The sheer amount of love, dedication and effort put in this game through the years should be more than enough to convince almost anyone interested to buy it. Luckily for those who remain doubtful, there's still much more to strengthen the case.

In essence, you are thrown into a beautifully crafted 2D world with nothing but your clothes and some basic equipment. From there onward it's a riveting and ever expanding journey of discovery and growth. A huge randomly generated world awaits you, filled with different biomes, ever-changing weather, countless and diverse monsters to fight and a bunch of secrets for you to uncover. The possibilities are really astounding, both in the amount of things you can craft and build as in the extensions available for you to explore. There's also a nice storyline, materialized in a series of simple events to be performed and bosses to be defeated to push the game forward. But the really mesmerizing part is the whole universe that surround and enriches that fairly basic premise.

Everything you see in the screen at anytime can by the end of the game be literally destroyed and rebuilt at will. The world is yours to craft and terraform at your heart's content, and in this aspect Terraria offers limitless hours of amusement for those creative enough to enjoy its possibilities. Want a basic not at all fancy house? Well, even for the simplest one you can indulge in multiple styles of furniture and building blocks with different crafting requirements. And not even to mention if you want to go all architectural and pompous in your designs and level of detail. The amount of tools and elements put at your disposal, whether you wanna use them or not, is simply astounding, but you never get it forcefully shoved down your throat if it's not your cup of tea and you'll rather keep it simple. To top it all off, there's a nice cast of NPC characters to meet and special events that can be triggered to add some extra flavor. And, yes, a fishing mini-game built in. For when you just wanna sit back and relax.

Rounding things up, the game also looks and sounds really great. The soundtrack, even at close to 300 hours of game-time, hasn't got the least tiring, being of great quality and with an astounding variety of themes. It complements the world perfectly, changing according to biome, event or boss fight to make sure it never gets even near to boring you. Combat is also nicely done, with great diversity of weapons and different styles to master, each with favored equipment for optimal results.

Overall, I honestly think Terraria is a must have in any gamer's library. And for the amount of content you get, it's even cheap as hell.

Edit: As of November 2021, with the game still receiving quality updates and caring attention from it's developers 10 years after it's release, it's impossible for me not to nominate it for the "Labor of Love" award.