Minecraft Legends feels like a craftier spin on Pikmin

digitaltrends.com:

Well over a decade into its life span, Minecraft keeps surprising me. Just when I thought I’d seen everything the franchise has to offer, Mojang keeps finding ways to deconstruct it brick by brick. The latest example of that comes in the form of Minecraft Legends, which looks to build a strategy game out of the series’ pieces.

I saw a live demo of the title at this year’s Gamescom that showed off gameplay for the first time. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Minecraft Legends isn’t so much the complex, systems-heavy strategy game that I think of when I hear the genre label. Instead, it appears to take cues from a more approachable strategy game that’s more of a fit for the franchise’s younger player base: Pikmin.

Minecraft Legends slots into the world of Minecraft with a clever narrative trick: The campaign is actually a folktale in the game’s universe. It tells the story of a brave hero leading an army of troops against an invading army of evil Piglin. The game’s procedurally generated environments are more colorful and lively to make it feel more like a fairy tale.

That setup gives its gameplay a unique twist. Minecraft Legends is a hero-centered strategy game, which means players control the main character rather than simply interacting via a cursor. In the demo I saw, a player loaded into the world, mounted a horse, and began exploring a vast, blocky environment. While the hero can perform a basic slash attack, their main skill is the ability to command forces.

There are two ways that idea manifests. For one, players can make allies who scavenge for supplies and build structures. Mojang noted that Minecraft has a “brick-by-brick” approach usually, which has the player placing every block themselves. Here,