Minecraft Legends: XBox Series X Review

Developed by Mojang
Released by XBox Games Studio
Platform: XBox Series X

Minecraft Dungeons was a fantastic spinoff of the Minecraft series.

Guaranteed to appeal to both Minecraft fans and fans of sprawling dungeon games like Gauntlet, its clever mixing of the two meant the game's crossover audience was massive.

So it was perhaps inevitable that Mojang would turn its attention to other popular gaming ideas to see if it could be fitted into their blocky world.

Unfortunately, in adapting Real Time strategy games into Minecraft has proved to be somewhat of a developer trying to force a block into a circle - it doesn't quite work as well as it could or should.

The game itself is simplicity - as a fighter, you are selected by celestial beings Knowledge, Action, and Foresight to repel a porcine invasion force called Piglins which are threatening Villagers and the world.

Given the chance to bring Golems life, you can create an army to repel the marauding forces as they head to take down the Villagers and their homes. Gradual unlocks reveal more forces for you to use to fight the opposition - but the quest appears to be never-ending.

Spawning pals, and utilising the resources around seems to get some of the Minecraft MO over to an audience; but the RTS elements incorporated in a beautifully crisply-rendered world doesn't really allow Minecraft Legends to soar.

Certainly, in its single player mode, the game feels grossly repetitive as you spawn, fight, free and then move onto the next challenge which requires you to spawn, fight and free and so on - it's an endless loop of repetition that doesn't really appeal to the non-Minecraft fan in the way Dungeons did.

But for fans of Mojang's world, it's like catnip - with little easter eggs here and there and resources which are familiar to the original game, this Minecraft expansion seems less interested in expanding its reach, and more interested in expanding its fans' insatiable love of the genre.

The frustration comes in trying to work out how to expand mechanics, how to improve your tools and how to generally up your game as your opposition levels up when you're less able. It's not to the game's credit that this isn't easy (though one suspects true Minecraft heads will know exactly what to do) but it definitely makes what should be a doozy a lot harder to master.

Minecraft Legends has multiplayer, but in its pre-launch phase, it's harder to judge that with the game having less people around other than reviewers - so that'll be something to look to when it launches.

In some ways, Minecraft Legends feels a little underdeveloped, with plenty of potential there for exploration and upgrades. But with a map that feels empty and a premise that feels repetitive, it's to be hoped Mojang has a roadmap for this game, because otherwise, it'll feel like a Minecraft expansion that never quite hit the mark.

Mojang and XBox provided a pre-release code for the purposes of this review.