Hello and welcome to our first post that's not about tabletop gaming. I said I might do this a long time ago, but none of my ideas were ever so compelling that I wanted to urgently get them down on (digital) paper. I decided to finally put the game Terraria to bed after they released its final content patch. Not to bury the lede, but I used to call this my favorite game however I'd never beaten its final boss on my own. I was excited for Journey Mode anyway, so I went on one last ridiculously complete run through the game. Now that I feel I'm completely done, I have a lot, a lot of thoughts on the game. After almost nine hundred hours, it's probably more than I'd care to put in a basic review.
In fact, I want to put a Steam-style review here before we start. Terraria is a lot of fun, especially given its price tag. I certainly didn't put all those hours into a game I hate. It's even more fun with friends. Despite what I might say about their design philosophies and intentions in the following paragraphs, Re-Logic went above and beyond and deserves respect for creating such a dense and interesting game.
That's probably enough Ado.
The Good
So this is a creative voxel-style exploration game with platforming. The key gameplay elements are collecting weapons, armor and accessories which all alter your gameplay style. That's a solid start. The game has a lot of "grind" to it, such as farming consumable materials or things with low drop rates. That's okay on some level. It's the game. I have more to say about consumables later, but the idea of them is fun.
Here's the part where I gush about Journey Mode. Basically, thanks to allowing you to "learn" and duplicate items, it does two things. The first is that it allows you to be as creative as you want without having to farm up a ton of resources. I've made plenty of bases over the years which are boring, stock standard wood towers full of rooms because I'm under pressure to get something, anything up. Thanks to creative mode's duplication, time-locking and other stuff, I was able to spend several glorious hours designing a huge mansion that I'll put at the bottom of this post for you to see.
The other is that it softens the game's need for farming and grinding. Again, I'm not a hundred percent against having to farm. Coming back for my 10th or greater playthrough, though, it was nice to be able to avoid it. I can lock or speed up time, raise the enemy spawn rate, or duplicate gold and consumables all to avoid long grinds. In addition, being an exploration-based voxel game with hundreds of weapons and accessories, it has an even greater need for item sorting than Minecraft or similar games. Journey Mode is particularly great for people who hate doing that. All with still being able to play on higher difficulties and earn everything from those a normal player would. If you feel bad that Journey is "Making the game easy", go ahead and jack the difficulty slider up to Master.
The two new bosses in the latest update are fine. Very well designed, and The Empress of Light is a downright gorgeous fight. I was impressed. They're both optional, though. I won't say that's absolutely a strike against them, but unless you're playing on expert difficulty, they don't really give you anything important.
Here's the part where I gush about Journey Mode. Basically, thanks to allowing you to "learn" and duplicate items, it does two things. The first is that it allows you to be as creative as you want without having to farm up a ton of resources. I've made plenty of bases over the years which are boring, stock standard wood towers full of rooms because I'm under pressure to get something, anything up. Thanks to creative mode's duplication, time-locking and other stuff, I was able to spend several glorious hours designing a huge mansion that I'll put at the bottom of this post for you to see.
The other is that it softens the game's need for farming and grinding. Again, I'm not a hundred percent against having to farm. Coming back for my 10th or greater playthrough, though, it was nice to be able to avoid it. I can lock or speed up time, raise the enemy spawn rate, or duplicate gold and consumables all to avoid long grinds. In addition, being an exploration-based voxel game with hundreds of weapons and accessories, it has an even greater need for item sorting than Minecraft or similar games. Journey Mode is particularly great for people who hate doing that. All with still being able to play on higher difficulties and earn everything from those a normal player would. If you feel bad that Journey is "Making the game easy", go ahead and jack the difficulty slider up to Master.
The two new bosses in the latest update are fine. Very well designed, and The Empress of Light is a downright gorgeous fight. I was impressed. They're both optional, though. I won't say that's absolutely a strike against them, but unless you're playing on expert difficulty, they don't really give you anything important.
More broadly, the game marries explorative creative gameplay with platformers. I dunno guys, I was just destined to enjoy this on some level. The gear is all fun, there's a ton of self expression, and the bosses all have cool, crazy designs. Procedurally generated worlds being corrupted by a spreading "sickness" like the Corruption, or even later the Hallow is a great idea. Distinct areas and the ability to break the sequence of natural progression if you're good is great design.
