When a game becomes popular, the only thing that is
inevitable as its success is copycats. To say that Terraria is a Minecraft
copycat is an understatement at best, but does it really matter? League of
Legends started as a DoTA copycat, and has now become one of the biggest games
in the world. Even Warcraft and Starcraft themselves were Warhammer copycats.
Copycats more often than not, take a popular formula and expand upon it. I feel
that Terraria has taken the essence of Minecraft and altered it in a meaningful
enough way to warrant itself as its own innovation.
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| 'The Jungle' is one of the first progressions in difficulty |
Just a quick aside before I go further into this review:
yes, I know this game has been out for quite a while. I only picked it up in
the most recent steam summer sale, and in accordance with my review policy, I
played it until finishing the main game as well as playing a good chunk of the
'hardmode' unlockable difficulty.
So anyway, this review will draw a lot of parallels to
Minecraft because, well, it's the obvious relation. Just like in Minecraft, Terraria sees you
controlling a miner, digging your way through multiple levels of underground
caverns mining for rare minerals, as well as battling dungeon monsters along
the way. Again, just like in Minecraft, Terraria has a plethora of crafting
options, from simple pickaxes and swords to complex gadgets and potions.
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| 'The Eye of Cthulhu' is the first boss you will encounter |
Unlike Minecraft, however, I found Terraria's crafting
system to be infinitely more refined and intuitive. Rather than combining
ingredients into a crafting window and hoping you got it right, Terraria's
crafting system automatically scans your inventory and provides all viable
crafting options in a single scrollable menu. You still have to occasionally
check the wiki for the more advanced crafting recipes, but I found it easier to
use than Minecraft's system.
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| NPC's will inhabit your houses... if you follow the housing rules exactly... |
Terraria is a 2D sidescroller, with that trademark 'indie
game' pixelated art style. I feel this
is the most significant change from Minecraft. Trying to mine in a 3D world is
disorientating. The 2D setting is much more enjoyable as you can easily see
your mineshafts and what surrounds them. It makes it a lot easier to find your
friends when playing in multiplayer too, and I do recommend playing
multiplayer. Building something amazing or getting a set of cool rare items is
much cooler when you have a group of friends to share it with.
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| 'The Eater of Worlds' another of the game's bosses |
While Terraria lacks some of the insane sandbox playground
features of Minecraft, it makes up for it by having an actual game behind it,
with levels and bosses. Progression through the game is not quite your
traditional linear progression, but there are different areas with more
difficult enemies, and a set of bosses that gradually increase in difficulty
until reaching the final boss, which unlocks 'hardmode' when defeated. The item
grind is pretty well done too, with items of varying quality and power being
dropped or crafted with random stats. It gives it more of an RPG feel - even
though your character has no 'levels', there is a distinct sense of progression
as you acquire more powerful weapons and armour, as well as cool little utility
tools like rocket boots.
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| Hell, the area at the very bottom of the map, and the 'Wall of Flesh,' the game's end boss |
In terms of the sights and sounds, Terraria is visually and
aurally pleasing. The music and sound effects, though occasionally becoming repetitive,
are fairly well done, and the cute pixelated visuals are very fitting for the
world. It's not a very graphically demanding game so it should run smoothly on
pretty much any system. The only real gripe I had with the game was with its
numerous bugs. The biggest one's pertained to NPC's, who would often refuse to
spawn even though the game had flagged the houses I had built as 'suitable'. Others
include stuttering bugs, monsters getting stuck in terrain and mineshafts that
would inexplicably kill you while falling through them. If I had to pick
something about the actual game that I didn't like it would be that it doesn't
really have too much replay ability. Once
you have beat the game, acquired the best gear, and fought most of the hard
mode bosses, there really isn't anything else to do, and the fact that Re-Logic
have stopped releasing updates to the game means that this is unlikely to
change.
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| Defeating the wall of flesh will unlock 'Hardmode' |
So what do we have here with Terraria? It lacks the
'build-anything-including-functioning-computers' aspect of Minecraft that gives autistic people wet dreams, but makes up for it by having an actual 'game' behind
the mining simulator. I played it pretty obsessively for about a week before
exhausting all of its content, so for the $10 asking price I would say it's
worth it - even more so for the $2.50 that I picked it up for during the steam
summer sales!
Editor's Note: I would like to take the opportunity with the first
review on this blog to tell you about my review verdicts. I, along with many other respectable
journalists, believe that review scores for video games are worthless. A quick
look at
metacritic sees that very few games fall below the 60/100 mark. What this means is that bad
games will get good scores because critics don't understand why they are bad. Video
games are a lot more subjective than a movie, and personal experience plays a
big factor. When I write a review, I describe my own personal experience and
leave it up to the reader to decide if this is the kind of experience they are
looking for. I don't want people skipping to the end of my reviews looking for
an arbitrary number. However, I would like to quickly distinguish between games
that are worth investigating, and games that I believe will never be worth your
money, thus, I will only ever have two verdicts in my reviews: 'buy it' and
'don't buy it'.
Liked this article? Check out my
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