When comparing Terraria vs Minecraft - Pocket Edition, the Slant community recommends Terraria for most people. In the question“What are the best Android games without in-app purchases/paywalls?” Terraria is ranked 9th while Minecraft - Pocket Edition is ranked 81st. The most important reason people chose Terraria is:
Terraria uses a bright color palette and an upbeat chiptune soundtrack to ease you into its world. However, once you start exploring and spend time in it you'll notice it's not as cozy as it first seemed to be. Blood Moons that rouse the dead from their graves. Goblin armies trying to destroy everything in their wake. Vast and dark cave systems, filled with odd creatures and various dangers. Ancient ruins, teeming with the restless dead and evil spirits. Pockets of decaying land, thriving with misshapen monstrosities. It's really fun to explore and discover something new about the world of Terraria.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Intriguing world
Terraria uses a bright color palette and an upbeat chiptune soundtrack to ease you into its world. However, once you start exploring and spend time in it you'll notice it's not as cozy as it first seemed to be. Blood Moons that rouse the dead from their graves. Goblin armies trying to destroy everything in their wake. Vast and dark cave systems, filled with odd creatures and various dangers. Ancient ruins, teeming with the restless dead and evil spirits. Pockets of decaying land, thriving with misshapen monstrosities. It's really fun to explore and discover something new about the world of Terraria.
Pro Allows for freedom of expression for all ages, all at your own pace
Terraria has all kinds of tools and materials you can use to build whatever you can imagine. From housing, to furniture, to weapons, to types of structure, the possibilities are almost endless. This is great for children who enjoy building and problem solving, and for adults who enjoy the same. It also makes for a great objective-less game, where you can do just about anything you want at your own pace.
Pro Playing with friends allows for endless scenarios
Up to 8 players can join any Terraria world. You can progress through the game normally, build a race course and compete in it, or split into factions and wage war against each other. The scenarios are endless, you just have to let loose your creativity.
Pro Lots of community servers, tutorials, and streams
Terraria has a large community of players on every platform including mobile, desktop, and console. Because of this, there are many servers to play on, as well as tutorials and Let's Plays. Finding content or help getting started is quite easy.
Pro Fun combat
It starts out simple, with you whacking away at slow moving zombies and flying eyes, gradually shifting to more fierce and fearsome enemies such as flying demons, agile lizardmen, and many more. To survive you'll have to be always on the move, dodge enemy attacks, and be accurate when you retaliate.
There are also plenty of weapons to choose from. Melee weapons such as swords, hammers, lances, and flails. Ranged weapons such as bows, crossbows, rifles, and miniguns. And various items that allow you to cast spells. Whatever you choose, it feels great to destroy hordes of enemies.
Pro Completely new experience with each generated world keeps the game fresh
Each new world a player starts is randomly generated, making for a different experience every time a new world is started. There are 38 biomes - snowy, cold, medium/lush, dry/warm, and neutral biomes, each with numerous sub-biomes (such as mountainous, rivers, forested, swamp, beach and more). These biomes each have their own set of blocks and configurations, and each frozen river biome will be different from the next frozen fiver biome you see.
Pro Great freedom of expression thanks to the sandbox gameplay
In Minecraft you can really do whatever you want. If exploring different landscapes is your thing, creative mode lets you do that. Building castles or villages, or even sculptures, computers (complete with redstone logic), or unique builds can be done such as roller coasters or replicas of objects like the Enterprise from Star Trek.
For more combat focused gameplay, enter survivor mode and you can fight monsters, gather resources, craft weapons, build traps and farms and much more.
Pro Local multiplayer option for when there is no internet connection
Minecraft can be played with other people locally over Wi-Fi. This is great for those that have friends or family they would like to play with locally, or when there is no way to connect the device to the internet.
Pro Plenty of fun customizable skins for those interested in customizing their look
Minecraft for Android offers player skins, so users can customize their avatar's look. While some of the skins are free, there are others that cost money through in-app-purchases offered as skin packs. All skin packs are $0.99 a piece.
Pro Active development means plenty of new features and fixed bugs
There are updates to the game all the time, new features do get added at a good pace, which means that not only do bugs get fixed but that the game will constantly be growing as the platform grows with it, which allows more demanding features to be added with time.
Pro Plenty of expansive mods available if the core game gets too boring
Minecraft can be modded in order to bring extended functionality to the game. Using mods created by the community, users are able to theme the game to their liking, such as theming the game to look like Grand Theft Auto or adding extra crafting objects.
Pro Addictive gameplay makes the title difficult to put down
There is always one more thing that the player can get done before turning off the game. Building a structure and wanting to complete it - oh but you ran out of materials. Well you will therefore need to go down into the caves again. Oh you died in a cave and need to go back before your items disappear - better get down there again. And so it continues. There is always one more thing to do before you are "done", which is the underlying appeal of the game, never wanting to stop playing.
Pro Monika
This is cool!!
Pro Good controller and button mapping support allows the game to be easily played with many different controllers
For those who would like to play with a controller, support was added in July 2015. Anyone with a HID supported controller can easily connect through Bluetooth. They can then go into the games settings to map which buttons they want to use. This customizability means that you can now adjust the controller to your liking when using an HID controller.
Pro Do not log
Cons
Con Progress can feel slow
Quite often you'll have to collect tons of materials to craft the necessary tools, equipment, and boss summoning items to advance. This can take a really long time, especially if you're unlucky with the items dropped by mobs.
Con Low replay value for those who play it as an adventure game
Terraria is a sandbox platform-adventure game, so it partly hinges on beating various bosses. If you play it purely for the sake of defeating all the bosses, you might have little else to do afterwards. Restarting the game won't be as enjoyable either because you'll already know what to expect, causing continued play without a new goal feel mundane or boring.
Con Laggy multiplayer gameplay
Depending on the speed of your device and graphics quality, this game tends to lag and load slowly when using the multiplayer function.
Con Not as deep as other versions
Minecraft - Pocket Edition does not have as much content as other versions due to the app needing a limited size for mobile devices and their small storage. This means there is missing content in the mobile version over the PC or console versions. It is getting comparative better, but still is lacking due to the platform.