Minecraft Legends: The Final Preview

ign.com:

When I think of Minecraft, I think of creativity, peace, and adventure. Minecraft Legends' opening campaign scene made me feel as though my past accomplishments and care for the franchise were being rewarded by trusting me with a new and important challenge: save the Overworld from the greed of the piglins. Minecraft Legends is the fourth Minecraft spinoff game (Telltale's Minecraft: Story Mode and Mojang's Minecraft Earth and Minecraft Dungeons preceding it) and after getting an hour with its campaign and about an hour with its PvP multiplayer, it's already building to be my favorite of the bunch.

Minecraft Legends is an action-strategy game, which yes, is different from an RTS (real-time strategy), though only in a few critical ways. Instead of taking a top-down omnipotent view of the world below you, your character leads mobs into battle with a sword in hand. Dennis Ries, Executive Producer at Mojang, told me that one of the reasons Mojang didn't want to make a traditional RTS is because of the challenges they present when putting them on console. The action-strategy interpretation cuts out some of the impersonal aspects of real-time strategy and makes events and threats more focused.

Instead of commanding waves of soldiers or creatures from above, you're using music to direct a mix of mobs to attack piglin towers or defend an otherwise defenseless village. First, you'll start with two kinds of golems, and then as the campaign progresses, you'll find allies in the iconic creeper and other formerly hostile mobs. Directions to the mobs are rather simple (move here, follow) but become more complex steadily over time (command one set of units following to move or focus a target). I played exclusively on an Xbox