@Violent_Gamer Reviews #Terraria

#TalkNerdyToMeLover’s @Violent_Gamer

A randomized world that plays like Castlevania and has the longevity of Minecraft. Another version of Minecraft? Not really. It shares similar base qualities, but that’s as far as that goes. Both of Minecraft and Terraria share crafting and mining but they feel entirely different. Terraria worlds are filled with bosses to fight, items to find, regions to uncover, merchants to acquire and items to craft. You create a character first, which you have a decent amount of customizable options available to you, and then you create your world. One of my favorite qualities of this game is the persistence of your character; whether you take him/her into a new world, your world, or someones world online, you still maintain all your items with never any errors or problems. They even have a persistent piggy bank. Terraria is created by a small group of developers, 4 to be specific, but they have installed a lot of great qualities into this game.

Gameplay

My favorite aspect of Gameplay is how it feels familiar, in a good way. If you have played Castlevania Symphony of the Night it feels akin to that. Unlike Symphony of the Night there are always a lot of challenges, you can still easily die even with great items. You move around with simple controls (W A S D or Arrows), that can be changed, and strike down your enemies with the left mouse button, like you would expect. Unlike Minecraft there are many different types of monsters, many bosses and many different areas to uncover. They are not entirely as random as Minecraft is. Bosses are brought about in specific ways, one of which is in a specific area, but that area is random on the map. There are meteors that fall from the sky when you do destroy corruption orbs, which can be mined to make special weapons/items and armor. There are also falling stars which you can collect to increase your mana, among other options. Dying is not so bad. You lose half of your money, which you could store various places, but you lose nothing else.The game is pretty difficult though, but a easily tolerable difficult, nothing like Demon Souls or Ikaruga.

The World

You can choose to create a small, medium or large world. I have only tried medium worlds and let me say they are massive, so I cannot imagine how long it might to take to explore a large world. There are many different area types in the world: Dungeon, Underground Forest, Underground Jungle, Hell, underground, corrupted zones and floating islands. All of these areas are at specific levels, but their location is random. There are chests to find containing anything from common stuff to unique rare items. Chests and other objects to find are all randomized, like most everything else. Like Minecraft, you should not be out at night. Even with improved equipment it can still be fairly challenging to fight the continuous undead assault that comes every night. There are also special events, like the blood moon, in which the undead assault is extra strong and they can break down doors.

Multiplayer

Multiplayer works very similar to Minecraft. There are no server lists, you have to use a IP connect to someone who is hosting a server. Like singleplayer, everything is persistent between multiplayer worlds. You may use the same world as your singleplayer one or create a new one. The odd thing about hosting is that you have to have two instances of Terraria running; one to host the server and the other to play on it. There is no lag that I have seen, nor heard of. You can host up to 8 players at the moment and you can do PVP, but it is toggled by each individual player. The only negative to multiplayer is that you have to compete for prizes from bosses, otherwise everything is easier, better and loads of fun.

Last Comments

Terraria is a expansive game, filled with enemies to fight, places to find and items to create. On top of that there are many merchants to acquire and a plethora of options for creating your home. A example of something neat you can do is creating underground mushroom farms next to a safe house. So you have somewhere safe you can respawn and a supply of healing supplies right outside, very useful near the lowest levels of the world. Many portions of the game are randomly generated and that is a great thing. It gives each world a feeling of uniqueness, especially with the biomes that exist. Terraria may only be four developers, but they are dedicated. They made this game in around four months and it is very well done for that short amount of time. They also are very vigilant in providing a new patches, they also promise to do a constant stream of new content, but we will see if that turns out like Minecraft’s promise of content. Not to bash Minecraft, great game, but there hasn’t been a ton of new content added to it in a year, especially for the amount of new people they have acquired. In the end if you like coop games with a lot of action and creating then you will probably like Terraria. The only snag you may run into is if you cannot handle the graphics and art. They definitely aren’t mind-blowing in any regard, but they fit the setting well. Also, Terraria sold 200,000 copies in it’s first week and that’s pretty amazing.

Violent Score: 9

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