Terraria's world is flat - it is not limitless. And that's my friend disparaging the way we play.
Terraria is still a game that I would recommend to anyone seeking a quick, easy-to-play, and highly engrossing game whether you’re on a netbook or a full-sized rig. It is a game for many types of gamers, whether you prefer to satisfy personal avarice by going deeper and deeper into the Terrarium and finding rarer and rarer objects, or you prefer to be harvest mooning above ground, by building farms of mushrooms, and then make them into potions. You can read the full review here.
I have had this game for about a month, and through this time I have played it offline as well as online. I have dug all the way to the bottom of the world, raced to the end of Terraria, and killed three out of four bosses. However, only in the second half of the month did I start to enjoy Terraria even more, with the addition of my friend and his girlfriend. With more people in the game, we started to delimit our different roles and specialised in different areas. I and the guy friend would go hunting for materials, while we sent them back and allowed the girlfriend to do what she liked – farming, crafting and building nice homes for the NPCs.
Merely in five days, we reached a point where we have elaborate farms and very powerful tools. My friend went from a Silver Chainmail to a Molten Breastplate. I went from Gold Pickaxe to Nightmare Pickaxe and Gold Sword to Blade of Grass. I’d say that we’ve already seen 50% of what’s there to be seen. However, despite only seeing half of what Terraria has to offer, it seems that we’re getting lesser and lesser impetus to play Terraria. I mean, we’ve reached pretty much the 75th-percentile of equipment quality, we can hack and slash everybody from the ugly Eye of Cthulthu to the Skeletron, and we’ve seen every area that Terraria has to offer.
Granted, not playing alone has allowed me to go from zero to hero in less than a week, and you’d probably have a longer lasting game if you actually played alone, but I’d have to say, I don’t regret playing with my friends at all. It’s probably the best part of my Terraria, experience – hunting together, collaborating and winning battles together. It just gets a bit hard when it comes to loot – you can’t split one rare item.
A quick search on Google shows that people believe that Terraria will last six months or more. Indeed it will if you play it one hour a day, but Terraria is so addictive in the beginning that you’ll be playing it for as long as it takes you to get through a playthrough on Civilization. And that’s where it gets problematic in less than a month, you’ll hit a ceiling where the world has little more to offer. Yes, there’s still this and that to collect and craft, but with the Blade of Grass, I didn’t have any problems killing the Skeletron. What am I afraid of? And why would I need something more powerful?
As for the girlfriend, she’s crafted and planted all that there is to plant. Vile Mushroom? Check. Underground Glowing Mushroom farm? Check. Obsidian generator? Check. I do not know what is her exact opinion on Terraria now, but I don’t see too much more that she can do.
A glimmer of hope still exist for Terraria, though. Based on historical trends, Re-Logic has always added in more and more goodies and challenges as they patch the bugs and contradictions in Terraria. Without doubt, the 1.0.6 patch would have something interesting to offer, and hopefully it will get jaded Terraria players back and in the game again. What I liked about Terraria is that the monsters always gave me a challenge. The first time I and my friends fought the Eye, we were completely owned. On the other hand, the first time I fought the Skeletron, alone, I completely owned. The challenge of Terraria has faded and along with it goes the draw of playing Terraria. No doubt, for $9.99, it’s one of the best bargains out there with the ability to engross you in a way the Sims, Harvest Moon and Diablo can take you in for hours, but for a game that is sandbox-styled, it just comes by as a bit weird that you’ll be putting down all that you’ve done when there’s no affirmation that your mission is complete. And yet, you know that even if you’d played on, you’ll just get diminishing returns.
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