GamesRadar's Mahin Kesore chats to Jasmine Gould-Wilson who's played Minecraft Legends.
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00:00Hello.
00:01We don't have much time, but just enough to show you a thing or two about these tools.
00:14Hello, I'm Maheen and I'm here with Jasmine and as you can tell she's played Minecraft
00:21Legends.
00:22Yes I have.
00:23Now Minecraft have their funny little ventures with like Minecraft story mode and Minecraft
00:28dungeons.
00:29What's their new venture like?
00:31What is this?
00:32So basically Minecraft Legends places you into the shoes of someone at the front of
00:37your very own legend.
00:39It's like a piece of mythology taking place in the world of Minecraft a few years before
00:43the main events of the main game.
00:47And yeah, it's more of a strategy based tactics game as opposed to being the standard building
00:54and sandboxy vibe of the original, but it does still have those elements, but this time
00:59it's presenting it more through this lens of strategic combat.
01:02Okay, because I've seen a bunch of trailers and yeah, it does look very tactics and strategy
01:07esque, but it's not like Final Fantasy tactics or fight emblem.
01:10It's not like a grid based thing.
01:11You're like running around and doing active stuff, aren't you?
01:14Yep.
01:15So basically what you do is, so there are two modes in the game.
01:18You have the campaign and the PVP mode.
01:20In the campaign mode, it's just you against enemies in the wild as you experience them.
01:26So it's all RNG like in regular Minecraft.
01:29So all of the maps, all the biomes, they're all randomized.
01:32So everyone will have a very different looking overworld.
01:35As you go around, you basically have to do a mixture of things.
01:39So you have to gather materials and also make like walls and structures and things and spawn
01:46points so that you can basically protect villages from these things called piglins, which are
01:52ugly little beasts from the nether who have come up to the overworld and they basically
01:57are just wreaking havoc and trying to take all of the goodness back down to the nether.
02:01And it's up to you to sort of use what you can gather and make in order to protect the
02:07villages.
02:08But also, I guess, just to reinstate peace and harmony in your very own legend.
02:13Okay.
02:14So I'm guessing there's like phases or something like you build your structure first and then
02:17you get waves of enemies attacking.
02:20So yes, again, so when I played, I played only about 40 minutes of the campaign mode.
02:25So it wasn't too much in terms of, you know, getting into the stories, but I got the basic
02:30gist of it.
02:31And what you can do is, like you said, it does come in waves.
02:35However, from my experience, they can be quite short.
02:37Like there's not much time in between, you know, being told like, right, okay, you need
02:41to set up arrow towers and spawn up some creepers and stuff in order to protect the villagers.
02:48You don't get, you get maybe like 30 seconds, like throw up all of these things.
02:52So the idea is while you're exploring, you have to passively send these things called
02:58alleys, which are like sprites and they go off and they can, you know, they find stone
03:02and wood and those will help you later on to put up all of these structures really,
03:06really quickly.
03:07Because if you don't do that, and then you find yourself in a really tough position when
03:10you have all the piglins arriving, you know, as night falls, because there are night cycles
03:15and day cycles and nighttime does feel distinctly more dangerous than daytime.
03:20Yeah.
03:21Is the camera always third person behind your player character?
03:24Oh, okay.
03:25So it's not like a top down view camera?
03:26No, no, no.
03:27It's, it's, it's very much, yeah.
03:28Third person sort of like, there is a kind of character customization component to it.
03:34Like you, I think there were, there were a grid of characters to choose from.
03:37So you can't, you know, alter the hair and the clothes, but they all look very, very
03:41different.
03:42So you can choose what your hero looks like.
03:43This is a question just for me.
03:46I saw in the trailers, you get to ride this like purple chubby tiger.
03:50Did you see the purple chubby tiger at all?
03:52Yes, I did.
03:53Yeah.
03:54So, so that's one of the cool things about it.
03:56And I actually found this out during the PVP mode, but you can ride on various mounts.
04:01So in the PVP mode, you start off on a horse, but you can swap it for a tiger or like a
04:06ladybug, a flying ladybug.
04:08There was, there was this guy on the team opposite mine during the PVP and I was, he
04:13was very loudly proclaiming every cool thing that he found.
04:16So I was just stealing his information.
04:18And he, he managed to find a ladybug which can fly over walls.
04:24So like he can just get into your encampment really.
04:26And I was like, oh my gosh, that's genius.
04:29So then of course I copied him as did everyone else in my team because we were like, we're
04:33like, we're like, we are sitting opposite you even though we're on opposite teams.
04:36Right?
04:37Right.
04:38So you were there playing like PVP with other people there.
04:39Yeah.
04:40Yeah.
04:41With other people.
04:42What is, what is that like?
04:43How competitive was it?
04:44What, tell me what that experience was like.
04:45PVP to me, that's where this game really, really shines.
04:48You know, like I enjoyed the campaign, but again, I would have liked to see a bit more
04:52of it, but that's okay.
04:53I'm sure I'll see more of it in a few weeks time.
04:56But the PVP was so interesting.
04:58I did not expect to get as into it as I did, honestly, as someone who's never played Minecraft
05:03before, I never really saw the draw, but my goodness, this was really cool.
