September 1, 2025

In my ever-continuing quest to play the weird, the niche, the obscure, and the oddly-platformed, I've been playing Terraria for 3DS lately.

Any non-PC port of Terraria controls poorly, in my opinion. I don’t think anything except a keyboard/mouse setup properly shows what this game is all about. However, over the years, Re-logic have been able to make decently competent controller mapping for the game that works fine.

That said, I actually think the 3DS port has the best controls? It’s basically the same as any other controller version of the game, but it also uses the touch screen for some more precise inputs, as well as optional things like switching items faster and map scrolling. It feels really good to play once you get used to the auto-cursor.

The update version is obviously older, I believe it’s largely equivalent to the desktop version 1.2.1 or thereabouts, though it does feature some fixes and changes from the early 1.3 hotfixes (while not actually including the content of 1.3). It’s a charmingly dated version of the game, and still absolutely peak! It’s a decent way to play Terraria, and all things considered, pretty beginner-friendly :3

Also it still has a lot of the old console exclusive stuff that’s been removed from the PlayStation/Xbox versions over the years, so have at it!

~ Alex Amelia Pine