Terraria is one hell of a beast. I’d heard bad things about it from a couple of people when comparing it to Minecraft, so I never really gave it a fair chance until I had the chance to review it. For some reason I jumped at it; I was excited to explore Terraria‘s worlds and see what it was all about. If I learned anything at all, it’s that those naysayers were way off, and people should just play games they’re interested in whether people say they suck or not. Yes, I see the irony in a game reviewer telling you that, but there’s a reason we don’t give review scores at Real Otaku Gamer!
For everyone who’s somehow still unfamiliar with Terraria, it’s a 2d action platformer with randomly generated worlds, loads of crafting, and a ridiculous amount of stuff to do. I’ve heard people compare it to a 2d Minecraft, and to some extent that’s true: you dig, mine, and chop down trees just like in Minecraft, it’s dangerous to go out at night like in Minecraft, there are numerous biomes that have unique items to gain, you build homes and have a row of different items to select from like Minecraft… With all of that said, it’s easy to draw a comparison between the two. But there’s sooooooooo much more to Terraria than that: enemies are far more numerous and there are so many weapons and armor pieces. Armor sets have unique bonuses, there’s a massive number of bosses to take on and even farm, and there are over a dozen NPCs you can recruit and put to good use.
Starting off in Terraria is a lot like Minecraft: you start with nothing but some basic tools (you can’t punch stuff for materials in Terraria!) and you’ll want to whip up a basic home if you don’t want trouble at night. From there, the world is your oyster: you can go fishing, craft all kinds of things, sell stuff to amass a pile of money, become a great warrior with all sorts of weapons (even yoyos!) or do like me and dig! One of the biggest changes for me to wrap my mind around was one of the primary rules of Minecraft: never dig straight down. In Terraria, if you’re playing as a softcore character, you can feel free to dig straight down all you want! There’s no lava for a long distance and you’re able to see it from a distance. Heck, even if you die all you’ll lose is some of your money (if you’re a softcore character), which can be picked right back up again most of the time. Once you get a chest or a piggy bank, you don’t even have to worry about that since you can throw your money somewhere safe.
Terraria takes a lot of what I love about Minecraft and pares it down into its own thing. For example, even in the biggest worlds you can create, it takes almost no time at all to run to the right or left through all sorts of biomes. In fact, with a pickaxe or some material to create steps, you can quickly start a world and run all the way to the right and left to see where all of the biomes are before you settle down. Don’t get me wrong, though: running across a large world takes around twelve minutes, even while running across a bridge in the sky without any obstacles (without anything that boosts your speed). Not only can you choose your biome, but you can also choose your world: in Terraria, you can choose from numerous characters you’ve made and then whatever world you’ve created as well. This is vital as some items are impossible to make without exploring multiple worlds, such as the Bundle of Balloons that allows you to quadruple jump. This is also terrific for getting new chests hidden underground and finding additional biomes, as some things – like buried pyramids or the giant trees – are rarely added to worlds.
Speaking of ridiculous accessories that grant you magnificent abilities, Terraria is packed with special perks and items. For example, my current character has a shield that makes me immune to knockback and fire blocks, boots that let me fly and run “super fast”, other boots that let me walk on water and lava while making me immune to fire blocks (double immunity!) and able to go swimming in lava for 7 seconds, a “gizmo pack” that helps with building, and a horseshoe that negates fall damage. You can also equip two pets – one that runs around with you and one that provides light – as well as an item to summon a mount whenever you want (I’ve got a badass unicorn that runs super fast) and a grappling hook. Then there are items that allow you to see your exact location on the map, how many enemies are around, and even the rarest type of item nearby among other stats. The weapons are just as ridiculous, like a gun that shoots sand, another that fires lasers that penetrate through enemies (and has unlimited ammo if wearing the right armor set), a sword that makes stars fall from the sky, and magic wands that can do pretty much anything you can think of.
