items are selectable solutions to problems in-game. the game throws a problem and ideally the player has to find and choose the right solution(s) to tackle the problem. games with good mechanical design that present unique and interesting problems will generally have unique and interesting solutions (or items) too. games with stuffty minmax-based mechanics like damage or health or defense have only one solution to the problem: have more health, do more damage, have higher defense. that's the intended solution, and the items will naturally offer this solution through arbitrary bonuses (+5 hp, +3 damage). games that have number minmax as an actual intended mechanic are well abstracted and easy to play but are poorly designed. the solution to having low defense will ALWAYS be to equip an item that offers the highest bonus to defense, and vice versa. this makes the solution feel mindless and dumb.
it all boils down to how abstract the game mechanics are. games with abstract mechanics like position-based stuff or verticality pose easy to understand problems with flexible complexity solutions. blocks in Minecraft are breakable and that's an easy to understand abstraction of matter in real life. the complexity of the solutions is up to the player: you can use an axe to chop down one tree, or 10 blocks of TNT to destroy a forest. both are viable solutions but range in complexity for solving the same problem, and the complex solution is more rewarding emotionally and statistically (you feel smart and you have more wood). some crafting recipes follow similar suit, as you can use coal or charcoal interchangeably which changes how you approach the game, from either blowing up forests or blowing up caves. and, the enemies can be blown up too. its a complex solution to many problems, all thanks to how well abstracted minecraft is.
in terraria you have a health bar. you can increase your health in multiple ways (items, potions) but all of the methods of increasing your health are simple and don't offer any level of complexity or room for synergy. in that sense terraria is content bloated with multiple, easy solutions to the same problem and is not a good game. minecraft has multiple solutions of varying complexity that can tackle multiple problems, and all of the items in the game are very deliberate for this goal, which is why there aren't 100 different axes or pickaxes, but only one (of varying quality)
[both minecraft and terraria have building as a mechanic but only one really builds the game around it]