I find in retrospect that the legacy console versions of the game were always so much more cozy than Java or Bedrock. The worlds really felt more like your own home in the classic versions; not just a near-infinite display of eternally explorable land that always feels foreign. To an extent, you needed to be more careful with your resources too, as sometimes they were extremely rare and you could cause an item or block to go “extinct” in the world, because you carelessly threw it out. You can see that as a hassle, but I found it a more realistic and fun experience having to think a bit more about how you managed the world.
Unlike the infinite worlds, you can’t just fly off to some far-off part of the world you never visit and demolish an entire beach or desert for infinite sand, because, with the limited world size, you would be tearing up your own home and making the world look ugly (unless you’re the YouTuber ibxtoycat who loves doing things like that 😂).
I miss the small worlds, and even though the engine limitations of that old version would have made it a stretch, I would have loved to see the recent updates (1.15-1.21) come to the game.
There was a charm to multiplayer survival worlds in Legacy, too. Because of the small size, you would bump into your friends just doing their own things, minding their own business in the worlds so much more often than in infinite worlds, where they could be hundreds of thousands, to millions of blocks apart from each other and only interact through the in-game chat or voice-chat. The world as a result felt so much more alive with multiple players. I miss the old console version…
On a side note, I prefer the world border method of having an ocean surrounding the world with an invisible wall, since it makes the world feel like it’s actually small. In Java, you can see the world continue to generate outside the border, which, when shrunk to make the world smaller, gives you the sense that you’re simply trapped in a small section of a world and can never fully explore it. In legacy, you know you can explore every nook and cranny.