The Bad
Here's the thing, though. A lot of Terraria's design feels unfocused, like it was based on what they thought was "cool" instead of a coherent philosophy, or worse...in response to players approaching the game "wrong". More on that later. Let me explain what I mean.
Consumables are at a point in this game where a full "load" of helpful consumes is almost half of my inventory. Are they necessary? Well, that depends on what you're doing. You take a shitload of damage on expert or master difficulty. Defensive consumes are a must, and offensive consumes can even make up for taking more defensive accessories or armor, turning them into ad-hoc defenses in themselves. Consumes are a very important part of this game, to the point that some popular mods add a "potion belt" where you can put up to ten stacks of them. Ten is sometimes not enough.
I need to make a point here, so let's go over what you carried all of the time at various stages in this game. I gotta stress that, this is only potions you always wanted to use. When I'm talking about "too many potions", rare conditional utility potions like gravitation or obsidian skin don't count.
During the vanilla release, you had this stuff.
Restorative: Health and Mana potions.
Helpful: Featherfall, Swiftness, Night Owl, Shine, Danger Sense, Spelunker, and Hunter.
Combat: Ironskin, Regeneration, Archery, Magic Power, food buff, and Mana Regeneration.
Obviously, depending on the weapons you use you can skip some of that. I want to point out that while nobody will want danger sense, spelunker or hunter during a boss fight, these potions are outright vital if you're still searching for things in the world.
The Fishing patch added more of them, mostly combat potions.
It added Ammo Conservation, Endurance, Life force, Rage, Wrath, Summoning, and flasks.
Keep in mind I trimmed this list down and left out a few potions some people would find useful like Thorns, Heart Reach, or Titan. My point is, for serious excursions, players will feel the need to carry sixteen stacks of potions, more if they're a magic user. For reference, you have forty inventory slots and ten hotbar slots. Many of these potions require fishing to make, which is much more time spent than the relatively passive herb growing of the vanilla release potions. This means, of course, that those potions in question(particularly endurance, life force, rage and wrath) are intended as "seldom use" potions for bosses or hard areas.
Shame that turning the difficulty above "normal" ends in you dying like a fucking stink bug, then, huh?
Let's get back to fishing later in our next section and instead talk about farming some more. After The Crimson was added, it was impossible to get the "opposite" sickness's items in your world. You get what you get, either Corruption enemies or Crimson. The problem is that the stuff is notably different, and in some cases, extremely unbalanced when compared to one another. For example, many items related to The Crimson(including the super important Flask of Ichor) reduce defense stat. This is very good. The equivalent items for The Corruption cause a DoT called Cursed Flames. It's not bad, exactly. But it's way worse, comparatively. In addition to that, there are many items you may want from exploration and none of them are guaranteed. You're very likely to get one of each, but it's not a promise. This is particularly true of water chests.
This means that sometimes, it's ideal for you to create another world, bring your character into it, and generally fuck it up(with dynamite) and farm what you want out of it. This is perfectly acceptable to me, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel like it was...an exploit. With the final patch, they made it possible for you to build an artificial biome of the opposite sickness. Slowly and with great effort. This still doesn't help with certain items you may find vital like Flesh Knuckles. It feels like a "single world playthrough" is a challenge.
Finally for this section I want to talk about boss AI specifically. Usually, it's okay. I think little things like having to "trick" Plantera and juke her to dodge is neat. The knowledge that she always follows you a certain way helps you fight her. But. There are a few too many bosses who are soundly defeated by flying circles around them. Literally, the best way to dodge in this game is in wide circles, even the Moon Lord. Especially the Moon Lord. I don't know what Re-Logic could have done to combat this, but given the game's difficulty curve I'm almost glad it exists.
On the subject of bosses, I said a while ago that some things in Terraria felt like they were designed in response to players instead of trying to make a complete game. In the beginning, people would build arenas to fight bosses in. I mean, this is a creativity-driven voxel game, why wouldn't you? It made them notably easier. So, the first time a new boss was added, it was The Wall of Flesh, a boss who steadily traveled toward you, not stopping, and would kill you if you got behind him. Players built a long road in Hell to kill him. The Mechanicals were next and seemed to be more of the same, but all needed quite wide areas to fight, and the new 'meta' was using wings to fly and dodge. A brief respite from this seemingly grudge-driven design philosophy. Next added was Plantera, a boss who's extremely hard, if not impossible to get to an arena: She follows you constantly and thus needs to be kited in very wide circles. That, and you can't control where you're summoning her: You have to find randomly spawned "Plantera Bulbs" and destroy them. Then came The Golem, a boss who you fight in his own specific arena which you can't change until after you kill him. Then the Lunar Pillars which spawn in semi-random places and the Moon Lord, who constantly moves to stay in a certain position in relation to you.