05:07So basically with the PVP, you can go in two teams of up to four players on each team.
05:13So you basically, each team has to protect a tower.
05:16So there is, it's a combination of like a capture the flag tower defense kind of situation
05:21where you have to, again, like send people out to gather items and build structures and
05:26walls and towers and things that you can use to protect your tower from the enemy.
05:30All the while they're doing the exact same thing.
05:33Maybe they're spying on you.
05:35Maybe your tower has the disadvantage of having a like water behind it because people can,
05:40they can go around the water.
05:41We made the big mistake of thinking, oh, there's an ocean behind us.
05:45No need to build a wall there.
05:47The piglins would come around.
05:49It was terrible.
05:50So, so like there are loads of things that were like, it was far more difficult than
05:54I would have expected.
05:55With the previous stuff they've done with like dungeons and story mode, it does seem
05:59kind of almost like, is this the kind of game that's leaning more towards multiplayer or
06:03story?
06:04So that's exactly one of the questions I asked the developer, Kevin Grace, when I spoke with
06:10Mojang Studios.
06:11But the thing is, and as he said, there is no main game mode.
06:15So even though I did feel like we were being presented with the PVP in a lot more of an
06:20obvious way, we had about two and a half hours with the PVP and 40 minutes of campaign.
06:25So I did feel like that was unequally weighted.
06:28However, he did say that there is no main mode and they're not trying to push one or
06:32the other.
06:33It's really to give us, you know, as much opportunity to play whatever we find the most
06:37interesting.
06:38So if you are someone that's a big fan of the Minecraft games and you're really interested
06:42by the storyline and how this world kind of builds upon the lore of Minecraft and Minecraft
06:47dungeons, then you can always take a lot out of the main campaign.
06:52But if you're like me and you're like, actually, I kind of want to just load in with some friends
06:56and, you know, wreak havoc and see what happens, then the PVP mode I found very accessible.
07:03And it's something which, again, like you can just play again and again and again.
07:07And because there is the RNG, it means that it's always going to be a bit different and
07:11you spawn in various places.
07:13There's of course like piglins, they are still wreaking havoc no matter what.
07:17So you now have two enemies of the piglins and the enemy team.
07:20So while I personally would say that this is leaning heavily into the multiplayer, I
07:25do know actually that the campaign mode also has a multiplayer component to it as well.
07:30So you can play the campaign with a friend if you want.
07:34But I feel like Minecraft has always had this idea of, you know, the co-op, but I do feel
07:39like they've really nailed it.
07:41Like it really does work with strategy.
07:43So whilst you were there, did you get any handle of the story?
07:47Were you playing any of the story much?
07:49So the story itself, again, we have the very bare bones idea.
07:54So you have to imagine it as if you are living through a bedtime story being told to a younger
08:01villager by an older villager.
08:03And the idea is that this, again, takes place long ago in the world of Minecraft when the
08:08overworld was a very peaceful, placid place.
08:12And because it was so lovely and peaceful and prosperous, the piglins in the nether,
08:17they got jealous and they wanted to rise up and steal all of the goodness from the overlands
08:22and bring it down to the nether.
08:24And the idea is that you're like the chosen one, I guess, in this case, you're selected
08:29by the villagers.
08:30And also there were like three, there were three characters, I forget their names.
08:34They were called like knowledge, ambition, something like that.
08:38And they choose you to basically fight back in the name of the overlands.
08:45So yeah, that's the story.
08:47That's like the gist of it.
08:48That's who you play as.
08:49So you would say this is like more for the strategy fans or fans of Minecraft, or maybe
08:54is it more action?
08:56Like it's hard to get a grips of what exactly they're going for here.
08:59Well, yeah, I guess it's kind of a mix of everything, really.
09:03I do feel like, to me, it felt, I would describe it as like an action strategy game, personally,
09:10because although there are the building elements and that is a large role, I think right now
09:15for me, that was mainly an important thing in the PvP where you're like scrambling to
09:19build up all these things.
09:21I do think that in terms of a specific genre, I do think that Minecraft has the benefit
09:27of being able to straddle multiple genres in a very comfortable way because it is a
09:32sandbox game and because it does really sort of want to hone in on the fact that they want
09:37us to play however we like it to be played.
09:41So I find that really cool.
09:42I would say, again, I would see it as an action strategy game.
09:46I personally do feel that the PvP sort of stood out the most to me in my gameplay, and
09:51I think that the style that they're going for in this lends itself very well to the
09:56multiplayer.
09:57Single player, I did have a bit of a hard time figuring out the controls, but again,
10:01I think that's because I am so new to it that the idea of like, oh, I have to build
10:06something and then I have to gather these guys and they come with me.
10:09That's one cool thing.
10:10You have like a companion, like these little dudes following you around, which is very
10:14cute.
10:15I'm told that's new as well.
10:17So yeah, I mean, I'm excited to see what other people think because we don't know too much
10:21right now.
10:22Cool.
10:23Well, that's Minecraft Legends, a seemingly more PvP kind of strategy game.
10:27Let us know if you're going to pick up Minecraft Legends in the comments below.
10:31Until next time, see ya!