The Overworld is being invaded, and it needs your help! Read our review to see if the gameplay and atmosphere will be enough for you to try out Minecraft Legends.

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Minecraft Legends Review and Score Explanation

Minecraft Legends Review Video

Minecraft Legends Score Explanation

Minecraft Legends Review: Block Hero Simulator

Minecraft Legends is a unique, albeit short, take on the action and strategy genre, doing its best to streamline unit creation and resource gathering so you can keep fighitng big tactical battles with many units on Minecraft's Overworld.

We think Minecraft and strategy fans will get a hoot out of playing this one, so grab it at its considerably low price and save the Overworld today.

Minecraft Legends Full Game Review

Pros of Minecraft Legends

Things Minecraft Legends Got Right
Unique Strategic Combat System Immersive Heroic Atmosphere Good Audio Direction Good Quality of Life Features

Unique Strategic Combat System

What sets Minecraft Legends apart from other Minecraft games (and a lot of action games) is how well it mixes strategy and combat. You spawn in troops, rally them to you, and have them charge at the Piglins. You can either help in the fighting or go back and bring in more mobs to throw at the enemy. It’s a very simple system, but you can pull off some decent tactical moves like flanking, pincer movements, and infiltration.

It’s also great that you can build defensive structures during the heat of battle. Most of the time, I set up a sort of siege camp just outside an enemy base, complete with towers, walls, and spawners. From there, I’ll make repeated attacks using different units depending on who I’m dealing with. Because there are three Piglin ‘hordes’ or factions to take down, and their base layouts are different from one another. So there's more strategic depth when you take these bases one by one.

Plus there’s good unit variety. You’ve got your golems that have melee, ranged, cavalry, and medic options, and you’ve got your mobs such as zombies, skeleton archers, and creepers. There are even a few super units here and there, plus other allies in unexpected places. The game managed to scratch my itches for both Real-Time Strategy and Tactical Strategy a la Mount and Blade, and I think other strategy fans will get a hoot out of it too.

Immersive Heroic Atmosphere

The very way strategy is handled in Minecraft Legends ties into how the game treats you. You’re a Hero of the Overworld, so all of its denizens are supposed to rally to you. You’re the one who plans military strikes, you’re the one who makes improvements to the defense of villages, and you’re the one who calls all the shots against the Piglin invasion. That makes for some really good immersion.

Imagine leading an army of the Overworld’s best troops against the last base of the cruel and chaotic Piglin hordes. The fighting is brutal and intense, and it seems the battle might be lost. So you retreat and gather a few Grindstone Golems as cavalry, then charge into the Piglins from the flank. That might as well be the Charge of the Rohirrim at Helm’s Deep, and I’m at the tip of the spear. Feels good, man.

Minecraft Legends is a kid’s game, definitely. But at its heart, it’s a hero simulator. A world under threat that’s being invaded by a heartless race of monsters, and it falls to you to defend it? It’s a classic scenario anyone can get in with, so that ups the immersion factor too.

Good Audio Direction

I’ll take some time to talk about the music in Minecraft Legends because it adds to the experience. Minecraft always had good music, and Minecraft Legends knows when to lay on the peaceful lutes and strings, and when to bust out the trumpets and angry boat sounds when things get tense.

Whenever you’re out and about exploring the overworld, you’ll hear relatively peaceful music, driving home how much of an idyllic place the Overworld is. But when you approach a Piglin base (or when you’re defending a village against a Piglin attack), the music takes on a more sinister air, with more trumpets and orchestral arrangements to emphasize how scary the Piglin threat is.

The game knows when to use its music, and it uses it right. Whenever you’re just there alone in the snowy field, very serene music accompanied by solemn guitar strums comes up. Kind of like “Mice on Venus” but more melancholic.

Good Quality of Life Features

In normal Minecraft, you’ll have to mine every block by yourself and lay down every block by yourself. But in Minecraft Legends, thankfully enough, you have the Allays – little sprite-like beings who will gather resources and put up buildings for you. That way, you can focus more on the war effort.

The Allays make building siege camps, fortifying villages, and making upgrades to the Well of Fate a breeze. Plus if you don’t like micromanaging your mining operations, you can just have an Allay harvest all the resources in a particular area (unless your inventory is already full of one of the resources there).

I like the Allay feature a lot. They help make Minecraft Legends keep moving in terms of action, not slowed down by complex base building and resource gathering. Hopefully future games that want to mix action with strategy take notes of how Minecraft Legends handles both units and logistics.

Cons of Minecraft Legends

Things That Minecraft Legends Can Improve
Gameplay Can Get Repetitive Bugs Still Present in Release Version Little Reason to Replay Game Once Finished

Gameplay Can Get Repetitive

It’s a good thing that Minecraft Legends is a relatively short game, with you only having to wipe three Piglin factions off the map and destroy the final boss. However, even before then, you might feel that the gameplay has begun to become samey. Since the gameplay loop is ‘defend villages > gather resources > attack Piglin bases’, you’ll find yourself doing the same things over and over again in terms of tactics, unit spawns, and how you move across a base.

The game remains rather unchanged throughout a playthrough, outside of a few major events like the emergence of more allies, the arrival of Piglin generals from the Nether, and the acquisition of legendary mobs. So some players might have a problem with the game’s repetitiveness, while others might not notice it because of the game’s short length.

Bugs Still Present in Release Version

While playing Minecraft Legends, our team came across a few bugs on the PC version that might get patched soon, but we ought to still mention them here.

For example, if you die as a Nether portal blows up, your cursor disappears and becomes unusable, so you’ll have to restart the game. There are also times when the game just refuses to start. It’ll load for a bit and suddenly disappear.

Though these bugs aren’t game-breaking, we hope that Mojang will take the time to address these issues and make the game smoother in the future.