Do you see what I'm saying? It feels as if the game's design has been half, or more, trying to force players to approach it in a single intended way. Maybe I'm wrong and this design philosophy was just an attempt to shake things up. I hope it was and any of the malice I attributed to it was misplaced. Still, I consistently feel boxed-in by this.
The Bad
Here's the thing, though. A lot of Terraria's design feels unfocused, like it was based on what they thought was "cool" instead of a coherent philosophy, or worse...in response to players approaching the game "wrong". More on that later. Let me explain what I mean.
Consumables are at a point in this game where a full "load" of helpful consumes is almost half of my inventory. Are they necessary? Well, that depends on what you're doing. You take a shitload of damage on expert or master difficulty. Defensive consumes are a must, and offensive consumes can even make up for taking more defensive accessories or armor, turning them into ad-hoc defenses in themselves. Consumes are a very important part of this game, to the point that some popular mods add a "potion belt" where you can put up to ten stacks of them. Ten is sometimes not enough.
I need to make a point here, so let's go over what you carried all of the time at various stages in this game. I gotta stress that, this is only potions you always wanted to use. When I'm talking about "too many potions", rare conditional utility potions like gravitation or obsidian skin don't count.
During the vanilla release, you had this stuff.
Restorative: Health and Mana potions.
Helpful: Featherfall, Swiftness, Night Owl, Shine, Danger Sense, Spelunker, and Hunter.
Combat: Ironskin, Regeneration, Archery, Magic Power, food buff, and Mana Regeneration.
Obviously, depending on the weapons you use you can skip some of that. I want to point out that while nobody will want danger sense, spelunker or hunter during a boss fight, these potions are outright vital if you're still searching for things in the world.
The Fishing patch added more of them, mostly combat potions.
It added Ammo Conservation, Endurance, Life force, Rage, Wrath, Summoning, and flasks.
Keep in mind I trimmed this list down and left out a few potions some people would find useful like Thorns, Heart Reach, or Titan. My point is, for serious excursions, players will feel the need to carry sixteen stacks of potions, more if they're a magic user. For reference, you have forty inventory slots and ten hotbar slots. Many of these potions require fishing to make, which is much more time spent than the relatively passive herb growing of the vanilla release potions. This means, of course, that those potions in question(particularly endurance, life force, rage and wrath) are intended as "seldom use" potions for bosses or hard areas.
Shame that turning the difficulty above "normal" ends in you dying like a fucking stink bug, then, huh?
Let's get back to fishing later in our next section and instead talk about farming some more. After The Crimson was added, it was impossible to get the "opposite" sickness's items in your world. You get what you get, either Corruption enemies or Crimson. The problem is that the stuff is notably different, and in some cases, extremely unbalanced when compared to one another. For example, many items related to The Crimson(including the super important Flask of Ichor) reduce defense stat. This is very good. The equivalent items for The Corruption cause a DoT called Cursed Flames. It's not bad, exactly. But it's way worse, comparatively. In addition to that, there are many items you may want from exploration and none of them are guaranteed. You're very likely to get one of each, but it's not a promise. This is particularly true of water chests.
This means that sometimes, it's ideal for you to create another world, bring your character into it, and generally fuck it up(with dynamite) and farm what you want out of it. This is perfectly acceptable to me, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel like it was...an exploit. With the final patch, they made it possible for you to build an artificial biome of the opposite sickness. Slowly and with great effort. This still doesn't help with certain items you may find vital like Flesh Knuckles. It feels like a "single world playthrough" is a challenge.
Finally for this section I want to talk about boss AI specifically. Usually, it's okay. I think little things like having to "trick" Plantera and juke her to dodge is neat. The knowledge that she always follows you a certain way helps you fight her. But. There are a few too many bosses who are soundly defeated by flying circles around them. Literally, the best way to dodge in this game is in wide circles, even the Moon Lord. Especially the Moon Lord. I don't know what Re-Logic could have done to combat this, but given the game's difficulty curve I'm almost glad it exists.
