This review was originally a comment I made replying to someone about whether they should buy Starbound since they like Terraria. Still basically is a review of the game though.

Bosses and Dungeons

Terraria and Starbound are without a doubt similar. They're both pixelated 2D sidescrollers trhat have you craft, explore, and fight monsters. In terms of a sense of progression however, Terraria takes the cake. Terraria has many bosses and dungeons that you have to complete in a sequential order as you progress through the game. Starbound, while having dungeons and bosses, is far simpler in practice. In Starbound the major in-game dungeons are story content that is unlocked after doing the same object scanning quest for that dungeon's respective race. The dungeons themselves while somewhat aesthetically pleasing, feel quite boring in my opinion. You go through their not-so-challenging obstacles and enemies to a final boss that is for the most part mechanically simple and thus, easy to beat. Hit the boss when it's armor is down, fight waves of enemies until the boss arrives and then shoot it, Switch the switches until you can use a device to damage the boss. Starbound just isn't interesting in that regard.


Exploration

After you reach the game's hub world and beat the first story dungeon is when you get the ability to explore all that Starbound's procedurally generated universe has to offer. You go to your ship's bridge, and sit in the captain's chair to open the starmap. There you'll see an endless number of stars for you to warp to, each star with it's own tier and and different planets based on the star's tier. You pick a star, warp to it, then fly to a planet or moon of your choice. Different planets have different difficulties, worldgen dungeons, and species, so you have to make sure you're ready for that planet's mobs and climate. Along with the different mobs come different dungeons. Science facilities, prisons, and egyptian style temples, Starbound has quite a bit to offer. These dungeons are scattered on different types of planets so looking to the wiki is helpful when trying to look for something specific. Compared to the worldgen dungeons of Terraria, Starbound's dungeons are again, inferior. You'll be mining underground, or exploring the surface and see them. When you enter them they have mobs and loot to either collect or kill, then you leave. So long as you have equipment that's for that tier of planet/star they aren't too challenging, although the same could be said about Terraria and it's dungeons. Terraria has places like the hives, Jungle Temple, and the Dungeon with their rather challenging enemies, rare loot, and sometimes bosses. Something that the Starbound dungeons largely lack aside from the occasional miniboss. Starbound does have something that Terraria doesn't when it comes to exploration, and that is villlages. Like with the rest of the game, different planets and stars mean different villages. The villages contain a single race and are decorated with blocks and furniture that reflects that race. These villages also have loot to reap and merchants to barter with. However, you can't break too many blocks in the village or else the village guards will try to kill you. Some villagers will also have rnadomly generated quest, although they're not very varied and don't offer a great reward, except for maybe a crew member if you're lucky. There's also in sapce mech combat that only really gets interesting once you get upgraded mech parts that I feel are a little too difficult to get considering how small of a role mechs actually play in the game.


Loot and Combat

Starbound's loot consist of randomly generated wapons with random stats, cosmetic items, potions, armor, etc., just like Terraria, but again Terraria has better loot. Aside from the unique weapons, the loot in Starbound isn't all that interesting going through the game until you reach endgame. It isn't like Terraria where you're scrrambling to find a magic mirror before your friends or get a particular item for your build. You're going through the game equipping armor that's better than you last, finding stronger weapons, and equipping some of the many cosmetic items that the game gives you. And that brings us to combat. Without a doubt, Terraria has better combat than Starbound. Terraria has wings, a variety of magical items, a variety of magical swords, and more. Starbound has a variety of gun types, but most aren't very useful at all, and all the swords, axes, and spears are essentially the same item aside from a random secondary ability given to it. The enemies in Starbound are also pretty lackluster. No matter what planet you're on, you'll usually see the same enemies you've seen on other planets. Starbound's enemies somehow are somehow less varied across planets than Terraria's are on just one.


Building

I think Starbound wins in this category because of the matter manipulator, the block breaking and placing tool in Starbound. It allows you you upgrade it to have a longer range, break blocks faster, and increase the amount of blocks it can break simultaneaously. Another thing I feel I should note is that placing walls in Starbound is easier because it doesn't force you to fill any tiny seam in the wall, all wall blocks just seamlessly connect which helps save blocks.


Modding

Modding in Starbound is the reason I'm still playing it. Mods help to even the playfield between the two games and what allows Starbound (in my opinion) to shine. The Starbound mods that are currently availble help to improve the game in numerous ways and to add more content. One of the most, if not the most, popular mods for Starbound, Frackin' Universe, helps to fill the gaps between it and Terraria. It adds many planets, stars, biomes, and some bosses that really help to put a fresh coat of paint on the game after playing it a few times on vanilla. I highly reccomend getting the game and playing with Frackin' Universe as it really does bring Starbound in-line with Terraria (in my opinion)


Conclusion/TL;DR

Throughout the comparison it may seem as though I'm trying to paint Starbound in a negative light, however that isn't what I mean to show. My impressions of the two games are this:

Terraria - Quality > Quantity

Starbound - Quantity > Quality

There are a lot more mechanics in both games that I did not mention simply because this comment would be going on forever.

Modding is what helps to keep me and many others interested in Starbound, and all you have to do is subscribe to the mod on the Steam Workshop to play them.

Just to clarify, this is my opinion on the two games when compared.

EDIT: Someday I'll figure out how to properly bold text...