In 2011, a little game built entirely on Java pioneered gaming’s procedurally generated sandbox. You collected resources and used them to build items in a genius gameplay loop where collecting better materials meant creating better items to collect even better materials and so on.

Buoyed by its simplicity (you can play the original version on browser still) Minecraft was a massive success, so much so that Microsoft forked out $2.5 billion to buy the IP from creator Markus Persson. Today, 12 years after the launch of its original version, Microsoft has turned Minecraft into a videogame empire.

The franchise has been expanded past its sandbox roots, and is now the basis of a dungeon crawler in Minecraft Dungeons, received a full storyline via a studio that excels at narrative gaming, and now Minecraft has turned to the realm of strategy and roleplaying.

Minecraft Legends is the latest effort from Microsoft to milk the super popular franchise. Developed by Mojang Studios and Blackbird Interactive and published by Xbox Game Studios, it is an amalgamation of ideas from other strategy and roleplaying games wrapped in a sugary coat that has only the barest essence of Minecraft flavour.

Instead of relying on the genius gameplay loop of the original, Minecraft Legends is more like Triumph Studio’s Overlord in that you slowly unlock and control a small army of minions from a single powerful being swinging a weapon – in this case the Diamond Sword.

It doesn’t have Overlord’s sharp writing and edge, but we could easily state that Minecraft Legends is better at Overlording, in that it smoothes out the more finicky parts of Overlord’s gameplay limitations.

Digging deeper into the gameplay

There are three ways to play Minecraft Legends. The first is a story-line based campaign. The second is a player vs. player mode and the third is an option to play the campaign in co-op multiplayer. Since we received an early access copy, we decided to just try out the single player experience.

The campaign begins by choosing your hero and there are plenty of options here. However the choice is entirely cosmetic and does not affect gameplay in the least.

You immediately get a mount and you are sucked into the tutorial, guided by a threesome of beings that speak to you like you’re a five-year-old being guided through Dora the Explorer. Boom. That’s right. It’s a game aimed at children, folks. Who would have thunk-it.

After a few choice lessons of the admittedly deep gameplay system and you get teleported to the open world – a huge Minecraft island complete with several biomes to explore. Minecraft Legends is a looker.

It’s not actually Minecraft, but it sure looks great

The island’s biomes transition seamlessly and are beautifully rendered in a faux-Minecraft imitation, as the blocks aren’t actually accessible by the player directly. You won’t be able to mine with a pickaxe or build a crafting table. These actions are performed for you automatically by two faeries that were given to you and briefly explained away.

Presumably this is so you can focus on the strategy gameplay, and the building of structures to support your war effort. Indeed, for Minecraft Legends sees your little hero command an army of earthen beasts and creatures against the Piglins of Hell. The battles take you across haunting swamps and desolate wastelands that somehow manage to be atmospheric even with the block-based graphics.

You can’t even walk, and all gameplay is mount-based. There are a few mounts to find in the world, and each comes with unique abilities. Like the beetle, which can hover and climb verticle faces. We saw loads of armours and outfits for the mounts in the in-game shop.

You will charge your steed, cute moss-covered golems and spine-spitting ents against the black towers of the Piglins who corrupt the land and build their fortresses on moats of lava.

Along the way as you are harried by your guides from village to village and biome to biome, you will unlock new ways to collect resources using your faeries that suck the wood right from the trees and the stone from the very rocks. As you unlock more resources you unlock more structures to build in a pale mockery of Minecraft.

Classic Minecraft was built using the Lightweight Java Game Library owing to its barebones and blocky art-style. It couldn’t have been anything else. Meanwhile, Legends is using the Bedrock Engine, and its Minecraft look is just art direction. This game was purposefully made to look like this.

But to say the art direction is lazy would be a huge disservice to the BlackBird team. They have made Minecraft look better than ever. Every tiny detail is gorgeous, from the decals on the houses in the villages to the way light shines on water surfaces.

When you discover a new village (which can be used as fast-travel locations on the world map), you can defend them to your heart’s content in a very real-time strategy (RTS) approach. Build walls. Arrow towers. Construct buildings that empower your resource gathering and more.

You will need to up your defences, because the Piglins are coming, or so your guides say. Depending on the mission you’re on, they will spawn randomly after a certain time period and you will have to defend villagers and slay Piglins who become uglier and stronger as the game progresses.

Apart from village defence, there are times when you must take the fight to the Piglin forward bases. Here is where the strategy of the game shines. Minecraft Legends’ developers Blackbird Interactive count former devs of Relic Interactive (RIP) among their ranks, who famously brought us RTS classics like Homeworld and Dawn of War.

These people know what they’re doing, and commanding your army of critters against more complex and ever-dangerous Piglin fortresses is super fun. You will have to plan out your army composition as each of your little troops have unique abilities. Eventually you unlock enemies from Minecraft as troops like Creepers, Zombies and Skeleton Archers.

You can command individual troops or command them as a group and this is a fun time. Your golems will wollap Piglin structures as your wooden archers pepper the Piglins into submission. We found the base difficulty of “Fabled” to be very easy, but “Legendary” difficulty drove us into the dirt almost immediately.

The battles also grow larger and larger as the game progresses, and we struggles with some of the keyboard controls. While the tutorial covered the basics, controlling your army becomes more complex right off the bat and we think that a gamepad would have been easier here.

In terms of campaign story, its very simple. The Piglins are out to destroy the world for whatever reason, and you must stop them with the help of your three guides. Eventually, the world itself rises up against the Piglin hordes and chooses you as its avatar. That’s about it.

The story is told via cinematic cutscenes, and voice overs, but most of the time you are running to the save the next village, and to destroy the next Piglin base. Minecraft Legends quickly becomes the second-half of Ghost of Tsushima here.

Another shortfall for Minecraft Legends, is that while the fake-Minecraft world is beautiful, it is unfortunately empty. We ran across the map looking for Elden Ring-esque caverns or dungeons to test our army against, but found nothing but a few NPC animals like wolf packs and movement speed buffs.

Minecraft Legends – Final Verdict

The world of Minecraft Legends is so awesome to run around in that its emptiness was a huge let-down. As we played Minecraft Legends we kept thinking about how great it would be to just strip away all the strategy gameplay, the mount, the golems, the Piglins, the guides and just enjoy this beautiful world. Maybe build a little house. Raise some chickens. Mine for coal in the nearby cave.

The game we were hoping for already exists, fortunately. You guessed it. It’s called Minecraft. Minecraft Legends is simply not that, and we wonder why this game needs to be made. Who wanted this strategy game that uses its Minecraft skin as a lure?

What you end up with is a beautiful quasi-RTS that relies extensively on its hidden depth to surprise and its incredible open world to leave your jaw on the floor, but its world is empty and there are better strategy games out there.

And there is a better Minecraft out there. But if you’re looking to introduce your kids to RTS, then maybe Minecraft Legends is the ticket. You can scoop it up from 18th April on basically every platform for R598.00.

FINAL SCORE: 7 OUT OF 10.