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