Terraria isn’t a BULLETHELL game
Is Terraria a bullet hell game well I’d have to say no including even the modded content I know some of you are immediately going to start yelling at me about oh but look at mutant from Fargo’s cargo mod or the the Supreme calamitus boss from the hit mode Calamity mod but
Calm your tiny little Mount since I will be elaborating on my thoughts in more detail later in the video Terraria in its purest and most casual form is a 2d open world survival craft casual Sandbox game where the main focus is debatably on building Mining and exploring of
Course you have to defend yourself from enemies as well on your journey throughout the game a lot people say the most unique thing about Terraria when comparing it to Minecraft is its lengthy and plentiful vertical progression of which The Gatekeepers are the many many bosses of the game which is exactly what
We’re going to be talking about the the bosses are the reason some people call Teraria bullet game the main perpetrator being Empress of light and maybe lunatic ctist and moon Lord as well in some people’s cases many keep calling EOL the buetel boss which it technically is I
Guess sure it’s UND debatable that she does shoot out a ton of projectiles but it’s not even about the amount in all honesty bullet in general is a word I see getting thrown around a lot within the online space as like this misconceived generalization of difficulty in 2D sidescroller SL Metroid
Vanas for example I found this random Hollow night video where this guy fights grim and it’s called Hollow night bullet Hill boss okay first of all this is the farthest thing from a bullet Hill boss uh lifts glasses both projectile amount wise and literally the entire game wise
This is a soulslike Metroid Vania with its main focus being on reactionary gameplay where you have to be aware on how to dodge and attack via the knowledge gathered from for attempts that sounds kind of familiar if I’m being real honest with you of course most bullet bosses also require dodging
Skills but the reactionary skills I’d say that in most cases of buetel the reactionary part comes secondary to pattern recognition and positioning skills the traditional bullets are usually quite slow but overridden with an overwhelming amount of projectiles which you have to train your for mentioned positioning for the Dodge you
Have to train your eyes to spot gaps between the projectile patterns and find this Hidden Trail hidden in this pattern that you can slowly and carefully float through definition wise bullet Hells AKA danmaku also known as manic Shooters are a sub Sher of shoot them up video games featuring large amounts of projectiles
The players characters are required to dodge this description from Wikipedia almost describes the action side of Terraria the boss fights in specific or well the single boss fight that being the Empress of light though if we Trace back to what I just said a few second
Seconds ago you have to train your eyes to spot gaps between the projectile patterns and find this Hidden Trail hidden in this pattern that you can slowly and carefully float through gameplay-wise it’s totally different the biggest problem with terraria’s bullet held side of things is its movement system you have omnidirectional movement
As you do in most bullet head games but there’s a huge difference with the addition of dynamic speed let’s bring up the most stereotypical example of bullet Toho here you can move omnidirectionally without a single setback or problem though in Terraria we have this thing called limited flight time this
Prohibits vertical Movement by a ton and makes vertical movement a resource management Min game don’t even get me started on the prehard mode movement accessories which go against every law of bullet movement systems though that isn’t even the biggest problem you know what is velocity in Tojo and most other
Bullet Hil games you press D instantly move right at Max Speed then let go of D and your character stops the instant you do in Terraria you press D speed up over the span of around a second reach maximum speed let go of the slide about four
Blocks and then finally come to a complete halt same goes for vertical movement though experienced Terraria players have their own way of dealing with these issues for example using a dashing accessory immediately set you at Max movement Speed without having to wind up your legs with the Hermes boots
And the Slime saddle immediately makes you fall down at more than maximum speed after equipping it so that you won’t have to wait for your upward swing velocity to wear off and then finally fall down at a mediocre speed of course you can also utilize hooks to get an immediate Max velocity boost
Omnidirectionally this in its own way makes terraria’s movement system much more in-depth than our traditional bullet HTH now the topic many people have been waiting for mod Terraria Terraria is an extreme welcoming game when it comes to moding since it’s in the scripting language of C which is one
Of the more straightforward ones due to this there have been quite a few mods being made especially now that the mod loader is on Steam most people who mod the game or play mods generally gravitate towards the boss fight side of things this is basically just an over
Complicated way to transition over to talking about modded bosses anyways there are indeed a few modded bosses that either follow the traditional bullet Hill patterns or straight up copy paste other bullet game bosses into Terraria though something I’ve kind of realized over the years is that
