Thoughts On: Terraria

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Starting off the blog with my most recently completed video game, Terraria. Long ago I dismissed this as 2D Minecraft and never bothered with it, but the recent 1.3 update and all the people talking about it persuaded me to give it an honest shot. Does it live up to the hype, or is it Minecraft all over again?

Full opinions on it after the break.




Eesh. It definitely killed a lot of time, but I've resolved to no longer play it alone. Spent way too long building a wizard tower, it's too bland and square, and I'm left feeling deeply unsatisfied. And not because my tower is bland - because I'm keenly aware I'm accomplishing very little relative to time spent while playing the game.

The bosses are fine, and what you can build is way cooler than it will ever be in Minecraft, so it is better than that. But I may as well fight the bosses with friends so that I don't have to spend time researching and preparing and leave that to the others. It helps that my multiplayer project plan is far less ambitious than the singleplayer one.

Mere days later...

So on a whim I went at single player again, under the assumption that I would enjoy it more playing it like an adventure and completely forgoing the building aspect of the game. I can safely say I had a lot more fun this way.

That said, I murdered a four day weekend doing this, and it just feels like I didn't accomplish much given the time investment. Given the type of game it is, it's no surprise that a lot of success against bosses comes from preparation, and the preparation can take a ludicrous amount of time. I typically absolutely hate that sort of thing, and I wasn't willing to tolerate it when I was combining that preparation time with the time it takes to build something worthwhile. What kept me going, ultimately, is the satisfaction I get from a steady player character power curve.

All the events are cool the first time, especially the lunar event and Moon Lord fight. After that it's just a grind, and considering the Moon Lord is proving to be a complete brick wall, I'm not willing to keep completing the lunar event, gaining nothing useful each time, to throw myself at a ludicrous boss again and again with little hope of success. Without any sense of progression and the feeling I've struck a brick wall, motivation to play the game has faded away.

Not a horrible weekend, and I guess I'm glad to get the game out of my playing now library, but the amount of time I spent on it was so much greater than it deserved.

Mere days later...

I lied again. I beat the Moon Lord. And this time I really mean it when I say I'm done. While I could make an expert mode character, expert mode relies more heavily on building the right kind of arena for each boss more than anything else, and I'm definitely not into that prospect. That plus I highly doubt ranged or melee is as cool as magic.

Still, I must admit that, despite at times feeling like a huge slog, the game kept pulling me back for pretty legit reasons. It took too long to accomplish things, but it really did feel good to accomplish those things. In the end I liked this game, but would've liked it more if it didn't take so much time to do things.