Minecraft is the best selling video game of all time, its mix of building, crafting and survival elements having brought in massive audiences and profits which, naturally, inspired a whole lot of developers to make games like it. Most of those games had little to offer other than a surface level resemblance and shallow mechanics, and at a glance, you might think Terraria would be in that category. You would be so wrong.
Terraria takes place in a sidescrolling, procedurally generated tile-based world. You begin your adventure in the middle of nowhere, and as soon as you can, you should gather some wood and build a house that you can hole in for the night while you craft equipment. As soon as night falls, all manner of monsters will come for your hide. If you survive, come the next morning, you're off to explore, mine and get progressively better materials.
That's as far as the similarities go. Minecraft's 3D space allows for building elaborate buildings, and had Terraria banked on that, it would likely have been a far less interesting game, as in 2D, construction is not that endearing. Terraria instead banks on the strengths of the 2D sidescrolling perspective: despite its innocent looks, it is an intense action game about slaying Eldritch horrors.
A few nights in, once you get your bearings, Terraria becomes less about survival and more about arming yourself to the teeth, then kicking down the door of evil's den, if not summoning it to you in a ritualistic fashion, and bringing them down. There is a laundry list of bosses to battle, each with different requirements, fight mechanics, and most importantly, rewards: their loot will allow you make better equipment and fight stronger foes.
There is a wide variety of equipment to obtain, and it never gets dull, as new sets of gear always represent a vast increase in power and often allow for a variety of branching playstyles. You begin the game with a sword in hand, but you might finish with a shark-shaped machine gun or as a summoner of magical dragons. And it's not just about combat, either: accessories dramatically change your play, with the slow movement speed of a new character soon giving place to running and dashing, then to hovering and flying, and a myriad of other tricks.
And you need to be at your best, because the world is out to kill you. There are several types of biomes within a Terraria world, each with its own enemies and characteristics. The craziest part, and what's probably my favorite thing about the game, is that as you defeat more bosses, the world itself begins to transform: new biomes appear and expand, new materials and enemies spawn in zones you may have thought were beneath your character level. The unexpected twists and turns are what keep the game fresh for dozens and dozens of hours.
Of course, a game that keeps changing so much is a complex beast, and in that comes what I'd say is Terraria only noteworthy downside: there's a huge barrier to entry, as figuring out what to do next is almost never obvious, and the sheer amount of items and interactions will have you constantly alt-tabbing into the wiki, losing sight of the amount of tabs open in your browser. It's one of those games where you need to not be ashamed of looking up stuff.
Honestly, though, it's a small wrinkle in a fantastic experience. Terraria is such a gem, a game with so much fun packed into it and that is still getting updates to this day. Those willing to put the time into it will find a constantly rewarding experience.
Now if only I can find the time to play the 1.4 update...
Terraria takes place in a sidescrolling, procedurally generated tile-based world. You begin your adventure in the middle of nowhere, and as soon as you can, you should gather some wood and build a house that you can hole in for the night while you craft equipment. As soon as night falls, all manner of monsters will come for your hide. If you survive, come the next morning, you're off to explore, mine and get progressively better materials.
That's as far as the similarities go. Minecraft's 3D space allows for building elaborate buildings, and had Terraria banked on that, it would likely have been a far less interesting game, as in 2D, construction is not that endearing. Terraria instead banks on the strengths of the 2D sidescrolling perspective: despite its innocent looks, it is an intense action game about slaying Eldritch horrors.
A few nights in, once you get your bearings, Terraria becomes less about survival and more about arming yourself to the teeth, then kicking down the door of evil's den, if not summoning it to you in a ritualistic fashion, and bringing them down. There is a laundry list of bosses to battle, each with different requirements, fight mechanics, and most importantly, rewards: their loot will allow you make better equipment and fight stronger foes.
There is a wide variety of equipment to obtain, and it never gets dull, as new sets of gear always represent a vast increase in power and often allow for a variety of branching playstyles. You begin the game with a sword in hand, but you might finish with a shark-shaped machine gun or as a summoner of magical dragons. And it's not just about combat, either: accessories dramatically change your play, with the slow movement speed of a new character soon giving place to running and dashing, then to hovering and flying, and a myriad of other tricks.
And you need to be at your best, because the world is out to kill you. There are several types of biomes within a Terraria world, each with its own enemies and characteristics. The craziest part, and what's probably my favorite thing about the game, is that as you defeat more bosses, the world itself begins to transform: new biomes appear and expand, new materials and enemies spawn in zones you may have thought were beneath your character level. The unexpected twists and turns are what keep the game fresh for dozens and dozens of hours.
