I like the piglins. They’ve got that anarchic goblin underdog vibe that makes me think that they’d be pretty cool if it wasn’t for the mean big boss types making them invade the Overworld. It’s a shame that they’re Minecraft Legends’ bad guys, because I’d have preferred to lead them in a revolution against their oppressive overlords. Instead, I’m stuck defending Minecraft’s weird, flesh-toned Squidward villagers from their raids.
Minecraft Legends reviewDeveloper: Mojang Studios, Blackbird InteractivePublisher: Xbox Game StudiosPlatform: Played on PCAvailability: Out 18th April on PC (Steam, Windows), PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch.
I chose to open with my thoughts on the game’s porcine provocateurs because I was taught to always preface any criticism with a compliment and, to be perfectly honest, the piglins are by far the best thing about Minecraft Legends.
Minecraft Legends is, surprising precisely no-one, a spin-off from the ridiculously successful phallic object and computer building simulator Minecraft. You’ve been summoned by the Hosts Foresight, Knowledge and Action to defend the Overworld from the aforementioned piglin invasion. It’s described as an “action-strategy” game and the best way I can describe it is like a rather rudimentary RTS game where the birds eye view and cursor has been replaced by a third-person view of a Minecraft character on a horse. You can swing your sword at things, which is where the action bit comes in, I suppose, but it’s wildly ineffectual on anything other than the basic piglins, so there’s not much point.
What’s left are the RTS staples of gathering resources and building things with them. There’s a slimmed down set of Minecraft materials on offer, starting with wood and stone and slowly expanding to include iron, redstone and the like. Buildings come in three types: defensive structures like walls and turrets, spawners for your combat units, and improvements that you can construct around the Well of Fate, the map’s central hub, in order to unlock new abilities. These include access to new materials, improvements to your carrying and minion-spawning capacities, and ways to interact with various points of interest that are scattered around the map.