A point to note here is that LEGO Brawls isn’t a new game; it’s a console and PC port of a mobile game that was released back in 2019. So, if you gauge it with regards to its target demographic and original platform – LEGO Brawls can be an acceptable game despite its many flaws. But on console platforms where there are so many great contemporaries available, it simply falls flat on its blocky knees.

" But on console platforms where there are so many great contemporaries available, Lego Brawls simply falls flat on its blocky knees."

Upon booting LEGO Brawls for the first time, you are greeted with a short tutorial on how the game works. There’s a single attack button that you can use to hit your enemies alongside a jump and a dash button to crawl out of harm’s way. Apart from that, there are two special slots each of which holds a power-up that you can take from the arena. And that’s all there is to the combat loop, in case you were wondering.

There are two major modes of play in LEGO Brawls – a Brawl mode and a Party mode. The Brawl mode is basically quick play in online mode, while the party mode allows you to play with friends through local couch play or online through an invite code. Regardless of whether you play in Brawl mode or Party mode, there are only two basic match types to choose from – a free-for-all brawl and a team-based objective mode.

The free-for-all is your standard affair – you pick a stage and the number of lives for each player and duke it out against the backdrop of a stage. The stage itself is littered with constantly respawning power-ups, which you can use to wreak havoc upon your enemies. Each downed opponent will restore your health bars, and the last man standing is the winner. Then there are team-based battles, where teams of 4 compete against each other for a common objective that can be anything from collecting x amount of Peaches to capturing a control point to something else.

" Apart from a single attack button, there are two special slots each of which holds a power-up that you can take from the arena. And that’s all there is to the combat loop, in case you were wondering. "

The stages themselves are based around different themes, ranging from a pirate ship to a cyberpunk dystopia to an alien planet. Some of them are also based on popular IPs like Jurassic Park and Monkie Kid among others. Each of them have their own themed props and special items alongside a gimmick to shake things up. For instance, a ship-themed level requires you to climb to the very top of the ship to reach the control point – and the stage has a shark-ride power-up that can make enemies fall off from the control point rather easily. And another lava-themed stage has the lava level rise periodically – requiring you to jump to higher platforms to save yourself from dying to the molten stuff.

The variety is novel in concept, but in the face of the game’s ultra-thin gameplay mechanics – they don’t amount to all that much. With the exception of some micro-strategic elements for different objectives, the gameplay often boils down to jumping into the fight and keep spamming your attack button to defeat the opponent. Then do it again, rinse and repeat. What downplays this element of variety is the fact that Brawl mode has a stage rotation mechanic wherein you can only choose a stage from a 4-choice pool and a random pick. This means that stages that are popular amongst players will be repeated over and over again, and you can’t even queue for a stage that you like that isn’t present in the current choice pool.

LEGO Brawls has a roster of brawlers ranging from a castle knight to an intergalactic warrior to a guardian of death. Each of these characters have distinct designs, but they are functionally one and the same. Each will deal the same amount of damage and has the same one attack move – which essentially reduces the difference between these characters to a purely cosmetic level. There’s also a decently fleshed-out character creator, which allows you to mix and match different blocks to create your own custom brawlers. There are plenty of blocks to choose from, and there’s a lot of potential for crafting goofy characters or dressing up as your favorite characters from other games or movies.

Players will start out with less than a handful of brawlers, and additional brawlers are unlocked through playing. Each victory or defeat nets you some points that contribute towards your active themed progression tree, which unlocks blocks and elements within that particular theme. For instance, if you select the Wild West theme – you will be able to unlock hats, pistols, masks, and whatnot. There are more than a handful of themes to choose from, meaning you will have plenty of busywork should you be willing to put the hours in.

Overall though, the progression feels really stingy. You need to attain a mastery with each unlocked Brawler by playing as that character to unlock the next fighter which of course is functionally identical, which is really frustrating. Some unlocks are hidden behind chests, which are opened when you unlock all pieces of a particular outfit in a specific theme. It feels purposefully bloated its audience to keep coming back for minor unlocks, and it obviously failed to captivate my attention in a similar fashion.

This is something that can be said about LEGO Brawls as a whole – it’s a game that just can’t hold anyone’s attention for long. The mechanics themselves – while simplistic – are functional, and the variety in stage designs and game modes does make the game fun for a little while. But when you get over that short-lived period, an inescapable feeling of repetitiveness starts to kick in – which is further compounded by stingy progression systems and little variety amongst fighters.

Of course, some of these problems wouldn’t have stuck out that much if the game would have been a part of a subscription service, like it was the case with the mobile release that was included in Apple Arcade. But even at its half-retail price, LEGO Brawls just can’t justify its price tag – and is a forgettable brawler that doesn’t offer much for anyone wanting a meaningful and captivating experience from this game.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.

Along with 4v4 multiplayer, LEGO Brawls features Party battles, which are big free-for-all fights and a Training mode. Since it collects different kinds of LEGO properties like Jurassic World, Ninjago, Alien Conquest and much more, there’s a wide variety of content for customization. New content unlocks through mystery chests, which can include cosmetics.

Though it’s been available on iOS and Apple Arcade since September 2019, releasing LEGO Brawls for previous and current-gen consoles makes sense. Platform fighters like MultiVersus, which amassed over 20 million players in less than a month, are thriving. Time will tell if LEGO Brawls can achieve the same amount of success.

For more information on the game, check out our feature here.