Little Reason to Replay Game Once Finished

Once you’ve finished a campaign, you’ve seen most of what the game has to offer. Sure, there’s the multiplayer Versus mode, where you can fight with your friends online, as well as Lost Legends, which are challenge-style maps you can play alone or, again, with friends. But these gameplay modes can only hold so much of our attention until another game comes out.

However, we are still open to the possibility that Minecraft Legends might get some sort of DLC in the future, so we don’t want to be too harsh on it when it comes to the replayability department.

Minecraft Legends Overview & Premise

In the far past, the vicious Piglins invaded the Overworld, seeking to spread the corruption of the Nether across the land. Villagers were defenseless, and the Mobs of the overworld were weak and divided. But then came a Hero with a banner that would unite them all, taking the fight to the Piglins to save the Overworld.

Developed by Mojang and Blackbird Interactive, Minecraft Legends puts you in the shoes of that very hero. Gather mobs, golems, and other allies with the Banner of Courage, and lead them in battle against the Piglin menace. Protect villages that will provide resources for the war effort, befriend mobs that will fight alongside you, and use the Allays that will build the infrastructure you need to defeat the Piglins once and for all.

The game is a cross between Mount and Blade, the Total War games, and regular old Minecraft. Resource gathering and building have been streamlined quite a bit compared to the original, though, so you have more time to improve and lead your armies.

You can build improvements to them at a central headquarters called a Well of Fate, so you can bring more troops to bear against the Piglin hordes. You'll also have to build up the defenses of the villages in the Overworld with walls, towers, Carpenter's Huts, and Masonry, so they're better protected from Piglin invasions.

Who Should Play Minecraft Legends?

Minecraft Legends is Recommended if You Enjoy:

• Minecraft
• Mount and Blade: Bannerlord
• Real-Time Strategy games in general

Minecraft fans will love Minecraft Legends’ aesthetic and music, while those who liked Mount and Blade will love the battle controls, recruitment, and logistics systems. Those who like RTS games meanwhile will like the base building mechanics and the control of many units on the field. If you’re into any of these games, we suggest giving Minecraft Legends a try.

Is Minecraft Legends Worth It?

Worth It for Minecraft and Strategy Fans

At $40, Minecraft Legends is a rather cheap game to get for its length, so it’s worth buying if you like both Minecraft and tactical action. Don’t go into this game thinking it’s just like Minecraft, though; the experiences between both games are very different. So if you go into this game with the right expectations, you’ll definitely like what you get.

If you’re not a fan of Minecraft, at the very least you can pick this up for your kid brother or cousin, or whoever you want to get into strategy games. This game makes for a very good entry title to that genre.

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How Minecraft Legends Matches Up to Recently-Released Games

Games That Came Out Recently	Pros	Cons
Dead Island 2	Minecraft Legends is better than Dead Island 2 in terms of openness (since ML takes place in an open world, while DI2 will most likely take place in open but instanced levels like Dead Island 1). There's also the strategy aspect that will give players a degree of freedom that First-Person Shooters just don't.	But Dead Island 2 has better graphics than Minecraft Legends, as well as more violent and gory gameplay. It might be better suited for people who don't want the kid-friendly aesthetic Minecraft Legends has.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor	Minecraft Legends would be a lot easier to get to grips with playing compared to Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, so more casual players will get more mileage out of it. It's also cheaper than Jedi: Survivor.	But Jedi: Survivor has deeper, intuitive combat that fans of Souls-like games will like a lot, on top of the better graphics and higher music production quality.
Honkai Star Rail	Minecraft Legends is a lot faster to play than Honkai Star Rail, plus it doesn't have HSR's gacha aspect.	HSR's anime aesthetic will definitely appeal to more fans, on top of those who liked miHoYo's past game, Genshin Impact.

How Minecraft Legends Matches Up to Similar Games

Games Similar to Minecraft Legends	Pros	Cons
Minecraft	Minecraft Legends manages to retain the spirit of the original Minecraft in its building mechanics, but otherwise, they're two completely different experiences. Minecraft Legends is more focused on action, and people who liked the action in the original Minecraft will feel at home playing ML.	But those who played Minecraft will be disappointed to see that building, while automatic because of the Allay system, is a lot less complex than what you could do in the original game.
Minecraft Dungeons	The combat in Minecraft Legends will attract players who want to have allies while fighting in battle and develop their own military strength. In Minecraft Dungeons, you are mostly alone.	The combat options in Minecraft Dungeons are much more expansive than in Minecraft Legends. At least in Minecraft Dungeons you get to use different weapons, while in ML you're stuck with a sword and a horse.
Mount and Blade: Bannerlord	The strategy system in Minecraft Legends is a more simplified version of the combat in Mount and Blade, so those who are familiar with the latter will have an easy time understanding the combat in ML.	Mount and Blade has a more complex logistics system, however, and has more options in unit control like formations, unit groupings, etc. So it has more mileage in the strategy department compared to Minecraft Legends.

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Minecraft Legends Product Information

Title	MINECRAFT LEGENDS
Release Date	April 18, 2023
Developer	Mojang Studios, Blackbird Interactive
Supported Platforms	PC, Nintendo Switch, PS4 and PS5, Xbox One / Series S|X
Genre	Hack and Slash, Strategy
Number of Players	1-8
ESRB Rating	E
Official Website	https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/about-legends

Michael Mendoza Ab..

Reviews video games by day, tries to write novels by night. He's a sucker for open-world games (Bethesda Fallout titles, Mount and Blade Bannerlord, Grand Theft Auto), CRPGs (Planescape: Torment, Disco Elysium), and First-Person Shooters (Call of Duty, Battlefield, and immersive sims like Bioshock..