Terraria is less survival sandbox and more metroidvania. It garnered a lot of surface level comparisons to Minecraft (randomly generated world, building a base, caving required to find ores to smelt into bars to get better tools/armor), but Terraria has all of that as ways to progress and grow stronger instead of just being things you can do in the sandbox for fun/survival. It’s less about survival and more about finding ways to increase your DPS/Mobility/Defense to fight bosses. Although you can still flex your creativity to make visually appealing bases (and you want to have multiple, one in each non-evil biome and one underground, trust me).