GAMEPLAY

LEGO Brawls is, as its name gives away, a fighting game- to be more precise, it’s a platform fighter with players controlling various minifigures in four versus four multiplayer battles. It does have a few defining characteristics that differentiate it from Nintendo’s series though. LEGO Brawls, for instance, is much more objective-focused.

CUSTOMIZATION

Another area where LEGO Brawls offers a fairly unique experience in the platform fighter space is the impressive degree of control it affords in terms of character customization. Players build their own minifigure heroes to fight with in battles, giving them unique styles, power ups, weapons, and more. As you’d imagine, customization of heroes includes cosmetics as well. As you play more of the game, you’ll unlock new upgrades that can give advantages in fights and cosmetic items for your minifigure heroes as well.

MINIFIGURES

Given LEGO Brawls’ flexibility in customization, it makes sense that there’s a range of different kinds of minifigures you can create and use in battles as well. LEGO Brawls groups its minifigures across multiple categories, each being themed in a variety of ways, ranging from Ninjago, Jurassic World, Pirates, and Alien Conquest to Classic Space, Western, Castle, and more. Customizing figures from across these categories with a variety of different weapons and power ups is clearly something the game emphasizes, with control being afforded over your minifigure’s faces, skin tones, torsos, legs, hats, melees, power-ups, emotes, and names.

THEMED STAGES

Similar to its minifigures, LEGO Brawls has themed stages as well. There are multiple battle arenas in the game, each themed differently, including a castle stage, the wild west, the caverns of Ninjago Seabound, and the Monkie Kid jungle. A Jurassic World themed stage is also featured in the game. Players vote which stage they want to play on at the beginning of each match, and each stage comes with its own modes, challenges, win conditions, and more. In the Jurassic World stage, for instance, players can control the t-rex.

MODES

LEGO Brawls has a variety of game modes on offer as well. For starters, there’s Control Point, a 4v4 mode that tasks you with controlling a center point of the stage. Keeping the opposing team out of that point fills up a meter, which, once completely full, grants you the victory. Then there’s Collect Mode, which tasks you with gathering collectibles (which may vary depending on what stage you’re playing on), and the player or team that gets to a certain amount nabbing the victory. Brawl Royale, meanwhile, sees multiple players going up against each other in a chaotic rumble, with the player who defeats the most opponents being crowned victorious. Then there’s Free-For-Brawl, a fast-paced last man standing mode that’ll refill some of your health every time you defeat an opponent.

ONLINE PLAY

LEGO Brawls is, of course, very much an online-focused game, and offers online content in different forms. In addition to the aforementioned modes, the game also features a Party Mode, which allows players to host or join private matches. For online play, Party Mode offers 4v4 matches, while when played locally, it switches to four player free for all. Meanwhile, LEGO Brawls also features global leaderboards for those who want to work towards climbing that ladder.

CROSS-PLAY

Given how focused on online play LEGO Brawls is, it goes without saying that having cross-platform multiplayer enabled would be a huge boost for the game. Thankfully, that is very much going to be the case. Players across Apple Arcade, PlayStation, Xbox, Windows, and Nintendo Switch will be able to play with and against each other in LEGO Brawls. 

THEMED CONTENT

LEGO Brawls is structured around players playing through content grouped in different themes and playing through each theme to unlock more of its content. Your performance in matches determines how much studs you earn, and these studs, in turn, are used to unlock new minifigures, power-ups, and more content. Unlocks will be tied to specific themes, though there will be an element of randomness involved with the occasional bonus unlock. Of course, players will be able to switch between themes at any time, so you don’t have to be worried about being locked into a single content track for too long.

COMMUNITY EVENTS

Again, given LEGO Brawls’ nature as an ongoing multiplayer-focused game, it’s no surprise that it will receive regular updates. These will take the form of community events, which will bring new seasonal and limited edition content to the game throughout the year. Similar to, say, Splatoon’s Splatfests, players will align themselves with one of two teams competing during an event and contribute to the team’s overall victory.

MINIMUM PC REQUIREMENTS

LEGO Brawls isn’t a particularly demanding game on a technical level, which shouldn’t be surprising, of course. If you plan on playing it on PC, you’ll likely clear its minimum system requirements easily. The game will need either an Intel Core i5-4430 or an AMD FX-6300, along with either a GeForce GTX 960 (with 2GB VRAM) or a Radeon R7 370 (with 2 GB VRAM). You’ll also need 5 GB of free storage space, and 4 GB of RAM. The game’s recommended requirements haven’t yet been confirmed, but it’s safe to assume that they won’t be awfully demanding.

PS5 AND XBOX SERIES X DETAILS

As you’d expect, you’ll enjoy a few advantages if you play LEGO Brawls on current-gen consoles. It’s been confirmed that on Xbox Series X, LEGO Brawls will run at 4K and 60 frames per second. Presumably, we can expect the same on PS5, though there’s no official word of that just yet. As for what to expect from the game on the Xbox Series S, that, too, remains to be seen.

Originally released for Apple Arcade in September 2019, LEGO Brawls collects all of the different themes and properties from the LEGO universe into one game. Players can create their Minifig character with different parts, abilities and personalities. Some familiar themes like Ninjago: Seabound and Barracuda Bay are also available to fight through.

Along with 4v4 team modes, there’s also a “battle royale” option which acts as a free-for-all among all players. Depending on the level, there are different challenges and win conditions to achieve, new content to unlock, and much more. With Warner Bros. Games’ MultiVersus out this year, it should be interesting to see how LEGO Brawls fares. Stay tuned for more details on it in the coming months.