This will wind up as a story, no matter how I try to format it. A very long time ago, at the beginning of high school, I tried this game for the first time. I had previously played a whole lot of Fable 1 (not The Lost Chapters), and so I had my expectations when my dad told me "it's like Fable but *better*". Now, at the time, he was wrong. I completed the tutorial, ran in the direction that did not allow me to find the magical falling man with the continent-hopping scrolls. I walked the coastline, actually enjoying the atmosphere for a while, until through the fog, an island appeared over the water. Well, my dad said I could go anywhere I could see. So I tried. I was almost immediately eaten by slaughterfish. I put the game down for two years after that. It didn't click with me at the time. So, two years into high school, I've made friends with fellow nerds. One of which starts hanging out with me now and then, and one day he sees my dad playing Morrowind on the Xbox. His eyes light up, and he starts asking my dad what all he's actually done in the game, before going on about how he accidentally found half a set of Daedric armor, with a dai-katana as well, and found out about a glitch to permanently control low level NPCs. It was magical. I began to understand that I never gave Morrowind a real chance. So, I dove in again. For several years, I explored this game across two, maybe three characters. The atmosphere was bar none for games I had played, and even on a small CRT, with a near-powerpoint framerate, this game set a standard for story and exploration driven games that I rarely see now, but more importantly, cannot ever have the time to enjoy like this one ever again. The game itself is a 4/5, what with *the bethesda moments* creeping in, but the experience with the game in my life gives an improper fraction for a score. Something about 45/21.
So, narrative-wise, it's kind of neat. The story feels borderline irrelevant to the gameplay, as the various things talked about through the story (so far) do not seem to explain any of their capabilities. I am currently in the phase of pursuing Project Demeter, no spoilers to follow, and am very much enjoying the game so far. It has three difficulty settings, the first of which is Normal, and feels kind of easy, at least for what I expected. I still got my booty folded into an origami bird by one of the bosses a couple of times. Gameplay is thus. It's a side scrolling action platformer, in which you have several classes of melee weapons, and ranged weapons. Melee weapons behave with combos, and you can jump and attack as well. Ranged weapons have ammo that replenishes when you defeat enemies with non-ranged attacks, and have a satisfying variety. Shotgun's my favorite though. It's a good panic button. You also have special ability slots. Currently I am using the healing ability for when I get careless, and the Nova ability, which is a powerful screen-wide area-of-effect attack. Good damage, makes things dead good, weakens everything it doesn't kill. These abilities, unlike many other games, recharge *when you hit enemies*, rather than a cooldown, or room-based recharge like Binding of Issac. This makes one particular melee weapon, the Falchion, quite useful for ability builds, as its passive is to make you recharge those abilities faster. All of these abilities can be upgraded. In addition to this. weapons seem to be the roguelike aspect of the game. They have stats that vary, different abilities, and different tiers of rarity, from common to Legendary, from what I have seen. These weapons all have different levels of upgradability, and the undesirable ones can be salvaged into the coins needed for the upgrades. Combat feels good. Weapons are satisfying. Conclusion: Buy this game. I may update this review after beating the game if my opinions change.
I initially picked up Terraria on Steam with its 1.0.5 release, when Bunnies were new. Since then, I've bought the game for at least a half-dozen friends, two of my own accounts, and now also a GoG version, have put more than 2500 hours into the game, and I regret none of it. Whether solo or with friends, this game continues to provide entertainment to me, and is one of the most treasured additions to my gaming history and collection. Let me give you a bit of what you can expect, if you've, somehow, never seen or experienced the game yourself. You'll start with nearly nothing, but everything you need at first, completely unsure of your surroundings, with your local friendly Guide nearby to give you some tips to start. As you progress through your first week, you'll build a (probably abominable-looking) cute house, have a couple NPCs move in, score some sweet loot from a surface-level treasure chest hidden in a slight cave, start adventuring underground to find abandoned houses, locate half a world's length of hidden minecart tracks taking you between multiple biomes, and this is all potentially before you have even had to deal with the first boss, or even upgraded your tools! On the outside, the game looks like 2D Minecraft, and everyone who's tried to tell me they won't like it has used this as a reasoning. The comparisons are only basic-level though. They both do indeed have: Crafting, Building, Exploration, Combat, Multi- or Single-player, and feature dungeons and bosses. Of course, the way you go about every single one of those things between games is dramatically different, as is the way the game presents those things. It's also *WAY* easier to run multiplayer Terraria worlds on just about any computer.
I have very fond memories of Cata-... I mean Emergence from back in the day, on an old Celeron PC at about 400 mhz or so. Many memories of a fantastic but difficult campaign, storyline like no other space RTS I had seen up to that point, it even surpassed the original Homeworld in my eyes. This version does not. I don't know what changed, I don't know what was altered, but the gameplay is not the same as Cataclysm was. Many things seem in error that are just simply frustrating. If you don't tell your command ship to stop attacking and wait for it to finish turning in a direction, for example, it keeps spinning at whatever velocity it was, forever, until you tell it to stop. Strike craft groups told to target multiple targets will break off halfway to one, to go after another that is the opposite direction. Multiplayer AI seems to think it's a good idea to always attack the human player, even when its option to do so is not. As well, they seem to also think it's a good idea to park their command ships within sensor range of yours. Seven other players that close to you is simply not fun. These things did not happen before, in the CD version I still have. Let's hope your Siege Cannon doesn't also have the same luck mine keeps having where it detonates INSIDE THE GUN'S BARREL, which kills your entire fleet, your command ship, and the match. I'm trying desperately to enjoy this but it seems to be an exercise in vast frustration so far. Even the normally very fun campaign is turning into a chore due to suddenly VERY bad ally and self-ship AI maneuvers. Nothing in the game seems to quite work the way it 'used to', and I HATE saying that about a classic game like this. I sincerely hope your luck is better.
