This is a good method if you are stuck and you don't know what you need to do. It also helps explore a project with a specific task in mind.

It is not very useful in giving you confidence your changes would not cause unexpected side effects, which is usually the main problem working with legacy code.

If you want confidence when working with legacy code, your best bet is to do a strangler fig pattern - find a boundaries for the module you want to work on, rewrite the module (or clone and make your changes), run both at the same time in shadow mode, monitor and verify your new module is working the same as the old one, then switch and eventually delete the old module.

Boundaries? Module? I laugh.