A Great Experience in Simulated Dimensions

Cryogenic Simulation by IterationFunk, is a master class in what a modpack should be. If I were to define what makes a good modpack it would come down to three main criteria. A strong central theme, a well curated mod list, and well balanced progression. But what makes for a great modpack? Innovative ideas, structured progression, and breaking the mold for what makes a standard minecraft playthrough different.
We start our journey in a void world, nothing but a monitor with some lore and broken portals. This central hub is the base for our exploration of the different simulations that the pack asks us to beat. Each simulation provides a different challenge and progression that must be accomplished before you can move on to the next. For example, in the first simulation your main goal will be to produce steel and that same steel production will follow you throughout the remainder of the playthrough as steel becomes a key resource that will be used in crafting more advanced materials. The guidebook, while a bit nebulous at times, provides for structured support on how you are meant to be progressing and giving out specific tasks and goals to accomplish in order to finish that specific simulation challenge.
The simulations is where this pack shines, each simulation has its own theme and set of challenges that test you in different ways. Generally I have found that exploration and combat in modpacks is either undertuned making it unnecessary or completely broken making levels of progression get completely skipped. Cryogenic Simulation managed to make exploration challenging and rewarding without being overpowered. Certain key resources are hidden from the player, in simulation 1 this is in the form of experience books, in simulation 2 this is sooty marble in the dimensions dungeons, and in 3 its the certuz quarts hidden underneath the high bedrock layer. This really shines in simulation 2 and 3, while necessary in simulation 1 exploration only serves to locate key resources like Clay. They could have taken the easy way out and just made all the ores/resources you need found underground in caves and have you go mining but instead Simulation 2 has dungeons spread across the land and your reward for conquering each dungeon is a slew of resources that you can use in that worlds progression which saves a lot of time over doing tedious crafting and locating raw resources. Simulation 3 has what I would call Battle Towers for being so tall and dangerous but the tower itself can be torn down for usable resources and inside holds more key resources for that simulations progression. You're never finding some random late-game items; it's always loot tailored to that specific simulation's demands and are easy enough to find to be useful.
Now lets talk the mid-late game, After unlocking simulation 3 and getting access to Applied Energistics the modpack slows down like a car in gridlock traffic. Its at this time when you have to take a huge stepback and start building out centralized storage and passive automation of many key resources in order to set yourself up for the late-game. Automated quarries and simple mob farms are going to be key here because of how crafting and automation heavy the pack is going to become. Now unlike alot of other modpacks Cryogenic Simulation warns you in advance that its going to start getting automation heavy and outlines a number of key resources that you should automate now to save you time later on. I liked this alot because usually what ends up happening in the late game comes across like a suckerpunch to the head. Many modpacks dont provide a good ladder for the grind and just kinda drop you into it. If youve ever played UniversIO you know what I'm talking about. Its as if the author didnt know how to resolve the end of their pack and simply wanted to pad the gametime by introducing a massive resource grind. Cryogenic Simulation does the opposite, it lets you know that the grind is coming and gives you cheap tools to automate it. AE2 items are very cheap compared to other packs which makes building out automation more about the puzzle and less about the grind. Now the final end-game grind to finish out the pack does have some super massive resource sinks taking millions of items but even that grind wasnt too bad because you are given extremely powerful ways to generate raw resources. The World Wyrms while flavorful present a unique challenge in powering them but the reward is resource post-scarcity. I would say that the kinda out of place Crop item grind was a bit of a slog as you need 9 different farm crops in the amounts of tens of thousands in order to finish one of the final items but apart from that every other crafting challenge up to that point felt rewarding to accomplish.

In addition, what I enjoyed the most out of this modpack is the variety of crafting puzzles that were presented. While resources are cheap, the challenge is setting up passive automation to produce the final outputs. Hyper Nutritious Wyrm milk for instance, took multiple resources processed in different ways in order to produce it. All the input items by that point are extremely cheap but the challenge was feeding them into the system in efficient ways. The Thermoelectric generator is a good one as well, an early multiblock machine that produces massive amounts of energy that will get you to the end-game before nuclear options. Keeping it stocked full of fuel provides a neat challenge early on before you can easily produce its fuels via simulation chambers and automated mining. The changes to Botania were probably my favorite, usually Early game botania is spam endoflames to make mana until you can unlock the better flowers later on. But by removing that entirely and replacing it with The Primal mana resource, producing Botania’s end-game materials didnt feel like a massive slog where you are always waiting around for more mana.
At a playtime of around 75 Hours to complete, assuming an advanced understanding of modded minecraft, Cryogenic Simulation is a great modpack that I would recommend to people looking to dip their feet into modded minecraft. It makes tech mods very approachable while explaining the key insights needed in setting up automation chains and general resource management. It doesnt rely on you already being an expert level player. This is something that quote unquote Expert Modpacks always seem to miss at least for me, an expert level modpack should mean that there will be crafting and automation challenges to solve and not that crafting bread will first take 30 steps and 15 different machines.