This pack was my first modpack I have ever really gotten into and after replaying I noticed many holes in its progression and incentives for questlines causing for a very boring and stale experience. The kitchen-sinked mod picks throughout the pack are very generic and is a replica of many other modpacks but as a starter it works well to get many people familiar with mods that they would see in other packs but does not stay consistent with the RPG theme with many tech mods and others included. Difficulty spikes occur often within the pack sometimes feeling unfair and just weird and awkward for gameplay and can also bore the player into demotivation.

Performance Specs
CPU: Ryzen 5 3600 / Ryzen 7 7700x
Memory: 32 GB DDR4 CL32 3600 MT/s / 32 GB DDR5 CL30 6000 MT/s
GPU: GeForce RTX 3070 / Radeon RX 7900 XTX

This pack is one of the first packs I have tried (second one) and the experience is amazing, it's great with all the tech mods and magic mods. I do see that it's missing some potential from being a highly performant pack and it stutters a little bit from time to time but overall, it's incredibly divergent with all its content!!

Gameplay:The storyline is one of the best fully fledged storylines due to the fact it had careful planning with the difficulty of the boss and how far the player has progressed. Thew tech mods are completely optional which I find great because I don't want to be confused while looking for a boss (In other words other modpacks require you to complete said tech mod before advancing) Along with the modpack picking the best for its theme (example Graveyard mod to show the world being untamed or wild)
Performance: Now when I started out in the modpack it was definitely heavy on my pc (not too heavy but heavy enough for a noticeable fps drop) but luckily this pack is versatile to anyone's pc!!
Aesthetics: Very nice that they have their own music discs, and the custom resource pack for the pack is definitely one of my favorites, the only thing I do ask is putting some music from the OST's and music discs into the game.

Definitely Reccommend!!

Prominence oh Prominence, if you think that your 2 minute made kitchen sink pack is bad because it's barely configured, try looking at this pack! Because even with all the "balans", custom items, quest and everything, this pack does almost none of it right. Let me dissect it one by one

Problem 1: The RPG Itself

Prominence promised to be an RPG, which as far as it does it, tries so hard to be a mix of POE2 and Rlcraft with all the armors, classes, and talent tree that it has. The problem is... balancing becomes insanely hard once you start locking people to certain builds.

For an example, Ranged builds can be seriously strong here, it's high dps, attacks from distance which is generally very safe even in tight dungeons, and were generally faster to reassemble into a hybrid magic build compared to Melee builds that needs to balance their mediocre dps, sustain themselves from being hit by bosses, and generally has a harder experience due to just how most boss AI's are not build to comprehend multiclass loadouts.

This isn't being mended by the talent tree or level progression in anyways, which also falls in the same problem as POE2 where there's too many small skills, but at the same time, not enough big skills which POE2 does provide, which this mod fails to do so and you're basically stuck in this condition of small gains at big cost and big gains simply locked. This also ain't being mended by the weapon skill tree, in fact, it doesn't even matter if you don't upgrade your skill tree at all, a crossbow can just cheese everything.

Same goes for the leveling, enemies always overlevel you, and even if you overlevel them, their stat boost is still bigger than yours, and how do you fix this infinite tug of war? yep, a crossbow and 3 blocks up.

The artifact interactions, trinkets as we say it, is also pretty much bandaid plaster to the actual problem of things. It's just bad, +8% random damage at the cost of literally searching tens of dungeon, is just bad progression, even worse than RLCraft, atleast you got goofy Lycanites.

Problem 2: The Tech not Teching Itself

Oh my goodness, i love tech mods, but this modpack is the first time i disliked the implementation of it. Usually you would add tech mods to a pack for certain reasons... automation, resource generation, storage, or logistics. The tech mods added here does not really solve any of that and instead add in an extra layer of headaches, STOP NERFING POWER GENERATION, I WANT MY AE2 SETUP TO BE GOOD.

Tech Reborn, basically IC2 recreated has it's own progression tree and interacts with no custom items of the pack, no reason to even play it. Modern Industrialization, basically Gregtech recreated and by extension IC2 recreation, also has it's own progression tree and interacts with no custom items of the pack, no reason to play it too... Industrial Revolution- NO NO NO, none of these tech mods actually does anything of substance even though they really should have because of the configuration being so unbalanced.

Ad Astra, allows you to go to the space... is there a boss or progression in the space? NO! Powah... basically a bandaid for FE generation now, just extremely lazy as an implementation.

Problem 3: The Story Itself?

Yep, the whole pack has a story, you are the flameborn of Vaaz, and... and... guess what, 100 hours of gameplay and i still don't have the story actually touched me in any way or sense. Whilst it is a common issue with most packs... especially a story driven RPG like Prominence, they should atleast make it make sense.