On the subject of bosses, I said a while ago that some things in Terraria felt like they were designed in response to players instead of trying to make a complete game. In the beginning, people would build arenas to fight bosses in. I mean, this is a creativity-driven voxel game, why wouldn't you? It made them notably easier. So, the first time a new boss was added, it was The Wall of Flesh, a boss who steadily traveled toward you, not stopping, and would kill you if you got behind him. Players built a long road in Hell to kill him. The Mechanicals were next and seemed to be more of the same, but all needed quite wide areas to fight, and the new 'meta' was using wings to fly and dodge. A brief respite from this seemingly grudge-driven design philosophy. Next added was Plantera, a boss who's extremely hard, if not impossible to get to an arena: She follows you constantly and thus needs to be kited in very wide circles. That, and you can't control where you're summoning her: You have to find randomly spawned "Plantera Bulbs" and destroy them. Then came The Golem, a boss who you fight in his own specific arena which you can't change until after you kill him. Then the Lunar Pillars which spawn in semi-random places and the Moon Lord, who constantly moves to stay in a certain position in relation to you.
Do you see what I'm saying? It feels as if the game's design has been half, or more, trying to force players to approach it in a single intended way. Maybe I'm wrong and this design philosophy was just an attempt to shake things up. I hope it was and any of the malice I attributed to it was misplaced. Still, I consistently feel boxed-in by this.
There are eighteen pre-hardmode NPCs, six hardmode NPCs, one seasonal NPC, and three optional pets. Re-Logic must have realized this was a problem, because they introduced a system where you benefit from placing them in small bases all over the map. While this is admittedly a good system, it doesn't really fix the problem of like five of six of these motherfuckers needing to go. I don't have a problem with "fun" NPCs like the Zoologist, Golfer or Party Girl. Honest. They're neat. What I have a problem with are NPCs like the Tax Collector, the Truffle or the fucking Pirate Captain who barely do anything for you...or in the case of the Pirate, almost literally nothing. NPCs who only bring one little thing like the Cyborg and Steampunker don't feel great, either.
It would be one thing if they were just in the game somewhere, but thanks to the creative nature of the game and the high damage they take, you're basically forced to care for them. I remember having to deal with bases constructed carelessly by other players and several NPCs dying per night. On my most recent play-through, I even skipped earning several NPCs. If you know me at all, you can probably tell that's a very serious decision.
It would be one thing if they were just in the game somewhere, but thanks to the creative nature of the game and the high damage they take, you're basically forced to care for them. I remember having to deal with bases constructed carelessly by other players and several NPCs dying per night. On my most recent play-through, I even skipped earning several NPCs. If you know me at all, you can probably tell that's a very serious decision.
The Ugly
This is going to be a short, brutal section filled with what I consider the game's worst stuff. Before now, my talking points were pretty broad. These are not. These are very specific.
Fishing, and The Angler. First off, it's cruel to put a slow fishing subgame in a broader game where you're spammed with enemies near 24/7 in most areas. That would be true even if it weren't strictly necessary for the game's most important potions. It's also slower than the already-slow cast-and-wait gameplay seems, because you need to find a good fishing pole, farm good bait, farm sonar and fishing potions, and deal with the Angler.
Speaking of him. I already don't like fishing minigames. This guy makes it a lot worse. For good fishing gear and to complete the game's best informational item, you need to do his quests. Once a day, he'll ask for a quest fish from a certain biome. Something you can't just stock up on. you bring it back and he gives you a randomized reward. Of these, there are six extremely important ones: Three fishing accessories, and three informational accessories. Here's the problem.
Speaking of him. I already don't like fishing minigames. This guy makes it a lot worse. For good fishing gear and to complete the game's best informational item, you need to do his quests. Once a day, he'll ask for a quest fish from a certain biome. Something you can't just stock up on. you bring it back and he gives you a randomized reward. Of these, there are six extremely important ones: Three fishing accessories, and three informational accessories. Here's the problem.
One: It's once a day. If this were just the fact that he always had one quest it would be bad enough, but he makes you wait a pointlessly arbitrary amount of time, exacerbating the issue of already having to grind a ton of these stupid missions for what you want. Oh, and by the way? You couldn't use beds to speed up time passing until the most recent patch.
Two: The six accessories you want are very rare rewards, and until the most recent patch, you could get duplicates. You want the Weather Radio, Sextant and the Pocket Guide so you can finally finish the extremely long-winded cell phone item? Too bad, here's twelve sextants.
