LEGO Minifigures Online Review

When the “Hot Dog Man” joined my party in LEGO Minifigures Online, I knew it was all over: Hot Dog Man had to be in my party at all times. He didn’t cause the most damage when he hit enemies and rolled around the map, but I still never let go of Hot Dog Man. There were also many characters just as funny that I earned along the way, such as the Fairytale Princess, who threw frogs at her enemies, and my personal favorite: Saxophone Player, who destroyed many a LEGO with his sweet jams. These unique characters sum up LEGO Minifigures Online well. I was in for a wacky, weird ride.

Bow down to Hot Dog Man!

LEGO Minifigures Online’s beta originally released in October 2014 as free-to-play, but developer Funcom transitioned to a buy-to-play model when the game graduated from beta to a full release. This means the customer can buy the game outright and gain access to all worlds, which were previously locked behind a paywall. When a game is free for such a long time, the transition to a buy-to-play model can be an awkward one, but LEGO Minifigures Online pulls it off successfully.

The story is both simple and funny, obviously appealing to the younger crowd. My character came into possession of a magical compass, leading him through worlds of various themes, such as Pirate World or the Medieval World. The story did its part to push me through each world, but I can’t say that I was engaged. You can tell that the story was written for children. For example: every main villain that I eventually defeated was immediately forgiven for all wrong-doing and joined my party right away, after apologizing of course. It was a bit odd that the evil wizard was suddenly so eager to be on my team after I defeated him.

My favorite part of the game (besides Hot Dog Man) was the combat, but it still leaves a lot to be desired. Although extremely easy and plain, I can picture a younger me loving the gameplay. Combat is boiled down to simply clicking enemies until their health bar is depleted, and that’s about it. There’s not much fear in being defeated; I rarely ever got below 20% health on any character. I would routinely run around an area, getting the attention of as many enemies as I could, and then use Saxophone Player’s special ability, which was an area of effect attack that destroyed most normal enemies in two seconds. It’s very satisfying, but I wish there was more depth to the combat. There are bosses that have more health and use special attacks, but even they aren’t a threat, they just take longer to defeat. There is definitely a certain charm to this game.

The game is also a bit buggy. There were times where I couldn’t use one of my character’s attacks, so I had to switch to some less-effective Minifigures for awhile. Other times, my character would float around sideways on the floor and was unable to build things. These bugs happened fairly often, and shouldn’t be there when a game has had such a lengthy beta period.

There are three types of characters: the damage dealing Strikers, the tanky Defenders, and the Builders, who can assemble LEGO faster than the other classes. You can have three characters readily able to use, and can switch characters in and out of the three slots in the menu. Personally, I never found a reason to switch from my Striker characters unless I needed to build something quickly, but that was rare. But honestly, the combat is so easy that Hot Dog Man could have probably done it all by himself with no worries. On one hand, this is a good thing because a kid can pick his favorite character and stick with him the entire way through. On the other hand, I wish I had more incentive to stick with other characters. While each character has different abilities, there isn’t any reason to not stick with whatever is working for you. I tried every Minifigure I acquired, but once I found my preferred three-LEGO-rotation there was no reason to switch.

This wouldn’t be a LEGO game without some sort of collecting going on. There are two things to collect in LEGO Minifigures Online, stars and pieces for new Minifigure characters. The stars are used to upgrade your existing Minifigures, while the pieces are collected to assemble new characters. Each character is made up of the head, torso and legs, which you can find by completing the dungeons, or “Pocket Adventures” scattered throughout the worlds. The Minifigures that you can assemble are all different, and I created some pretty cool ones from the parts I found normally playing the game. However, I do wish the was more depth to to customization. I could create Minifigures that I couldn’t find in the story, but a lot of the time I would end up using the exact same character as the other players around me. Some options to add a personal touch to the characters would have been nice. There are all sorts of interesting Minifigures that can only be assembled.

LEGO Minifigures Online could have been so much more if it didn’t limit itself to one specific age bracket. I would have loved if it kept it’s LEGO charm, but added some depth to the gameplay and story to keep my interest. If it were just a little more difficult, or a little more complex, we could have had something interesting. Instead we get this simple hack-and-slash online game that struggled to keep my attention. But this game isn’t made for me; It was made for the ten-year-old me, and ten-year-old me would have enjoyed it way more than the adult me did.