The World is Your Canvas

Platform: PC

Developer: Re-Logic

Publisher: Re-Logic

Release Date (WW): May 16th, 2011

Genre: Action-Adventure

Nerd Rating: 9/10

Reviewed by Kidd

Hey there everyone, today I will be talking about Terraria. I found this game months ago when one of my friends got me playing League of Legends. He casually said I should play this because he plays it as well and that it’s like Minecraft but better. There are two things I told him since I started playing this game:

1.) Fuck you, it’s not like Minecraft.

2.) It’s so much better than you even began to lead on.

Terraria is an Indie sandbox-based adventure game, throwing you into a world full of different biomes, hard bosses, and amazing gameplay. Before I can even describe the in-game qualities to you, I have to first go over the different game modes.

1.) Softcore Mode – This is the gameplay mode that I started on. This gameplay mode is relatively easy, with the only hinderance being that when you die you will lose all your money. All that copper, silver, and gold coin will stay in the world though until you come back to pick it up. If you continue in this mode long enough, you can eventually defeat a boss named, “Wall of Flesh,” and this will instantly spit you into hardcore mode.  I recommend this for all new players because even though you might get bored with this easy mode, you will eventually push past it when you can beat that boss.

2.) Mediumcore Mode – This is the gameplay mode that is just slightly more difficult than the last. When you die in this mode, you lose all your items. Still very annoying, but if you’ve played Softcore for too long and don’t feel comfortable being in hardcore mode just yet, than this will be perfect for you.

3.) Hardcore Mode – This mode will fuck you up. It unlocks many many new bosses, entirely new biomes, NPCs, as well as new items and abilities. This brings a whole new gameplay element as well because when you die, you lose your entire character. You restart as a ghost who can phase through walls and ground, but he is no longer able to be used. This forces you to wander back to the main menu and create a new character to use.

One thing that is said on the Terraria Wiki is that you are able to retrieve the items of your deceased character after you create a new one, and to my knowledge that is absolutely not true. I have died countless times and have been rewarded with ten more hours of gameplay to try to get those items back.

With all three game modes in mind, let’s now discuss your character creation. Whenever you create a character you can tie it to a different mode of difficulty. For example, you can create one character with hardcore mode difficulty and place him into the world, and than when you die and lose everything and are discouraged you can create a new character in softcore difficulty, but you will lose many of the options that come with hardcore difficulty and will not be able to do as much.

Alright, you’ve got your character created and your difficulty selected, and now you can create your world. They give three options of small, medium, or large for your world so I went with large. Go big or go home, right?

Terraria has over 350 enemies, and you can spawn small maps to large maps majorly altering your gameplay. Terraria has tons of quirks in its gameplay which I absolutely fell in love with. Your goal in Terraria? Survive, that’s it. You’ll start off with nothing but primitive low-grade tools, no house, and one NPC as your guide. As you progress you upgrade your items, how much is up to you. You must build a house to survive the nights, and even the days, in Terraria. You’ll find yourself surrounding your character in dirt for protection more than once just to survive the night.  Also, bed materials do start off rare in the world of Terraria so you’ll be sleeping on the floor for quite some time.

The great thing about this game is that you can’t just make a suit of armor for ten…maybe fifteen ingots. You’ll be looking at at least fifty for just some items in the game, not even the whole thing. You will really have to leave no stone unturned and you’ll have to spend wisely with your resources depending on if you want one badass suit of armor, or a cheeky sword. And what happens when you get everything you wanted? If you wear it all the time, and are mining one day for new resources, and you fall…what will you do then?

You have to make sure you cover all your bases. I have lost hundred of items by not following that simple rule. So, now, whenever I start a game I make sure to not waste a single item, even dirt, and back them up in my chests at home. Oh, and you may be tempted to make a chest, but you don’t have to. Just find them in the wild, mine them, and bring them back.

Through the entire game, you’ll explore many different biomes comprised of snow, sand, dirt, and even brick. Each boss is more challenging than the last, and you will get pissed off more times than you can count. It brings the simplicity of Minecraft to a great 2d format. It also brings entirely new difficulty that I like to see, and hope to see, in future games. While I was not that big of a fan of Minecraft, I am definitely a fan of Terraria. I will play it until the day I die.

TO SUM UP:

Terraria is an amazing one of a kind game. There are thousands of hours of gameplay to be had, especially in Multiplayer mode with your friends on servers(Which I shall be doing soon). The only reason I rated this game a nine out of ten and not a ten out of ten would be because the character-forever-gone idea while admittedly probably one of the coolest ideas it is the MOST annoying thing ever to deal with. With the amount of enemies and bosses and items, I will be playing this for years before I explore every inch and you will too.