Three: Everything else you'll get is basically garbage. The rest of the rewards are either decorative(which you might not want) or fishing consumables, which you're already spending to even do this. It feels wonderful to pop a sonar potion to make this easier and your reward is...a sonar potion.
Two: The six accessories you want are very rare rewards, and until the most recent patch, you could get duplicates. You want the Weather Radio, Sextant and the Pocket Guide so you can finally finish the extremely long-winded cell phone item? Too bad, here's twelve sextants.
Three: Everything else you'll get is basically garbage. The rest of the rewards are either decorative(which you might not want) or fishing consumables, which you're already spending to even do this. It feels wonderful to pop a sonar potion to make this easier and your reward is...a sonar potion.
On top of that, this kid consistently cops an awful fucking attitude with you. That might not seem like a problem to some people, but it's irritating and demoralizing to be forced into dealing with someone who has contempt for you. Ya'll are into Tabletop RPGs, I presume, and you hopefully know the damage a forced interaction with an extremely negative NPC can do.
Healing. So at some point, along with the Golem I believe, they added another tier of armor to attain. Good stuff. Beetle armor for melee, Shroomite armor for ranged, and for magic users? It was spectre armor. Each of these sets came with multiple pieces so you could change around your "sub spec" and the spectre armor had a version with an extremely interesting set bonus: You could heal via your magic damage. In addition to "tanking" and "threat" items recently being added, it felt a lot like the game was adding a trinity of sorts, one that wasn't strictly required, but could enrich multiplayer a lot.
Maybe Spectre Armor was too powerful when it came in. Maybe. However, Re-Logic basically did everything they could to bury the entire concept of healing. Spectre Armor was nerfed no less than twice, the entire concept of magic-based damage was redesigned(needlessly, in my opinion) and the final strike was that the Moon Lord causes a severe debuff to healing received.
Regenerative armor like the Valhalla chest and leg pieces were not only untouched, but remain the easiest way to kill the Moon Lord.
Speaking of Valhalla, the Old One's Army event(a crossover with Dungeon Defender) is miserable and dumb and I hate it. GETTING those pieces includes a pretty severe grind of having to play a tower defense minigame which I find wholly unwelcome. You must approach this game on its terms and its terms only, especially if you're alone. You have to grind seals to get better stuff to grind seals with, and the worst part of it is that you probably really want those Valhalla pieces I just mentioned, and some of the third tier boss's gear is quite nice. I mean, not to be rude but if I wanted to play Dungeon Defender...I'd play Dungeon Defender. trying to recreate it on a 2d plane just flat out doesn't work.
Base Defense. So at some point they decided mobs should be able to bash doors in, with some fucking mobs even removing the door's placement entirely. This pointless stupidity was implemented to add a certain amount of danger to random events(see below) but all it serves to do is restrict your creativity. Now, we have to place doors in weird areas and make dumb looking floating bases. I love my mansion and I consider it the best thing I've built in Terraria, but the fact that it's not safe because I wanted to make a normal looking house drives me up a fucking wall.
It would help if traps and devices were useful, but after you get to hard mode, not even the special traps from the Golem's temple do enough damage.
Speaking of events where your door gets bashed in, Most bosses have some form of chance to spawn randomly if you haven't defeated them yet. Notably, the Eye of Cthulhu and the Mechanicals. I like this. It keeps you on your toes. There's also the Blood Moon and later the Solar Eclipse, which are...fine. I said my piece about door-bashing, and in general these events can mean you're outside dealing with them for the entire time they're active. There's also the Goblin Army, which is important to do once, and the Pirate Invasion, which is worthless, dumb and deserves to be removed from the game. These two events can keep happening after you finish them, and aside from being an enormous waste of your time, can string together along with blood moon and solar eclipse to keep you fighting dumb bullshit that won't go away for 20+ minutes.
The Goblin Army brings the goblin tinkerer into the world. It means you're excited to beat it the first time. After the first, it shouldn't spawn again unless you use an item. In the very least, it shouldn't happen during Hard Mode at all, because the only thing different is a single hard enemy, and the rest die like cannon fodder around him. Just make the Goblin Summoner a rare mob somewhere.
