Release Date: 11 November 2014
Date Played: 1 January 2022
Terraria is a sandbox 2D action adventure game. It fits into the same vein as games like Minecraft, Stardew Valley, and countless others that hopped on that same bandwagon. You're essentially dropped into the world with little direction and are supposed to explore, chop trees, mine ore, craft, build houses, fight enemies, etc. It was developed by Re-Logic and is considered to be one of the better and more renowned crafting games of the last decade. While it does fit into that category, Terraria has much more of a focus on combat and killing large and interesting bosses over building and farming.
The presentation of the game is fantastic and everything is in a 2D side-scrolling view. The 16-bit inspired graphics and art style are well done and have a ton of charm that I really appreciate. In addition to this, the music is catchy and doesn't become too irritating while you spend the dozens, if not hundreds, of hours that the game was designed for you to put into it.
The gameplay loop is standard for this type of game. You chop trees to get wood, make a crafting bench, make weapons and armor, then dig into the ground to explore the mines to get ore to build better armor. The deeper you go, the more rare minerals you'll find. All of this is to build up your character enough to take on the copious amounts of bosses found in the game. Thankfully, these boss fights are the most interesting part of whole experience and help it stand out from its peers.
So, we have a cute and colorful game with a tried and true gameplay system. What's not to love, right? Well, I'm not going to beat around the bush. I didn't enjoy this game. I've attempted to play it 3 times now and I get so bored and exacerbated after a short while that I don't want to continue anymore. It's not the game's fault by any means. It's just that I don't like this style of game. I feel the same way about Minecraft and Stardew Valley. They are fun entertainment tools, but don't really feel like much of a game to me. You're given a lot of interesting mechanics to go out into the sandbox style environment and make your own fun. Unfortunately, that isn't something I want to do. I want to experience a well thought out and carefully constructed game with interesting mechanics and a good narrative. I don't want software that allows me to create my own experiences and set my own objectives. In these sorts of games, I feel like I'm just doing chores with no real objective to work towards other than completing more and more chores with increasing complexity and difficulty. Even the idea of grinding for countless hours to get gear to go kill a boss doesn't appeal to me either. Yes, this happens in RPGs all of the time. But in those cases, you're given characters with backstories, timelines, lore, narrative. Terraria is sadly lacking on all of those fronts.
Lastly, the control scheme for Terraria on the PS4 is so terrible that it's almost unplayable. Accessing basic commands and menus takes several button inputs. Switching items, targeting items in the scenery, and even performing combat actions and jumping all feel awkward and clunky. If you dive into the peanut gallery of the internet, you'll soon learn that I'm not alone in my feelings about these controls. Terraria was designed for play on the PC, and if able, that's where you should play it.
If you like these sorts of games, Terraria is a good one. It has a great art style and music. The mining/building mechanics all seem solid, and if you like games where you just spend most of your time exploring and finding things, Terraria will treat you right. If you're the sort of person who goes into a game like Skyrim and has fun wandering around the map and discovering cool things, you'll enjoy this game as well. I'm more of a gamer that prefers to just tackle the next quest without any diversions. Terraria wasn't made for me and the poor controls on the PS4 pushed me even further away.
Final Status: Played (3 attempts)
Final Score: 5/10 (Just not for me).
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