strong against what you’re attempting to take down.
This makes it easy for anyone to understand, but it also takes away what makes strategy games fun.
We were hoping that the joy in Legends would be in the building, much like the game it’s based on.
Here the majority of the tactical play would be in building forts that the enemy finds impenetrable.
However, this isn’t what we have here, with the building options being extremely limited.
It has to be this way though because Minecraft’s audience skews young, and children make up the majority of the fan base.
They will likely be satisfied by the level of challenge here, but it will leave its older fans wanting.
Just like Dungeons introduced a new generation to dungeon crawling, Legends might open new players up to RTS.
However, if you’re already into RTS this isn’t a game you will find challenging enough to enjoy.
Written by Ryan Woodrow and Georgina Young on behalf of GLHF.