Importing a bullet H boss into a game which isn’t meant for bullet Hells with its movement system doesn’t really make the game a bullet game nor play like a bullet game I know it sounds stupid but hear me out playing a bullet game is like playing a fast-paced game of chess
You aim to position your piece in a safe spot keeping in mind where you want to move it later in the game game same goes for Terraria bullet bosses which we’ll take Supreme calamitus as an example for she quite literally has attacks refer to as bullet HS which they really are I
Mean look at all these projectiles where would you move from here I mean I’d move here but oh wait if I did I’d run out of wing flight time unlucky okay let’s see I guess I’ll move here then oh wait the diagonal downward movement in this game
Is not to even be considered if you have built up or neutral upward so that’s a nogo I guess I’ll move into this space then oh wait I forgot my slime saddle at home okay I’ll just make the traditional diagonal Dash move and maybe another one and maybe another one
And maybe another one and that’s how the circle Strat was born anyways I think you get what I’m trying to say Terraria has a much more restricted in-depth movement system that requires you to familiarize yourself with it the movement options SL physics limit your choices when it comes to dodging in most
Situations mostly due to Sliding now let’s see what would happen if we gave Terraria a traditional bullet Hill game movement system with the EXO box from Calamity the weaving and dodging becomes a piece of cake I can get to where I want to go without a problem in the
World if only a bit slower if we took out Dynamic velocity from Terraria it would be a much much easier game though the velocity is exactly what sets it apart from the traditional bullet Hills and I personally love that it gives it much more soul and uniqueness speaking
Of which the amount of bullets does not matter when it comes to difficulty look at the infernum do or Thanos or yaron for sake this shit’s practically a Dark Souls rolling simulator at this point and that’s why I personally love it more than any Bullet Head game
Anyways that was my soy jacking outing of some definitely inconsequential opinions and takes on Terraria the crazy thing is that according to all my logic undertale isn’t the bullet Hill game either technically in most cases at least I mean there are definitely a few bullet H attacks here and there but the
Hardest part of the game is a literal platformer so give me a break I guess it’s my own fault for trying to make a video on such a delicate and specific subject whatever hope you enjoyed it either way Peace join our Clash of Clans CL Clan Clan Clan CL code this is the code
A little change of pace from my usual content. I enjoyed making this a lot, though I kinda realised that my discussion is generally all over the place. I’ll add a shortened explanation in the comments for anyone confused with my takes.
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๐ต “Stained Brutal Calamity” – DM Dokuro
๐ต “Empress of Light” – Scott Lloyd Shelly
๐ต “The Grimm Troupe” – Christopher Larkin
๐ต “U.N. Owen Was Her? Jazz Arrange” – dante / SoundCirclet
๐ต “You Left Your Canvas a Mile Back” – Sidetracked
๐ต “Edenic Whispers” – ENNWAY
๐ต “Gelatine Groove!!” – ENNWAY
27 Comments
My explanation is kinda all over the place and full-schizo in the video, so here's a more conclusive take (IT IS VERY MUCH A GENRE PURIST TAKE):
Terraria is not a bullethell game, at least with it's vanilla movement system. The "dynamic" speed does not allow for precise enough movements to make a "traditionally bullethell-y" boss in the game without mods providing you with some sort of mount (like the Exo-Box). The bullethell attacks in Terraria (and it's mods) differ to traditional bullethell attacks in terms of the WAY you process / dodge them. In terraria, you more-so just have to react to the attack and stray away from it (usually), while in "traditional" bullethell games, you have to more-so recognize the pattern the bullets are spreading in / where the bullets are coming from and then position yourself in a way where you KNOW what your next move is going to be.
Even shorter take: different movement system = harder to do traditional bullethell. the attacks are fundamentally dodged differently and looked at differently than in bullethell games (in most cases).
People tend to think terraria is only about the bossfights and forget about the core game. When modding they add a bunch of bosses that are either bullethelly shitstorms or copies from other bosses like the bazillion worm bosses in popular mod:tm:.
I think this is an unpopular opinion but i dont like calamity and what it has turned the game into. I actually hate how it set the standard for community content on terraria
Ive seen people call ULTRAKILL's flesh prison a bullet hell before.
Now make a video correcting urself
"why terraria is not a Dark souls game"
Nsksnsebeisbsi
(it's a joke)
I ainโt watching all that๐the game itself isnโt a bullet hell just certain bosses and modded bosses are
So queen slime
TERRARIAEUH IS NAWHT A BULLEAT HILL GEMAQ!
CALAMITY MOD ENTERED THE ROOM, FARGO SOUL MOD ENTERED THE ROOM : ALLOW US TO INTRODUCE OURSELVES
If people think terraria is a bullet hell, they have never played a bullet hell before
This video was great, you made many good points and genuinely made me think you were a wayyy larger content creator.
I was talking with some other composers about the current state of modded terraria.