Of course, a game that keeps changing so much is a complex beast, and in that comes what I'd say is Terraria only noteworthy downside: there's a huge barrier to entry, as figuring out what to do next is almost never obvious, and the sheer amount of items and interactions will have you constantly alt-tabbing into the wiki, losing sight of the amount of tabs open in your browser. It's one of those games where you need to not be ashamed of looking up stuff.
Honestly, though, it's a small wrinkle in a fantastic experience. Terraria is such a gem, a game with so much fun packed into it and that is still getting updates to this day. Those willing to put the time into it will find a constantly rewarding experience.
Now if only I can find the time to play the 1.4 update...
5 Comments
@DragonMals Thank you, I'm glad to hear it resonated with you. In regards to mods, I never actually played any of them, I always played vanilla. Calamity gets recommended to me a bunch, and it's been on my list for a while, but I hear there's many more. Do you recommend any others in particular?
Ik this was 42 minutes ago, but anyone who has deep and great thoughts to say about this game, I am inclined to compliment their thoughts all the way to the bottom. Why? I suggest giving Terraria a read. But a tldr: Terarria is one of my most favorite games of all time being a veteran of the series from the 1.0 mobile version (when skeleton was the final boss and life crystals on mobile weren't the same as how they are on PC at the time), and I remember having the struggles that I don't have anymore and even the cheating methods that I can use to my advantage. But hey, at the end of the day, if it can be done within the game itself, it's essentially not cheating lmfao.
Mods like Calamity and Starlight River are ones that I refuse to touch due to how much they bring outside of the Terarria experience to more of their own story with their own weapons lore and such. The type of mods that I use are mods that extend the base game's replay value cause a good reason Terarria is great but isn't too perfect is that when you have a world that's completed, you don't have much to do in terms of story, weapons, and such and the game relies on outside activities to extend its value. If someone were to play in their run, they would want to continue building, but the focus of Terarria is mostly combat based, even if the game advertises itself to be a digging building, and exploring type of game. Combat is it's biggest point, and once you finish vanilla, there's not much you can do. Sure you can play adventure maps, playing the same experience with another person but at the end if the day, you'll guarantee have the same result: a finished world without anything else to do.
Normally that's what I can say that Calamity comes in: Calamity might have a bunch of unfitting content that matches with the lore of Terarria, but it's biggest selling point is that it's the mod with the most post game content. If you want a mod that you can do more, then Calamity is your best bet. However if you're like me and if you want to explore options that the base game can possibly have is Thorium, Consolaria (this adds the exclusive content from the old mobile version like Ocram, Lepus, Valentine's Day, etc), Miscelaria (I forgot how to pronounce the name but it's a mod that adds the removed items. Good example would be the First Fractual, the original Zenith when it was supposed to be the True Terra Blade).
Mods like Calamity and Starlight River are ones that I refuse to touch due to how much they bring outside of the Terarria experience to more of their own story with their own weapons lore and such. The type of mods that I use are mods that extend the base game's replay value cause a good reason Terarria is great but isn't too perfect is that when you have a world that's completed, you don't have much to do in terms of story, weapons, and such and the game relies on outside activities to extend its value. If someone were to play in their run, they would want to continue building, but the focus of Terarria is mostly combat based, even if the game advertises itself to be a digging building, and exploring type of game. Combat is it's biggest point, and once you finish vanilla, there's not much you can do. Sure you can play adventure maps, playing the same experience with another person but at the end if the day, you'll guarantee have the same result: a finished world without anything else to do.
Normally that's what I can say that Calamity comes in: Calamity might have a bunch of unfitting content that matches with the lore of Terarria, but it's biggest selling point is that it's the mod with the most post game content. If you want a mod that you can do more, then Calamity is your best bet. However if you're like me and if you want to explore options that the base game can possibly have is Thorium, Consolaria (this adds the exclusive content from the old mobile version like Ocram, Lepus, Valentine's Day, etc), Miscelaria (I forgot how to pronounce the name but it's a mod that adds the removed items. Good example would be the First Fractual, the original Zenith when it was supposed to be the True Terra Blade).
@DragonMals noted! Thank you for the detailed recommendations!
@Lucca202 You're most welcome. If you ever need anymore questions, I'm on Steam with the same name as this one. You should see an Ashley as the profile picture with Terraria featured on the front page. If you played on GOG.... Then uhh I would've provided my Discord, but I got rules in the case of that.
DragonMals
24 days ago