Terraria, the "2D Minecraft" that has Infinite Replay Value (Computer)
User Review
Product Information:
- Release Date (NA): May 16, 2011
- Publisher: 505 Games
- Developer: Re-Logic
- Genres: Sandbox
- Also For: Nintendo Switch
Game Features:
Single player
Local Multiplayer
Online Multiplayer
Co-operative
Review Approach:
You have probably heard a gazillion times that this game is my favorite game. During the great years of 2015-16, I have discovered by my father and my bigger brother this game on the 1.0 release of the Mobile version, when Skeletron was the final boss, and the Life Crystals worked differently. While I have struggled to get with the games during that point, it was up to the last major versions of the mobile version that actually made me obsessed with this game.
And for those that know me, you should know that my most favorite game of all time is this one, Terarria. Developed by Andrew "Redigit" Spinks with Re-Logic in May 16th, 2011, this game was hell of a unique game that people commonly refer to as "2D Minecraft," and honestly, for this game's 13th anniversasay TODAY, I shall give the temp my fullest thoughts of this awesome game.
In this review, I will be covering the basics in terms of the beginning of the game (where most players play and leave off), addressing the misconception of 2D Minecraft talk, Hardmode, and extra things you can do within the game, along with my opinion as to why this game beats any other Sandbox game that I've played.
To start off, let's talk about why people call Terraria, "2d Minecraft." Before you start gathering the pitch forks, I'm an here to say that there's reason for everything, even if its a saying like this one. The reason for this? Terarria came out 2 years after Minecraft's ORIGINAL release (May 17, 2009), if I'm getting my information correct. During their initial development phases, both games were missing distinctive features. They offered fundamental exploration, enemies, and NPCs, leading many to label Terraria as "2D Minecraft." However, as both games evolved over time, such comparisons diminished significantly. Nowadays, those who still refer to Terraria as "2D Minecraft" are likely unfamiliar with the unique aspects of each game and base their opinions on reputation rather than in-depth knowledge. I would personally say that at the time of 1.2.4.1 (last 1.2 update for Terraria) it would've made sense for at least the veterans to stop making the comparisons because there's clearly a difference between the two. Probably much earlier when 1.1 was done, but 1. 2 I believe would be a good solid point.
Another problem that I notice within this game is how new players tackle this game. From my experience, a lot of them would tend too mess around with the game, figuring out the absolute basics on what you can do in pre-hardmode, and using the wiki to guide them whether it comes from the in game guide, or the wiki.gg guide that's lore helpful. Anyway that you look at it, there's nothing wrong with looking up something in this age to figure out what you're supposed to do. For my first consecutive playthroughs on 1.1 mobile, I've done the daunting task of figuring them out myself too even find a flaw in the games system to make me create duplicated of my characters to cheat and such, and was sticking to the same method for a while until I've learned to get over it. Whichever way you learn, the result will be you learning more about the game though it's many ways. Normally, I would've said that cheating would make the experience bad and morally speaking it still applies, but cheating does have it's perks: it makes you feel what the game is going to become in the future, having later game stuff in the progress that you've had, and when it comes to figuring out how you've normally get it, its rather easy to find it out becsuse it'll become one of your most favorite weapons to use against enemies and bosses. I've done this primarily with modded Terarria (Which I over in this review) due to the different nature's of the other mods.
Coming from a veteran, there's no bad way to play this game. Using the wiki.gg wiki is your best bet in terms of playing the game as normal as you cam. Or using the Guide works! Whichever way you play it, it'll help with connecting you into the world of the game had to offer, and that's where I talk about it's gameplay. There's also 4 difficulty modes when using a player and a world overall: For the player, there's Journey (Researching items to act as an inifinite way to obtain them along with weather control, enemy spawns, godmode, etc), Softcore (drop money only upon death), Mediumcore (drop items a la minecraft upon death) and Hardcore (drop everything and you die forever). For Worlds, there's Journey (same thing as player but the enemies and bossses are weaker), Classic (enemies and bosses have their default values), Expert (enemies and bosses are harder with some having new attacks), and Master (same thing as Expert but even more damage and deaths).