I'm taking this from the description of the mod itself, where it said that:

**"You one of the Flameborn of Vaaz, a race created by S'kellak, the Creator of All Things to protect and ensure the balance of all realms.

After thousands of years of peace, a ravenous force known as the Void has started an invasion into the universal realms, worlds filled with life and death, are now threatened to being destroyed completely. Will you fulfill your mission and stop the Void's Invasion?"**

And yet it doesn't really feel like you're fighting an invasion, or if there is even ONE Void (Eldritch End) being that invades the overworld, or even really attack you that much, this feels like a lazier version of SR Parasites and the Void enemies themselves are just so so basic, i'm genuinely baffled when i found out that these crooks are one of the supposed final enemies of the VI chapter that's invading the world, is that it?

Ohoho of course not, the title of the pack itself is... Hasturian Era which already spoils itself to be a homage to Hastur the King in Yellow... Yet in this pack, the closest thing to Hastur... is that one end game boss is just a reskin of another boss that is "possessed" by Hastur... are we joking? is that all the influence of THE KING IN YELLOW? Is that it?

Yes, that's it...

This is the main gripe that i have with this pack, it tries to be story driven, without properly driivng a story. So the car crashes, and then by extension the only plausible way they could introduce Hastur just like the rest of the pack would be in a fight and a fight and a fight, and i dislike this direction so much, it's not even a kitchen sink now, a kitchen sink pack has the luxury of turning into a real RPG. This one has bandaid fixed itself so much, that the wound is untreatable, it needs a total overhaul for it to even be able to pull of a True Hastur and another mindless boss fight.

If you've seen the ARG regarding the world that didn't exist, you know what i mean. An intangible God who's connected to the play and the lost city, Carcosa. Should be executed in a way better manner than just simply possessing a boss and buffs the boss into 2x the pain. And suddenly our origin of Flameborn of Vaaz, created by Skellak, literally has no affect on this whole ordeal. You could really ignore the entire lore and think of yourself as just default Steve being tossed to Prominence world and it won't affect a single narrative...

Conclusion

Q: Is it a good pack?
A: yes, it has many unique items.

Q: What's the catch to the statement?
A: If you ignore all the bleeding problems, balancing issues, tech mods spam as bandaid, barely any immersion that lets you sunk deep to the story, and no real consequences, then it's a good pack.

Q: If i don't ignore that?
A: It's a pack worse than any kitchen sink pack that you can make right now, atleast your kitchen sink, can still be reconfigured, this one needs an overhaul of it's own overhauling.

Q: Should beginners play this?
A: Genuinely, no, but if you wanna try, go on.

Q: Can this pack be fixed?
A: Absolutely, all the problem in this pack emerges from an unbalanced game design, or rather, a game deisgn that didn't consider enough variables for balancing. Completely fixable by the config, except for enemy AI.

Q: How would you rate this pack if all the issue is fixed?
A: Overall 4.5/5. Gameplay 4.5/5, Performance depends on how far it got optimized then, Aesthetics would still be 4/5, genuinely a very potential modpack

I remember at least 1-2 years ago, this pack did have a lot of things for everyone. But the latest update seems to try to turn down / lock some progression for tech.

The problem of P2HE is it's failed to deliver a good experience from anything this pack try to offer.

• Story ..... they try.
• RPG class is very unbalanced.
• Progression is a mass. .
• Why does this pack need a high-tech mod for ore processing?
• It even has space travel!? (that barely has anything to do with this pack)
• Performance is okay, except huge craft lag.

► RPG
It does have rpg element with a weapon mod here and there. The problem is they are not working well with each other. Do rpg series work with enhance netherite? How can mages and archers use soul-like weapons effectively? (Mage is the worst experience here too).

As equipment is a freebie from exploration and lacks proper balance. Making a lot of them useless compared to others. Reforge is also annoying at best, especially early with stone/iron tools.

Talent trees are also meh at best. +1 this +5% that until choose only 1 big node. That's hardly called a build or forge your endgame or whatever.

► Tech
WHY? Why does a rpg, middle-aged class pack have a high-tech mod!? Create and Botany seem.... okay at best if you really want it.

But Tech reborn, Modern Industrial, Industrial Revolution... Do they have anything good for this pack besides 'I want tech guy to play this too.' It's not a duck, it's an abomination now. Wiki say you don't need to play with tech, then why do you add them, a lot. Now ores is a total mass. Space is empty too...

Also, previously. You can enjoy mix and match each mod for best optimize/processing. Now the authors seems to have started working on a liner line. Force to use powah or shitty Tech Reborn for power storage and alike. At this point, you can just add greg-like to this pack and done with it.

They still keep gaming axe and power armor for some reason...

► Progression
You can walk right away to Minecell and get tons of iron/diamond with good equipment on the first day. Find a saddle and tame phoenix to bypass all exploration and loot anything above ground (and sky). Skip all non-vanilla ore for non-slog experience.

