Collaborating with friends to take on challenges is a cornerstone of fun in video games. Minecraft Legends continues this legacy by allowing players to take on challenges in multiplayer, both with and against friends. This is enhanced thanks to two very seemingly minimal but influential features.
Like its original counterpart, Minecraft Legends will allow players to build their own bases while exploring a randomly generated world. Though similar to the original game, these features were not added to simply satisfy a checklist quota in ways it could be similar. Rather, these two specific features strengthen its core gameplay and team strategizing capabilities.
Team Strategy in Minecraft Legends
Randomized terrain generation and base building in Minecraft Legends works similarly to the original game, but there are a few distinctions that make them differ. Terrain generation includes things such as biomes, but also includes resources like ore. Deposits of ores such as redstone can be found on the surface, and must be gathered in order to build specific structures. The player is allowed to build through Minecraft Legends' allay construction mechanic, which delegates construction to NPCs. The player can build forts in the shape and material they prefer, as well as structures that help protect the fort and provide positive status effects their allies.
Both mechanics, while seemingly simple, lend themselves to creating a great environment for team strategy. Minecraft Legends' procedural generation allows for a certain level of randomness to exist within every session. Players may find themselves focusing on different resources and in need of a plan to defend said resources. Players could alternate in shifts as guards, patrol to defend their resources, or even orchestrate raids on enemy-controlled resources. The valuable nature of resources makes them contentious locations, with collaboration being required if players want to defend them.
Base building will also allow for a great amount of collaboration in specific strategies. Players may come up with favored follower compositions, and build structures that would compliment their followers' abilities. If players collaborated to all adopt this strategy, while also carrying the same follower compositions, their bases could all serve as places where they have a significant advantage against enemies. This would allow for Minecraft Legends' PvP gameplay to feel both varied and strategic, and groups of players can try out new compositions or build strategies and see what works right for their specific goals in mind.
There are plenty of other things for tactically-minded teams to work with. Minecraft Legends' PvPvE experience alone may lend team strategies with many opportunities for smart team plays. For example, attacks from the denizens of the Nether are enabled in PvP, meaning groups of players can take advantage of a base being attacked by enemy mobs and seize victory in the chaos. Many of these decisions all seemingly encourage teams working together in order to achieve their goals. Procedural generation and base building are the strongest compliments to this, but are also assisted by a variety of other features.
Minecraft Legends may be what the RTS genre needs, as it seemingly takes the best features of the genre and synthesizes a Minecraft spin-off with them. With the game's release date quickly approaching, it won't be long before players are working together to accomplish seemingly impossible feats. There may even be ways for players to utilize the features to do things that not even the developer expected them to.
Minecraft Legends releases on April 18, 2023 for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
