A right piglin’s ear
Surveying the sprawling piglin outpost before me, a plan forms.
With a flourish of button presses from my controller, I spawn a sizeable army of zombies.
With another flourish a contingent of friendly creepers scuttles along behind me.
A masterpiece of tactical engineering!
Or it would have been, if my minions weren’t so bloody stupid.
Meanwhile, I sent my creepers off to explode against the first spawner I found.
This game could have been so much more.
Your character acts as the mouse does in regular RTS games.
The map is divided into 15 or so different biomes, dotted with friendly villages and naughty piglin outposts.
If you’ve ever playedTooth And Tail, then controlling units Minecraft Legends will feel familiar.
You summon mobs of a certain jot down by placing down spawners and interacting with them.
It’s an interesting idea, forcing you to use your character to control your armies.
Tactics that are utterly simple to execute in a more traditional RTS are next to impossible in Minecraft Legends.
Why isn’t there a way to control things on a larger scale?
I mean, come on.
What’s that about?
We were told that instead of building block by block, you would build “thought by thought”.
What a spectacular opportunity, squandered!
At no point did the piglins ever come up with a response to this tactic.
Their army would just mindlessly chase after me, never quite reaching me to get to do any damage.
Because of the various frustrations with building and fighting, I spent more time than necessary exploring the world.
In regular old Minecraft, you journey to a biome because it houses what you need.
Want bamboo or ocelots?
Head to a jungle.
Head to the Badlands.
In Minecraft Legends, the biomes feel like a superficial skin stretched over the world.
Not exactly a good incentive for exploration.
The focus seems instead to have gone elsewhere.
In fairness, the amount of polish that has gone into some parts of this game is really impressive.
The map in PvP is absolutely miniscule, so exploration is even more meaningless than in the campaign.
The focus is instead on building defenses and forward bases, and attacking your enemy’s Well Of Fate.
Controlling my units was enough of a hassle in the relatively stress-free PvE campaign.
I just don’t think Minecraft Legends is anything like as good as it could have been.
This is a Minecraft RTS!
What if I wanted to play as the piglins?
What if I want to delve into a cave and dig under the enemy’s base?
Can’t do that.
What about towers that throw splash potions, or lava?
Can I summon an army of spiders that can climb walls?
At this, it could succeed.
