Terraria Review

The lazy comparison misread what this is. Building is available but it is not the point; progression is, and it runs through a chain of bosses that each unlock new ores, new biomes and new classes of gear, so the world materially changes shape around your kill list. Hardmode arriving after the Wall of Flesh rewrites the map you thought you had mastered, and the melee, ranged, magic and summoner builds diverge far enough to justify separate playthroughs.

The combat is genuinely good, with boss patterns that demand arenas you build in advance and movement gear you earn. Multiplayer with two or three friends is where it peaks. The barrier is real: crafting recipes are almost entirely undocumented in game, and the accepted way to play involves a wiki open on a second screen, which is a design failure however affectionately players describe it. The early hours are also visually drab. Everything after that is one of the great value propositions in games.