The Pirate Invasion brings the Pirate Captain who, like I said, barely does anything at all. It doesn't drop anything you're very excited to get, aside from the extremely rare discount card. It serves as an annoyance at best, something to distract you from other things you'd rather be doing. It should be removed and its unique items added elsewhere.
I've danced around explaining the difficulty of the game, so we might as well explain it fully in my final section. The good aspect to this is that bosses have better, different AI in Expert/Master and drop unique loot. Normal enemies also drop more loot more frequently. They can cause additional debuffs as well. This is fun. The problem is everything else.
Base Defense. So at some point they decided mobs should be able to bash doors in, with some fucking mobs even removing the door's placement entirely. This pointless stupidity was implemented to add a certain amount of danger to random events(see below) but all it serves to do is restrict your creativity. Now, we have to place doors in weird areas and make dumb looking floating bases. I love my mansion and I consider it the best thing I've built in Terraria, but the fact that it's not safe because I wanted to make a normal looking house drives me up a fucking wall.
It would help if traps and devices were useful, but after you get to hard mode, not even the special traps from the Golem's temple do enough damage.
Speaking of events where your door gets bashed in, Most bosses have some form of chance to spawn randomly if you haven't defeated them yet. Notably, the Eye of Cthulhu and the Mechanicals. I like this. It keeps you on your toes. There's also the Blood Moon and later the Solar Eclipse, which are...fine. I said my piece about door-bashing, and in general these events can mean you're outside dealing with them for the entire time they're active. There's also the Goblin Army, which is important to do once, and the Pirate Invasion, which is worthless, dumb and deserves to be removed from the game. These two events can keep happening after you finish them, and aside from being an enormous waste of your time, can string together along with blood moon and solar eclipse to keep you fighting dumb bullshit that won't go away for 20+ minutes.
The Goblin Army brings the goblin tinkerer into the world. It means you're excited to beat it the first time. After the first, it shouldn't spawn again unless you use an item. In the very least, it shouldn't happen during Hard Mode at all, because the only thing different is a single hard enemy, and the rest die like cannon fodder around him. Just make the Goblin Summoner a rare mob somewhere.
The Pirate Invasion brings the Pirate Captain who, like I said, barely does anything at all. It doesn't drop anything you're very excited to get, aside from the extremely rare discount card. It serves as an annoyance at best, something to distract you from other things you'd rather be doing. It should be removed and its unique items added elsewhere.
I've danced around explaining the difficulty of the game, so we might as well explain it fully in my final section. The good aspect to this is that bosses have better, different AI in Expert/Master and drop unique loot. Normal enemies also drop more loot more frequently. They can cause additional debuffs as well. This is fun. The problem is everything else.
Mostly, extra difficulty is just everything has more health and does more damage. Defense stat is more effective to compensate, but frankly this is almost like a wish on a monkey's paw. It means that, if you want to play a difficult game of Terraria while solo, you're no longer playing a game that has fun, varied specs. It means you're either a god of dodging or you're putting on the gear you need to survive. It means magic characters, who are already squishy, have an amplified disadvantage.
This is hardly the only game which does difficulty like this, so maybe I shouldn't be so hard on it. It's just depressing to have the thought of finally playing a magic-based character in Terraria and ending up in Melee a tenth time because I'm taking so much damage and dying so often.
So that's it. I hope you noticed how often I said "Until the latest update" , because I wanted to stress that Re-Logic did, in fact, try to address some of my issues. Not every fix they added is a great one, but I'm glad they did and I'm thankful that they're trying, even if I didn't always feel their design was always coherent.
So in summation? If you like platformers or voxel games, give it a try. It's not like it's very expensive. Maybe being warned about the bad stuff will help. My advice? Definitely get some friends together...and maybe don't worry about completing the Cell Phone.
This is hardly the only game which does difficulty like this, so maybe I shouldn't be so hard on it. It's just depressing to have the thought of finally playing a magic-based character in Terraria and ending up in Melee a tenth time because I'm taking so much damage and dying so often.
So that's it. I hope you noticed how often I said "Until the latest update" , because I wanted to stress that Re-Logic did, in fact, try to address some of my issues. Not every fix they added is a great one, but I'm glad they did and I'm thankful that they're trying, even if I didn't always feel their design was always coherent.
So in summation? If you like platformers or voxel games, give it a try. It's not like it's very expensive. Maybe being warned about the bad stuff will help. My advice? Definitely get some friends together...and maybe don't worry about completing the Cell Phone.
