Minecraft Legends is an extremely fun and casual-friendly Minecraft spinoff, but how much of the real Minecraft can be found in it?
Today we’ll take a look at the most important differences between the two to help you familiarize yourself with the most recent title from Mojang Studios and Blackbird Interactive.
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About Minecraft Legends
Minecraft Legends is a 2023 real-time strategy game that combines the elements of simple strategy, base building, troop commanding, and tower defense. It’s safe to say that Minecraft Legends is nothing like the original Minecraft – apart from the blocky visual style and the use of familiar types of blocks and creatures, the two games are entirely different.
If you’re looking for an open-ended sandbox experience that would allow you to unleash your creativity, Minecraft Legends won’t serve as a Minecraft alternative. However, if you’re into some fast-paced action that involves the use of some strategy instead, you’ll be in for a pleasant surprise.
Gameplay Differences
The most notable gameplay difference between Minecraft and Minecraft Legends is how the game is actually played. You’re still controlling your character, but the camera can be zoomed out much more, which helps to get a better view of the surroundings. This can greatly improve your combat awareness, which is extremely important in strategy games.
Minecraft Legends is not a sandbox game and the exploration part doesn’t play a huge role here either. Instead, you’ll be tasked with building and expanding your settlement, constructing defenses, and recruiting and commanding troops on the battlefield in real-time to repel the enemy invasion.
The freedom when it comes to building and crafting is quite limited – you’re only able to construct pre-defined buildings from blueprints found throughout the game, but you are free to choose their placement.
The game features a day and night cycle, which plays a crucial role in the gameplay. Days are usually peaceful and can be spent on making improvements in the base, while nights are when the invasions happen.
It’s also worth noting the game’s PvP mode, which is where the game can truly shine, but it could use some extra polishing touches – it will surely get better with time and future updates.
Story
As opposed to the original Minecraft, Minecraft Legends actually does have a story, which revolves around the Nether piglins that invade the Overworld and spread corruption, so your mission is to put an end to this and save the world. It’s nothing extraordinary – a rather simple but decent narrative that doesn’t have too much depth but comes with a touch of light humor, making it a perfect choice for a younger audience; following the events as they are unwrapped shouldn’t be a problem even for the kids. In any case, Minecraft Legends clearly favors fun and exciting gameplay over the story.
Modding
Considering how recent and fresh Minecraft Legends is, it shouldn’t be surprising that the number of available mods is very limited. The original Minecraft was around for over a decade and has a huge dedicated modding community that continuously develops new fun ways to enjoy the game. Only time will tell if things will be the same for Minecraft Legends, but for now, if you’re looking for a game with high modding capabilities, you may want to wait a bit and see how the modding scene for this game develops.
On a side note, there are already mods that are trying to add some basic functionalities of Minecraft Legends to the original Minecraft – it may be worth checking out in the meantime.
Graphics
Minecraft Legends
The graphics are more polished with more vibrant colors when compared to the original Minecraft. It truly feels like a more modern version of Minecraft, especially when combined with environmental animations and camera work. The cel-shading finish adds extra value to the game’s unique visual style and doesn’t strain the eye – you’re guaranteed to have a lot of fun for hours to come.
Minecraft
Pricing
Minecraft Legends is slightly more expensive than Minecraft. Usually, you can get the former for around $39.99 and the latter for $29.99 (at the moment when this article was written), unless you’re looking at Minecraft: Deluxe Collection, which comes with some extra tools and items and sits at the same price tag as Minecraft Legends.
Considering Minecraft’s open-ended sandbox nature that provides virtually unlimited possibilities and replayability, the pricing is very reasonable. In Minecraft Legends it’s up to you to decide if it’s worth the price at the moment – the main campaign is rather short, but there’s a dedicated PvP mode and more gameplay improvements are surely yet to come. It’s a different game than the original Minecraft, and for that unique experience alone spending 40 bucks can be justified.
Conclusion
Minecraft Legends is a vastly different game than the original Minecraft. In fact, they only share a handful of similarities, including the name and blocky visual style – apart from that, they provide completely different gaming experiences catered to different types of audiences. Minecraft Legends is not a survival game but a strategy with real-time action, where building the base and commanding troops on the battlefield is the core element of the play. For that reason, even if you didn’t like the original Minecraft, you may actually fall in love with Legends.
Hopefully, our comparison made things clearer for you, so now you know all the important differences between the two games. Pick the one you think will be more exciting to play and enjoy your time.