Progression in Terraria is steady and rather natural, and one of the NPCs will give you advice on what to do next if you’re confused. You start the game with only 100 max health, and as you explore underground you’ll find hearts that increase your max health by 20 each. As you find more of these, you’ll start triggering new events like a goblin horde assault. As you craft better weapons and armor, you’ll also be able to take on tougher bosses and explore more dangerous areas, which will give you better resources that allow you to craft better things, and so on… until you massively change the world by defeating a specific boss and triggering Hardmode. This alters the world in such a huge way that it’s almost like starting over; new enemies appear that have a tremendous amount of health and armor, there are lots of new events to face off against, a huge slew of items that were formerly impossible to find or craft, and more.
The one thing I really love about Terraria is just how much there is to do. There’s an NPC that gives you a daily fishing quest – that’s in-game time, not real-time, which means you can do a new quest every 24 minutes – and even without the quests, fishing can reward you with crates that contain all sorts of amazing items. In fact, you can skip a lot of mining with enough crates! Then there’s the huge number of areas to explore, from the hellish underground to the clouds. You can get around with boots that make you run faster, mounts, or the classic: a minecart. The entire world is as customizable as anything in Minecraft, but thanks to the ability to use a joystick as a mouse (when you want to), it’s even easier to be very precise with laying out materials. Death also isn’t as scary since you don’t lose your items (if you’re playing as a softcore character), so it doesn’t hurt to experiment and explore.
However, Terraria is far from perfect. One of the things that almost made me give up on it was the lag when saving. It seems like the bigger the world you’re in, the longer saving takes (at least handheld; I haven’t played Terraria with the Switch docked). My primary world is a large world (the biggest type), and whenever the game saves it seems to freeze everything for a good 5-10 seconds. Shortly after starting Hardmode there was a pirate invasion event, and these pirates were WAY more powerful than I was. I died in a matter of seconds, which caused the game to save, which led to me freezing for 5-10 seconds, then waiting a couple more to respawn, and then inevitably dying within a matter of seconds and repeating the process. I tried turning off autosave and yet I still faced this sequence of events every single time, which was enough to drive me insane. On the bright side, since death isn’t a big deal, I did manage to successfully complete the event eventually!
Like Minecraft, there are also loads of things that take a while to figure out and get good at, especially if you don’t use a guide. Luckily the first NPC you find allows you to input any material and see what you can craft with it, but there are so many materials that it’s impossible to hold them all while trying to craft things. It’s also impossible (from what I’ve tried) to be close enough to all of the crafting stations at once to be able to craft everything at once, so there’s a lot of grabbing items, putting items away, running between crafting stations, etc. The PC version of Terraria seems to have the ability to automatically draw from nearby chests while crafting, but the Switch version hasn’t gotten that update yet. Like Minecraft, this is something you’ll get used to, and since you can not only make all kinds of chests that look very different from one another, you can also rename chests, it’s easy to stay organized. There’s also a magnificent option from your inventory that allows you to automatically throw items into nearby chests if there’s a matching item already stored. There’s nothing better than coming back home with a full inventory, pressing one button and having 90% of it put away automatically! Then you can open a chest and click “Restock” to restock all of your stacks from that chest, making it easy to get loaded up with torches, healing items, ammo, and so on.
Finally, one of the major bosses you face off against requires you to throw an item into lava. However, on the Switch, there’s no button for throwing an item unless you customize your controls. When I was trying to figure this out I also didn’t know that you could set the game to pause when you’re in a menu (the default setting has the game run nonstop like Minecraft without the ability to pause), so I was fussing with menus, trying to customize the controls, and getting hit by powerful enemies repeatedly while my potions were all slowly being used up.
Even with these issues, Terraria is a magnificent game. I’ve put over 85 hours into the game and still feel like I’m just scratching the surface. Heck, I preordered Dragon Quest Builders 2 and still haven’t started playing it yet because I’ve been so hooked on Terraria. It’s also terrific that a lot of the controls just make sense once you’ve played it for a while; there were a couple of times over the last month when I had to take a break for a few days, and when I came back to the game it didn’t take any time at all to remember what I was doing and how to play. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a unicorn to ride and some badass stuff to make!
Terraria is available on Nintendo Switch (reviewed) and pretty much everything else: Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Steam (Windows/Mac/Linux), iOS, Android, PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii U, and 3DS.
A review code was provided for this review.