As the Minecraft movie fills theaters, the too-quickly-forgotten strategy and RTS spinoff Minecraft Legends is now available for free.
Minecraft Legends is caught between two warring sensibilities. A spinoff of Mojang and Microsoft’s epochal building game, at its core, it needs to be accessible, simple, and suitable for all ages. But it’s also an RTS – mechanically, it’s drawing on Starcraft, Command and Conquer, and other genre monoliths, games where players expect deep systems and complexity. In trying to unify the essence of Minecraft – fun, light, eminently playable – with the conventions of more involved strategy games, Legends often collapses under the effort. But it’s not anywhere near as bad as you might have heard, and with the Minecraft movie still taking over the box office, now is the time to give Minecraft Legends another try – especially since it’s available for free.
You build your character, you spawn into a procedurally generated, blocky world, and you’re suddenly accosted by Piglins. On the surface, Minecraft Legends is a basic game of tug of war. The iconic porcine menaces are invading from The Nether, and you need to crush their armies before they can capture more territory. It’s an RTS game played at ground level. From atop your two, four, or six-legged mount, you can attack the Piglins yourself – but you won’t last long. Instead, you need to dig up resources and use them to build spawners. Backed by an army of Creepers, Golems, and Zombies, you can direct your troops to gather more material, build defenses, and attack the Piglins head on.
Although it was only released in 2023, Minecraft Legends has already been largely forgotten. In the last 24 hours, at its peak, the building game attracted a mere 32 concurrent players; back in January 2024, Mojang confirmed that no further updates would be released for the game. In our own Minecraft Legends review, however, contributor Andrew Farrell rates the game 7/10, explaining that it “delivers the basic loop of attacking and defending territory and finds the odd inventive way to use its iconic IP.” Despite its imperfections, Legends deserves another shot, and it’s now available for free.
Until Wednesday June 4, Minecraft Legends is available for free via Prime Gaming. That means you can play it at no extra charge, providing that you have an Amazon Prime subscription. If you want to get it, or sign up, just head here.
Otherwise, if you’re returning to the base game, make sure you use the best Minecraft seeds and the best Minecraft mods available right now.