One of them brought up something called "The Doom Curse" which basically means that the player base becomes too skilled
at the game. Rendering anything that's thrown at them on the same scale as EOC or King Slime. They had a really solid point. I used to think Plantera was extremely
difficult. Now she's a breeze. Even on some modded difficulties.
It's only a matter of time.
Nice video, but I think instead of saying "dynamic velocity", I think it would be more concise to just say "acceleration".
0:40 ima have to disagree, bosses are one of, if not the biggest, points of terraria.
Yeah, now beat Masoquist mutant no hit
When looking for mods people forget that fighting bosses is less than 50% of the game. I wish there were more expansive mods that focused on the other aspects of Terraria instead of just bosses.
Interesting video! Iโm mostly a bullet hell player who sometimes plays terraria – I agree that the movement really sets it apart from the traditional bullet hell/danmaku genre, although there always tends to be bits of gray areas since, for example, some bullet hell shmups do have some inertia (ew) and delineating where movements stop being โbullet hell-likeโ becomes really divisive.
Something I absolutely think couldโve been included in this video is the use of hitboxes. Terraria tends to use sprite accurate player and bullet hitboxes, whereas itโs practically a staple for danmaku to have generous hitboxes for both (some going so far as to only check for collision on every other frame, or having โ0x0โ hitboxes, so as to make even the most impossibly tight squeezes doable.) Even outside the movement, this is a pretty integral reason for the relative lack of projectile density – itโs just not realistically possible to dodge anything tighter.
Kinda based
1:50 ima have to stop you right there, hollow knight ain't a souls-like either.
Ayo, nice video. I appreciate the effort to clarify the terminology – I feel like most people use the term "bullet hell" as an emotional quantifier as opposed to a descriptive one. "Bullet hell is when there are bullets on screen and I find it hard to not get hit by them", basically.
One more thing I would add is that, at least in the scope of Touhou, is that "bullet hell" also acts as a sub-genre of visual design and artistic spectacle. "Unnecessary" bullets are sprayed across the screen not because they hope to hit the player, but more because they're there to serve as "paint" or "brushmarks" for the "painting" of bullets that the pattern represents, hence the game's focus on pattern recognition and visual parsing. It's rare you ever see bosses outside of the genre lean into this concept of "bullets as artistry", but it's pretty much the defining aspect of 2hu and 2hu-style shmup gameplay.
Some tMod bosses approach this concept, but it's only on the low-key side. Alot of interesting visual patterns are limited by the capabilities of the Terrarian, from movement mechanics to even hitbox size, whereas bullet-hell games with more straightforward movement and smaller hitboxes get to go absolutely wild with their patterns with not as severe of an impact on balancing or fairness. IMO, Touhou-style danmaku at its peak is a dazzling, mesmerising spectacle, like a playable fireworks show – which is why it irks me to see the term "Touhou" used to just mean "lots of bullets on screen". It's kind of like how people call every hard game the "Dark Souls" of [genre], it's just disappointingly reductive.
That being said, I encourage any who are interested to try and give the 2hu games a shot. They're great fun and tbh any experience with the gameplay flow of "high-end" modded Terraria does do a lot to acclimate/prepare you for "true" danmaku gameplay, so it's not as bad as you think.
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This was very interesting. Videos like this remind me that video game genres are a very loose concept and mean many different things to different people. There isn't really a correct definition for most of these genres and really just down to opinion. Best example is roguelikes vs rougelites, I've never seen somebody talk about the differences between the two without starting an argument.
The Empress of Light fight specifically greatly encourages macro-dodging (avoiding the patterns completely), as opposed to the micro-dodging (weaving through patterns) much more common in actual bullet hells
nice video :3
Just @GitGudWO
Gitgud actually paying for the next 30 videos, huge sauce
i agree, though i think it's fair to say some modded bosses have bullet-hell segments, just non-traditional ones due to the movement mechanics, but yeah, that doesn't make the game a bullet hell at all, but i do think that terraria players are more likely to enjoy bullet hells because of what terraria (especially modded) gets you used to. As a truly pro gamer myself who has sunk many hundreds of valuable hours of my life into bullet hells, my two cents are that different movement mechanics wouldn't make it not a bullet hell, just not a traditional one (and also many bullet hell games do demand as much, and even sometimes more reaction time than they do precise positioning, timing is also often important).
I was playing Homeward journey terraria mod and it had a boss where depending on the biome you fight it the boss changes attacks but it had you in a box and shot loads of projectiles in a bullet hell like way and you get a mount before it like the exo chair thing
Even daytime eol for me isn't bullet-hell, you needn't to dodge random projectiles and go into tight places and it's consistent