The only thing that locks you is that beloved 12 end-portal eye mod. But it's just soft lock to a bit more content and some boss. You backtrack or travel 10k blocks to hunt that boss in the story line.

Quest guide you poorly, and the boss is not balanced based on that progression .... or class. Nothing is more fun than committing to a class and getting puked by boss that was not designed for your class.

Overall, threat it as a weird kitchen sink with quest book and a boss hunting list. Nothing more.
At least, this pack don't try to one-shot you with every mob.

Overview

Now I have rather mixed opinions on this pack like I imagine most people do, I've played this pack through to completion, at least up to the point that was available when I played. That being the start of the Hasturian era, Now I did genuinely enjoy my time on this pack and played it with a few friends. However I had plenty of problems and complaints over that time.

Starting with the positives, when it comes to custom content this pack is one of the best out there. Custom items, game mechanics, guests, mobs you name it. The system towards the end of the game where you kill bosses to subsequently unlock fights with more and more difficult bosses is great, it gives the player a stream of things to work towards even after completing the main story.

Some of the Custom items and weapons are also rather well made, including unique skills and spells.

The Quest line is acceptable though falls into the realm over overwhelming, with a large number of quests seeming unnecessary.

Performance on this pack is rather poor, with lower end pcs struggling to run it.

Unfortunately for all the custom content this pack provides its going to be have to be put into the "kitchen sink" category, While playing through this pack you get the feeling the pack itself doesn't really know what it wants to be? A fantasy pack? A tech pack? Sci-fi? Survival? Story? RPG? The pack tries too hard to do well at every and in turn fails to do anything extremely well.

Reviewer's PC Specs:
Windows 11
AMD Ryzen™ 9 7900 @ 3.70GHz - RAM: 32 GB
AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT - VRAM: 16 GB

Prominence 2: Hasturion Era is an ambitious Minecraft modpack that offers deep progression and the illusion of huge build diversity. While there are many possible playstyles and setups, in reality you’re often forced into the “correct” or most optimal path to stay efficient. The pack is heavily grind-focused and relies a lot on RNG, which can make progression feel repetitive and sometimes frustrating. It’s rewarding for persistent players, but less flexible than it first appears.

Super unpolished RPG focussed pack

Even after a year of updates since I last played, it feels a beta pack in the small things. They continued to add content, that's right, but everything else was left behind without much thought

Aestetics

The pack by default uses a couple of texture packs, including a modified font, which I find quite hard to read compared to the standard vanilla font. Moreover, the ashen resource pack is just slapped on top of the game, where modded contents are not retextured to follow the same aesthetics, especially cave ores.

Mod choices feels all over the place

Is it an RPG pack or a kitchen sink? Why is there such an in-depth tech mod like modern industrialization along with the rather cool and interesting boss progression? Create is obviously thrown in there for good measure, I guess just for the sake of saying "play how you want". They even removed a good early game storage option (Tom's simple storage), leaving all the work to AE2 (in a medieval-fantasy themed pack?).

Too much RNG focus

You get to build a character and that's cool and all, but most of them requires a "relic" only found in loot chests. Guess what? In my original world, where I spent 100+ hrs goofing around I never found the one I envisioned my build to work with, having to deal with sub par weapons. No way of crafting it, just gambling.

Final thoughts

This pack would be even half decent if the dev(s) took the time to revise some old/not up to date contents, because it's really the small things that made me quit the modpack, just the feel of many small clashing decisions. I didn't talk about crashes I experienced with some bosses I encountered in an old version, because they may have fixed it, but I have little faith in that. This review has been rather hard on the pack, but that's in the hope of getting a better experience in the future...

TL;DR

it only took 3-4 days for me and two friends, to climb the progression mountain. We had our best end-game weapons, and (most) of our best end game armor (i was the only one who didn't, as i opted for diamond armor over ranger armor)

Some end game armors require scutes, which feels somewhat disrespectful to the players time; as by the time you're doing the turtle eggs-- you're far beyond the vanilla enemies being any threats- so it was ultimately too boring to do.

about half way through chapter 1, we reached our end game, and by the end of chapter 1, we were level 50, and mostly maxxed out.

Seeing as there was nothing we could get thats better- we lost purpose in the main storyline.

The custom weapons are insane, the animations are amazing. The Villages were also really good. The mod had a lot of lag though

The player animations look odd and unnatural, the Curse of Uwuification is BEYOND annoying, and some mutant mobs bypass claims and destroy everything. If it weren't for these, I'd rate the whole pack 5 stars.

The good parts are many, the pack is fun, theres something for everyone. For tech fanatics like me, theres Tech Reborn, Indrev, and Modern Industrialization. For magic fans, theres Archon, Botania, and Spellblades. The story progression is fantastic, the boss fights are fun, the new biomes are wonderful, and there's always something to do.