Recent reviews by SumIrshBstrd

***TL;DR I dislike some very small things but overall I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ love this game, and heavily recommend it to anyone looking for a "game-y" survival game or a good 2D exploration game.***


--UPDATE-- Terraria 1.3 adds SO MUCH new content! It's actually kinda hard to keep track, I've hardly scraped the surface thus far, so this review may be fairly outdated, but whatever.


I've been playing Terraria non-stop now over the course of five weeks, and I still haven't gotten sick of it yet. I keep finding something new and interesting, or a new NPC arrives and I wanna find out why. The amount of content in this seemingly simple game is massive, no matter how deep you 'dig.' But just like any of these games I will burn out at some point

Depressingly bad pun aside, the game gets surprisingly deep once you start going down, especially once you got the hang of things. The game works on a pixelated block-by-block basis, but the movement, lighting and particle effects is a little smoother and more complex.

The HUD's size changes depending on resolution, but overall is non-intrusive and easily readable, save for the map. The map is the only HUD element that even slightly gets in the way, off to the right and entirely opaque. I also think the map taints exploration slightly, you don't get this lost feeling when you can just pull up a map of all the places you've been so far, but that's just me. Then again, you can just turn the map off, so it's just a matter of preference.

Before you start the game, you get to create a persistent character, which is very nice, the amount of customisation is fair enough, the standard sort of stuff, between 50 hair styles, and a choice of colour between hair and clothing, gender, and the 'difficulty' of character. There are three difficulties: Softcore, Mediumcore and Hardcore. Softcore and Mediumcore allow you to be respawned, losing money on Softcore, and both money and items in Mediumcore, but if you die on a Hardcore character, you respawn as a ghost, unable to do anything other than fly about.

Once you do begin, however, you are immediatly thrust into a randomly generated world, with a few tools, and an NPC: the Guide. This randomly named Guide can help you with crafting, and more importantly, give you tips on what you should be doing next, based on your stats, equipment and what you've acclompished so far, so objectives are clear and you aren't left to do nothing, unless you neglect the guide of course.

The crafting system in this game is overall pretty simple, just sit next to a collection of things with the required components in your inventory. While this is very shallow, it does open up to a HUGE list of craftable items, depending on what workbench items you have, and the combination of materials, and also makes it easier to mass-produce many items, without having to memorise hundreds of patterns. This lets you get to the exploration part a lot faster.

Exploration on the surface is full of different areas to explore with different enemies and materials, it's also just interesting to run about to see what the game offers right out of the gate. Exploration underground is both essential and interesting, spelunking caverns and discovering questionable wooden structures, but can be mildly irritating at first. Many stacks of torches are required to go anywhere near 'deep', and without any mobility buffs travesing larger expanses can be annoying and dangerous, given the effectiveness of knockback, but these minor complaints get easily overshadowed by everything else underground exploration offers.

There's a huge list of enemies in Terraria, while a few of them are a bit un-inspired and added for the sake of having them in a game (Zombies, Skeletons) they're a TINY minority compared to some of the more original and interesting enemies (Cursed Man, Possessed Armour, Demon Eyes) Many enemies are actually exclusive to certain areas or to the underground, which gives a good sense of theming, which isn't absolutely neccesary it really helps with those who immerse themselves into a game's world.

Some minor gripes I have with this game, that I couldn't really fit anywhere else would be an aspect of the replacement ores and the seemingly tiny inventory (compared to the sheer amount of collectibles, that is.) Around the same time as the map's introduction, some new ores were added to the early-game, all of which have the same properties as the older ores, and are basically variables depending on the world-generation (Example: Copper=Tin, Iron=Lead etc.) While this was a really nice edition for variety, there's one aspect of it that urks me a little. There's a workbench item called the Extractinator, which you can find underground, that takes two useless blocks (Silt and Slush) and turns them into a random low-level coin or ore, but regardless of which ores have been placed in your world, the Extractinator can give you any and all of them, which is a bit of a pain considering this means that you have one item taking up two slots, essentially.

Inventory space is also a small issue, while it is very spacious at the start, once you start going underground, you'll end up having to make return trips every 5 or 6 minutes because you just keep running out of space. Also having to sift through the inventory to get rid of half your stuff every return trip is a little pain-staking and annoying. If you're the kind of player who just needs everything, make sure you have many, MANY chests, as they have less space than your inventory, given the fact you have a hot-bar worth 10 spaces.

Despite these minor complaints, Terraria is still a very solid game in my eyes, brimming with content and things to do right from the beginning. I heavily recommend this game to a more "game-y" survival romp akin to Don't Starve, or just looking for a nice 2D exploration game.