When I usually review games, the gameplay is one of my most important details that I discover about, and for Terraria? The gameplay is magnificent in every way. EVEN if pre-hardmode is boring. Wanna know why it's boring at least in my opinion? Because it's the initial test to see if you've done enough of what the game has to offer before you move onto hardmode. No matter what difficulty you're playing on, you're going to always see pre-hardmode as the most boring part because barely anything is happening. You don't know what to do. You need help with what to do. Now the Wiki has you covered in terms of figuring out what to do next, along with the in game guide! But yet despite this, a lot of people would never end up past even Skeletron because the game can't seem to have it's essence be captured by its viewers. It's all of a matter of time and dedication. Because the game can't play by itself. A good way to circumvent this is by playing the game with the person that introduced you to it and purposefully take long within that stages of the game so they can get used to the task of having to deal with said obstacles. They won't like it and they will usually say to hurry up to the better stage of hardnode but you need to make them learn about the importance of pre-hardmode and hard mode once you finally get into that point.
I'm going to take this paragraph to talk about the goblin Invasion one of the many kinds of invasions are going to get into Terraria. pretty much what happened is that a bunch of goblins come from the west or the East at a random point in the game to come take over your world. They're not that hard of a challenge because most of the enemies just have the usual fighter ai and can be a easily defeated the more they are. If you want to hear more about invasions, just stick to reading more of this thread (even if it's long) because pre hardnode in terms of invasions is honestly not interesting outside of the goblin tinkerer, an important character thatis rigged helps you with modifications to your tools to give them upgrades to make them the worst or the best.
Speaking of Hardnode, why don't we get into that stage of the game? Hardnode is one of the well known parts of Terarria, and honestly makes things much more streamlined and linear to the path into defeating the god of this game, the moon lord. But, from just beating tbe Wall of Flesh to either beating your first mech or queen slime is going to be definitely rough. The game will introduce you to hardnode with keeping the gear hay you've have but the core elements of hardnode will make things difficult. Your job at this stage is to take a long gander at your evil biome, to break the altars that lie there in order to gain access to better ores with the molten pickaxe that you've crafted from hell stone. After that, it's a matter of going through another adventure throughout your world because hardnode doesn't being anything extremely new to the table in world generation outside of the hallow, a place that's supposed to be the purifier of both of the evils in the story. Idrk if I can really get more into the story in this review because I am a little fuzzy on what this game provides officially and the developers stating that some of the info are false and just a better way to mess up with some popular things fans theorize about the game. Back to what I was saying though.
While you have your ore collecting, enemies drop other items and materials to further expand the items you're able to craft and collect. Most of them are usually optimal into beating the hardnode bosses whole some of them can be shown as gimmicks just for fun, but it's always best to try them out against the bosses to make you know which item is for next. But primarily, the mech bosses are your main targets: Destroyer, Twins, and Skeletron Prime. If you're a master of the bosses they're based on (Eater of Worlds (no brain variant LOL), eye of however you're supposed to pronounce it, and Skeletron), most of these shouldn't really been an issue. Although It's still best to understand how the boss works by either playing the game or for more specifically finding out using the wiki to find some tactics. It's much better fighting them and suffering the consequence yourself though be sure you're able to easily develop a strategy to fighting the bosses even if they appear officially in the wiki or as a strat other people say.
Now we are at post mech, and honestly, this part of the game is the mort confusing one of the bunch. This is before Plantera, and there's not much in stock. While you have the Pirate army (another invasion similar to the Goblin invasion talked about previously), you also have an upgraded goblin army, the frost legion, the solar eclipse, and the frost/pumpkin moon. All of these are great ways to become stronger in Terraria, and it's up for you to figure that out because I'm probably reaching that hidden cap on this site. With that said, I should talk about post Plantera. There's a bunch of opportunities that you can do at this stage like fighting Golem, to then tackle the pillars and then eventually beating moon lord finishing the game. Or actually doing what this paragraph has originally talked about, fighting the invasions again! At post Plantera, most would say that this is the most confusing part of the game because you're so strong that you're able to cheese through most of the bosses with the gear that you've have. With the difficulties it can make things a bit more challenging than just running into the bosses, but still if you know what you're doing, you're better off just finishing things off with Golem and the rest.
