Minecraft has been transplanted into another genre. With the Minecraft Legends release date fast approaching, – Game News came to GDC 2023 in San Francisco to see how the world’s biggest PC game doubles as a strategy game, and we can report that it surprisingly fits the bill. .
Built on the Bedrock Engine and using similar procedural generation technology to its creator, Minecraft Legends follows a similar gameplay trajectory: you collect resources, build a base, forge gear, and ultimately take off to deal with Piglins and mobs. .
The first big difference is scale. Instead of doing it all yourself, in Minecraft Legends you’ll use allies to farm resources across an entire area, erect walls and buildings in the blink of an eye, and spawn armies of defensive mobs at a much faster rate. fast. For anyone familiar with the base game, it’s disconcerting to see so little friction, so little it breaks, in that gap between working hard on your personal creations and mass-producing them. So that they can then work not only on a larger scale, but also on completely different kind it’s a bit of a marvel.
But it is important to manage expectations. Setting up your defenses around a village to fend off piglins and command your troops doesn’t have the breadth or depth of a Total War game, and Minecraft Legends wouldn’t be worthy of its franchise if it removed its fundamentals of mining and crafting. . The creativity they give you when building your bases and armies absolutely makes up for the more streamlined feel of this RTS spin-off.
To this you can add the joys of exploring the open world, in which you will find chests full of resources and new mounts for your character. A far cry from the frenzied APM rates of something like Starcraft, this makes for an oddly serene experience; Minecraft environments have always been bright and diverse, but jumping between them in Minecraft Legends while placing allies in rock pockets or a clump of trees while searching for secrets is actually quite soothing.
Although it’s set in randomly generated worlds, there’s a reassuring precision to the gameplay loop every time. Updates in the form of new monsters, resources, and buildable structures arrive at a steady pace, while every core element of the game – exploration, building, and combat – never becomes junk as you progress. The Minecraft Legends campaign can also be completed co-op, with the entire game being cross-play, underscoring Mojang’s ongoing mission to make Minecraft accessible and community-focused. And as a core Microsoft title, it will naturally be on Game Pass at launch.
Compared to the campaign, the Minecraft Legends PvP experience is pure chaos, and much better. Two teams of four are dropped onto a smaller map and are forced to destroy each other’s bases. You’ll still need to gather resources, fight piglins, and build defenses, but now you need to communicate with your teammates and watch out for the enemy.
The possibilities in these roughly 30-minute PvP matches seem endless. During my time with the game, we’ve seen team members adapt naturally to various roles, such as gathering resources, which are shared between teams, building, or defending mobs to help run the game. Both teams in my session spent too much time building defenses and fighting piglins against each other, so our bases ended up having multiple layers of stone walls completely surrounded by towers firing arrows and crowds, which meant that it became almost impossible to get to the place. . someone’s center, destroy the center and win. This is where Minecraft Legends’ “strategies not maps” philosophy comes into play; Since everything is procedurally generated, you can’t rely on map knowledge to gain an advantage. Instead, we adapt to the situation, developing a strategy that will be applicable in the future. We sneak around the enemy base and find a good position to establish some kind of forward operating base, build defenses there and place a TNT cannon in the center. Instead of breaking through walls and crowds, we crushed them.
With this strategy, we got out of a stalemate that had lasted half an hour in seconds; Several barrages of TNT cannons in the center of the enemy team completely took him out and we won the game. It was a nice moment of quick thinking that only happened thanks to Minecraft Legends’ focus on its toolset, as much as possible. appear Lacking in depth compared to more traditional strategy simulations, it stimulates and rewards a different but equally rewarding form of organic tactical puzzle solving.
More traditional strategies are also viable, in the particular context of Minecraft Legends. In other matches, you can focus on rushing the enemy before they can get ready, do turtles to unlock better monsters or gear, or maybe you’ll see some land near their base which could hide a smaller outpost for your team, so you can launch a two-man attack. -Attack with spikes and take the enemy by surprise.
Minecraft Legends is a game for everyone. Whether you want serene exploration and base-building, cooperative hog-fighting action, or PvP as endlessly chaotic as the procedural maps you explore, this Game Pass release is right around the corner, and it’s going to be good.