Years have come and gone, where Microsoft has released several spin-off games since the acquisition of Mojang. From Telltales series taking a different approach by being story focused only. To an augmented VR game, Dungeons releasing almost 3 years ago. And now, we have Legends.
The problem with the spin-offs are that they are a small presence to the juggernaut that is Minecraft. These games try different things, but don't offer anything tangible to last long enough. Does this game change that?
I want to say absolutely, it's just almost there. Being a hero involves a lot of work, but micromanaging to keep a land safe can be fun. I was hooked into it because of me playing as both a base builder and a strategic general. But it was difficult to grasp that at first, no thanks to the learning curve. When getting around it, I was controlling armies, defending villages, constantly farming, and keeping each village safe to make sure they benefit me.
I start off with a basic hero, chosen from a list of face presets, and then tutored by these guardians of the land on how to play the game. Initially by learning how to build structures like ramps, gates, towers, and so on before making them into good use for both defense and offense.
An issue I've encountered with these is the lack of tooltips that tells me whether I can place them on enemy soil or not. As well as this other hassle regarding placement, since the terrain is messy and uneven. Nonetheless, getting to the fundamentals was easy enough with this. The next step was handling troops and resources.
Troops are deployed by building nodes, they're easily build by allays, whom are Minecraft's version of pixies. Can be used to recruit units, and return them if they get lost. But resources are also required for building bases and hiring units too, that's where the resource allays come in. And the difficult grind involved as well.
I have been put to a lot of work. At the starting point, I can only summon 20 units, but can hire 25 into my army. Meaning that anyone that is outside my regime is added temporary. Some of them included the well-known Minecraft characters like the creeper, zombie, and skeleton soldier.
Playing further had me unlocking them as recruit by saving their villages or getting into the later parts of the campaign. There are even these giant golems that can either create more units for me to command, throw major boulders at large enemy bases and even more when found.
And now comes the difficult part of the game, the grind. I started off pretty weak, and the game was easy at this stage. But it was also boring, and I felt like there wasn't much incentive to keep going. Bad early impressions didn't help because while I was taught how to play the game, I wasn't taught about what the game is about.
And that is due to how intrinsic all of this is. If I wanted upgrades, I had to obtain Prismarine. Which can be gotten by taking down enemy Piglet base camps. Build up my army, travel through the map from the village to the horde camp, and destroy the portal that acts as its main nexus. Should sound easy, right? Except it's not.
The Piglet bases get tougher to invade, mostly because as more of their bases are taken down, they come up with more ingenious and tougher ways to make my crusade hard to work on. So I had no choice, but to upgrade, which requires me to upgrade. Which requires Prismarine, which I get after destroying Piglet bases. That does sound confusing somehow to start with.
There are weak bases and ones that are camped outside of villages, which will get attacked once in a while, the game will not pause, and it has an active day/night cycle. Night is when they are more present in the map and when they strike too.
None of these goals and instructions sound cohesive to me. It's one thing that the game's battle mechanics plays out like an RTS, but adding this Dragon Quest Builder type gameplay, with all the traits only unique to Minecraft, feels like a different thing entirely. It should have been a working formula. To which it kind of does, much later on in the game.
One interesting thing I've noticed about this spin-off title is that it was co-developed by Blackbird, the guys who made Homeworld Desert of Kharak and Hardspace Shipbreaker. Which made more sense as to why the RTS part of the game feels intrinsically fun.
Dealing with the tedium of defending villages being attacked, then destroying horde bases slowly, once I've unlocked a few things after installing these improvement modules on the main tower, that's where it was getting fun. Like, my grind was finally paying off. Being able to increase unit cap, access to siege buildings, new type of resource to gather and increasing their storage.
It's worth enduring this, especially when battling the horde, as they do throw stronger enemies at me. Especially at large numbers. My units are robust, but the A.I. in this game isn't well coded, so they do dumb things like bath pathfinding, and not following my orders a bit more explicitly.
But to see the chaos in such frenetic nature, it's the kind of Minecraft strategy game I was really getting into. Despite not playing Minecraft much myself. I really was also starting to like the environment themselves. Each terrain different in each region of the map. What's even more interesting, is that every new game, the map changes procedurally.
Reaching the later stages of the game, before I was warned about not taking out bases with higher difficulties, I was going head first with my new legion. Commanding over 30 units, with 2 giant golems, and respawn points in case things do go bad. I was trailblazing right at this point, supreme hero commander.
It is a strange game to suggest to a kid, because they won't understand a number of complex things here. Neither would a teenager if the tutorial fails to keep them invested at first. Except, I do think people who played Minecraft before will kind of get into this.
And there's this other problem, I felt like I was done mostly with the game when I took out 70% of their base. Just 2 more hours and I would most likely be done with it. Despite having other modes like the multiplayer and shared co-op by inviting people.
Word on the street though is that, this game released pretty short. And that sucks. The Minecraft world here has a lot of charm, I was getting invested into its storytelling for that sole reason. The gameplay gives a lot to come back for. But lack of content also puts me off. I think they will update the game in the near future with more stuff, but for now, not worth the 40 USD asking price.