But after you finish the Moon Lord, what do you have else to do? All I know is that THAT IS NOT ENDING SHIT. you might believe that you have no reason to play this game anymore, but YOU'RE WRONG. you're always free to play this game by yourself again changing certain elements (the class system you can follow within those restrictions Melee, Ranged, Mage, and Summoner), you can play adventure maps (pre constructed maps made by fans that have their own little objectives and such), play the game with more people doing what I've already said, building, cleaning your entire world's evil, whatever you can possibly think of. If you ever wished to play with me, I am almost ALWAYS down to play it. Especially if you're new! But, this unfortunately concludes my ultimate Terarria Review. I hope you had an AWESOME time reading this, and to reconsider your last playthrough if you didn't touch it much.
Another problem that I notice within this game is how new players tackle this game. From my experience, a lot of them would tend too mess around with the game, figuring out the absolute basics on what you can do in pre-hardmode, and using the wiki to guide them whether it comes from the in game guide, or the wiki.gg guide that's lore helpful. Anyway that you look at it, there's nothing wrong with looking up something in this age to figure out what you're supposed to do. For my first consecutive playthroughs on 1.1 mobile, I've done the daunting task of figuring them out myself too even find a flaw in the games system to make me create duplicated of my characters to cheat and such, and was sticking to the same method for a while until I've learned to get over it. Whichever way you learn, the result will be you learning more about the game though it's many ways. Normally, I would've said that cheating would make the experience bad and morally speaking it still applies, but cheating does have it's perks: it makes you feel what the game is going to become in the future, having later game stuff in the progress that you've had, and when it comes to figuring out how you've normally get it, its rather easy to find it out becsuse it'll become one of your most favorite weapons to use against enemies and bosses. I've done this primarily with modded Terarria (Which I over in this review) due to the different nature's of the other mods.
Coming from a veteran, there's no bad way to play this game. Using the wiki.gg wiki is your best bet in terms of playing the game as normal as you cam. Or using the Guide works! Whichever way you play it, it'll help with connecting you into the world of the game had to offer, and that's where I talk about it's gameplay. There's also 4 difficulty modes when using a player and a world overall: For the player, there's Journey (Researching items to act as an inifinite way to obtain them along with weather control, enemy spawns, godmode, etc), Softcore (drop money only upon death), Mediumcore (drop items a la minecraft upon death) and Hardcore (drop everything and you die forever). For Worlds, there's Journey (same thing as player but the enemies and bossses are weaker), Classic (enemies and bosses have their default values), Expert (enemies and bosses are harder with some having new attacks), and Master (same thing as Expert but even more damage and deaths).
When I usually review games, the gameplay is one of my most important details that I discover about, and for Terraria? The gameplay is magnificent in every way. EVEN if pre-hardmode is boring. Wanna know why it's boring at least in my opinion? Because it's the initial test to see if you've done enough of what the game has to offer before you move onto hardmode. No matter what difficulty you're playing on, you're going to always see pre-hardmode as the most boring part because barely anything is happening. You don't know what to do. You need help with what to do. Now the Wiki has you covered in terms of figuring out what to do next, along with the in game guide! But yet despite this, a lot of people would never end up past even Skeletron because the game can't seem to have it's essence be captured by its viewers. It's all of a matter of time and dedication. Because the game can't play by itself. A good way to circumvent this is by playing the game with the person that introduced you to it and purposefully take long within that stages of the game so they can get used to the task of having to deal with said obstacles. They won't like it and they will usually say to hurry up to the better stage of hardnode but you need to make them learn about the importance of pre-hardmode and hard mode once you finally get into that point.
