Recent reviews by [LXI] Firock Finion

I recommend switching controls for non-grav vehicles to "relative" in controls, since facing is important; grav vehicles it may be easier to keep on screen absolute though because of they way they work.

Personally I wish there was a way to have limitless replenishes of ammo or straight up unlimited ammo, but that's just a personal preference of mine. Otherwise this game is absolutely great.

Also, hooray for Mandalore's recommendation!

EDIT: As of the latest update, there is now a cheat you can activate in the settings for infinite ammo, and I am now a very happy player!

This game has a neat, dynamic, and randomly generated strategic layer and fun tactical layer. If you like games like Mount & Blade but want the same kind of style in a space game, then try this out. It's good.

This game is adorable. If you like Where's Waldo books, you'll like this game.

Only complaint is that the game starts off at full brightness, and all that white glare can be a little hard on the eyes. But you can turn it down easily via the options.

Once upon a time when I hadn't played this game for too long and back several versions of it ago, I said that this game was basically a 2-dimensional Minecraft and recommended that anyone interested just buy Minecraft instead. I would like to now take the time to take back that statement, and fully recommend this game on its own merits.

I still feel that comparing Terraria to Minecraft is mostly fair; there is a number of similar conventions and ideas between both games that are obvious to bring up: Both games feature a day-night cycle which primarily determines what threats you face; both games feature combat with melee and ranged items that you create yourself with materials you have gathered, with a pretty clear progression of lower material items to higher material items, generally with the accessability of said materials and thus the difficulty in making said items correlating thusly. And there are other comparisons as well.

Before I get to why I recommend Terraria and what I feel it does better than Minecraft, let me talk about what I feel Minecraft does better than Terraria. First off, building: Just by inherent nature of being two dimensional versus Minecraft's three dimensions, the scope of what you can build in Terraria is much smaller. Even with a much wider selection of building blocks in vanilla Terraria than vanilla Minecraft, the "things I can build in Minecraft that I can't in Terraria" list is much, much larger than the "things I can build in Terraria that I can't in Minecraft" list.

Second, I feel that Minecraft has a much more visceral and in-your-face feel to the combat, simply by the nature of the perspective difference between the games. Both Terraria and Minecraft has zombies that come out at night and will hit your character, sending them flung away slightly while making a pained noise. (Heck, the noise is even very similar between the two titles.) In Terraria, even though your character is sent farther relative to their own size, it doesn't feel that significant due to the 2-dimensional side view and the relative smallness of your own character and the zombie hitting you; getting flung back a number of tiles in Terraria just doesn't feel that significant. Compared to Minecraft, where the perspective is first or third person, and not only does the knockback feel more significant, but usually the zombie hitting you is taking up a much larger portion of your screen space; combining both these aspects together and I can say that I've had simple fights against zombies in Minecraft that felt more visceral and intense than any fight I've had in Terraria, even against end-game bosses.

But there's something about combat that Terraria does much, much better than Minecraft, and that's variety. In Minecraft, outside of constructing elaborate traps, there's really only three ways to fight; melee combat, which except for blocking with a sword uses literally the same mechanics no matter what item you use; ranged combat, which is limited to a single bow; and throwing potions. The only variety in this is using enchantments, or extensive game mods. In Terraria, outside of constructing traps, you have multiple different types of melee weapons: stabbing swords, swinging swords, spears, maces, and others; multiple types of ranged weapons: bows, guns, boomerangs, (which interestingly use melee modifiers) and others; and various magical spells and items: staves, laser guns that use mana instead of traditional ammo, spell books, and others; and even the option to summon minions in combat to aid you. In addition to all that, every set of items has its own set of modifiers that could be applied to it, creating variety in identical copies of the same weapon much like enchantments in Minecraft can, AND the fact that ranged weapons using ammo can be equipped with different types of ammo for different damages and effects.

This huge variety in just the vanilla version of Terraria bleeds into other aspects of the game as well, such as the armor. Though it doesn't come into play much until the later sections of the game, it is totally possible to build what are essentially "classes" in Terraria based on what armor you use and what benefits that armor specifically gives you: Will you be a melee tank, taking the hurt and throwing enemies around up close? Will you be a ranged gun user, deadly in your potential but limited by your reserves of ammo? Will you be a ranged spell caster, taking a more reliable ranged approach but with need of quick breaks or potions to rejuvinate mana? Will you be a minion summoner, less durable than any of the others but able to summon a whole pack of invincible (and ignored by enemies) minions to fight alongside you?

Combine all this with an accessory system which increases the variety even further while bringing much needed options to liven up movement in a 2-dimensional space, and Terraria is very much so a game where you can play the way you want to, and still usually be effective in some manner. It is an incredible fun time, standing well on its own merits while being both similar to, and also very different from, what some would consider its 3-d counterpart. If you're looking for a game with ideas like Minecraft, but with a much simpler building system and much more varied combat system, then Terraria is the perfect game.

The only last gripes/words of warning I have about the game are thus:
#1: For some reason, lately on my pretty darn modern system that could make Crysis cry tears of joy, Terraria has every now and then started chugging a lot and drop in FPS like crazy, for reasons that are beyond my understanding or comprehension.

#2: I feel that this game is a much, much poorer experience to play singleplayer, and that to really get the best of it you really should be playing with some good friends.

#3: For all that is good and holy, LOOK UP QUICK WAYS TO GET A HOOK SHOT. This game is slow as molasses at the very start, and in my opinion that is mostly due to not starting with a hook shot. Just having even the most basic, crappiest hook shot in the game and binding the key to use it without having to switch to it opens up cave delving immensely, and makes parts of the game that are otherwise nightmarish to deal with without one, much, much easier.

You guys, and maybe some gals, but mostly guys I'm guessing, remember back when you were little, and had imaginary battles between your little plastic army men?

This is what those imaginary battles looked like. This is that. As a videogame. It's amazing.

Also, this is early access yet one of the most stable games I've played in recent memory. I seriously can't recall any obvious or enjoyment breaking bugs; at worst a few grenade deaths that seemed questionable due to the range between myself and the explosion, but that's it.

Meditation: the game. It even has spacebar sit down instead of normally jump, and shift makes you walk slower instead of sprint. Great for relaxing.

It's a real time strategy mixed with a top-down shooter with a really, really great story. The retro graphics look great, and the gameplay is fun and unique.