I'm going to take this paragraph to talk about the goblin Invasion one of the many kinds of invasions are going to get into Terraria. pretty much what happened is that a bunch of goblins come from the west or the East at a random point in the game to come take over your world. They're not that hard of a challenge because most of the enemies just have the usual fighter ai and can be a easily defeated the more they are. If you want to hear more about invasions, just stick to reading more of this thread (even if it's long) because pre hardnode in terms of invasions is honestly not interesting outside of the goblin tinkerer, an important character that
Speaking of Hardnode, why don't we get into that stage of the game? Hardnode is one of the well known parts of Terarria, and honestly makes things much more streamlined and linear to the path into defeating the god of this game, the moon lord. But, from just beating tbe Wall of Flesh to either beating your first mech or queen slime is going to be definitely rough. The game will introduce you to hardnode with keeping the gear hay you've have but the core elements of hardnode will make things difficult. Your job at this stage is to take a long gander at your evil biome, to break the altars that lie there in order to gain access to better ores with the molten pickaxe that you've crafted from hell stone. After that, it's a matter of going through another adventure throughout your world because hardnode doesn't being anything extremely new to the table in world generation outside of the hallow, a place that's supposed to be the purifier of both of the evils in the story. Idrk if I can really get more into the story in this review because I am a little fuzzy on what this game provides officially and the developers stating that some of the info are false and just a better way to mess up with some popular things fans theorize about the game. Back to what I was saying though.
While you have your ore collecting, enemies drop other items and materials to further expand the items you're able to craft and collect. Most of them are usually optimal into beating the hardnode bosses whole some of them can be shown as gimmicks just for fun, but it's always best to try them out against the bosses to make you know which item is for next. But primarily, the mech bosses are your main targets: Destroyer, Twins, and Skeletron Prime. If you're a master of the bosses they're based on (Eater of Worlds (no brain variant LOL), eye of however you're supposed to pronounce it, and Skeletron), most of these shouldn't really been an issue. Although It's still best to understand how the boss works by either playing the game or for more specifically finding out using the wiki to find some tactics. It's much better fighting them and suffering the consequence yourself though be sure you're able to easily develop a strategy to fighting the bosses even if they appear officially in the wiki or as a strat other people say.
Now we are at post mech, and honestly, this part of the game is the mort confusing one of the bunch. This is before Plantera, and there's not much in stock. While you have the Pirate army (another invasion similar to the Goblin invasion talked about previously), you also have an upgraded goblin army, the frost legion, the solar eclipse, and the frost/pumpkin moon. All of these are great ways to become stronger in Terraria, and it's up for you to figure that out because I'm probably reaching that hidden cap on this site. With that said, I should talk about post Plantera. There's a bunch of opportunities that you can do at this stage like fighting Golem, to then tackle the pillars and then eventually beating moon lord finishing the game. Or actually doing what this paragraph has originally talked about, fighting the invasions again! At post Plantera, most would say that this is the most confusing part of the game because you're so strong that you're able to cheese through most of the bosses with the gear that you've have. With the difficulties it can make things a bit more challenging than just running into the bosses, but still if you know what you're doing, you're better off just finishing things off with Golem and the rest.
But after you finish the Moon Lord, what do you have else to do? All I know is that THAT IS NOT ENDING SHIT. you might believe that you have no reason to play this game anymore, but YOU'RE WRONG. you're always free to play this game by yourself again changing certain elements (the class system you can follow within those restrictions Melee, Ranged, Mage, and Summoner), you can play adventure maps (pre constructed maps made by fans that have their own little objectives and such), play the game with more people doing what I've already said, building, cleaning your entire world's evil, whatever you can possibly think of. If you ever wished to play with me, I am almost ALWAYS down to play it. Especially if you're new! But, this unfortunately concludes my ultimate Terarria Review. I hope you had an AWESOME time reading this, and to reconsider your last playthrough if you didn't touch it much.
Verdict
What I Liked ...
- Rewarding Exploration
- In-Depth Crafting System
- Tons of replay value
What I Didn't Like ...
- Misconception tarnished the game's reputation
- Pre-Hardmode bearing a slow start among players
- Lacks a comprehensive Tutorial
9
Gameplay
The progression form a wooden sword to a sword swinging cats is magnificent, but new players could use a bit more help.
10
Presentation
The pixel art is gorgeous from the weapons to the bosses, and it keeps on getting better over time.
8
Lasting Appeal
This game is great for people who are looking into the Sandbox genre, but It would've been more successful if people didn't call it 2D Minecraft early and currently in it's lfiespan.
9
out of 10
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