TREPIDATION — Story-driven Horror Roguelite

DISCLAIMER: THIS REVIEW IS FOR AN OUTDATED VERSION OF THE GAME. SEE DEVELOPER REPLY FOR INFORMATION ON CHANGES.

It's a very cool premise, but it barely delivers on what it promises. One of the main problems is that 1 hour is FAR too long. You get bonus time after each area, but it's a pitiful amount. I think the system would be much better if you started with a lower amount of time, and got more time after each area. This would keep the game more tense, and would feel more fair. As it stands, you can mess up a lot at the start, and not realize you've run out of time until much later, which feels terrible. If you make lots of mistakes, you should lose sooner rather than later.

The skill system is very shallow, and abilities vary wildly in power. Some abilities are nearly worthless, and some are alright. There's a purchaseable dash ability that you'd think is pretty good, but you already start with a dash that you can do while in the air over and over, giving you absurd lateral movement, even across empty space.

This game also has tons of binds, and many of the binds conflict right off the start, so getting that working is a pain.

The moment to moment gameplay isn't too bad. Fighting enemies is more fun than vanilla, though that isn't saying a lot. Your main way to progress is mining ores to get better ores. Basically it's normal minecraft progression, but scaled up to have more tiers, and you're on a time limit. Also you're mining upwards instead of downwards. I was hoping that there would be more to the progression than this, but it seems like that's all there is. It means that you're reliant on RNG to decide whether or not you find the ores in time to progress. And as previously mentioned, even if you take a long time to find the ores, you get way too much time at the start, so you won't know you've spent too long until way later.

The item system is also not very interesting. It advertises itself as sort of a roguelike, but me and my friends only ever found 2 or 3 special items, which is an absolutely pitiful amount. That isn't to say we only got 2 or 3 items, we found plenty, it's just that we kept getting the same 2 or 3 over and over again. They also seemed to just drop from random enemies, there was no fanfare or way to find them intentionally. I much preferred Muck's system for getting items, where there are designated objects that give items. I feel like that system would work well in trepidation, you could have little platforms floating out above lava in the nether, and you'd have to bridge out and get them, and maybe give up some amount of XP to unlock the chest. Of course, for this system to be meaningful, they'd need to add more special items in the first place.

To wrap the review up, the mod seems unfinished, and not very well designed. It looks pretty nice, and the premise is cool, but a game that is cool in theory does not always translate to good gameplay.

I jumped in and played a few rounds for the first time, here's a badly written review (i'm assuming you've read the modpack description so you know the basics)
Unhide the spoilers if you've already played the game since it's best played blind.

MOVEMENT
Just like vanilla except you have a midair jump, dashes, a wall grab/jump and Step (you can walk up blocks like stairs).
I don't find myself using the wall grab as often as I should, but when I do, it saves a lot of time.
Double jump off the bat is just a tiny bit op tbh, you can use it to survive huge falls it speeds you up a ton but I don't mind it staying as-is.
Having step from the get-go is balanced, doesn't make you too fast but lets you outrun mobs if you choose to go uphill.
Pressing alt + a direction will make you dash. In it's current state it's extremely overpowered.
You can fly across entire lava lakes by dashing repeatedly and then using your midair jump right at the end to negate fall damage.
I'm sure the dev will get around to nerfing it at some point.

GAMEPLAY
Escaping the nether is pretty simple, you get the equivalent of wood tools -> stone tools -> iron tools then you mine straight up.
It would be nice if there was a guide book that tells you that you're supposed to mine all the way up to escape.
Okay let me just interject for a moment (lol) - I found out there are custom advancements right as I was about to publish this review. It's not really mentioned anywhere, I completely missed them. (maybe the dev could make them more promiment outside of the advancement button).
The main difficulty seems to come from:

1. Trying to stay alive (the mobs are rough!)
2. Finding pyridium (the equivalent of iron ore)
   It took me way too long to realise that humanoid mobs can dig to your location, they really keep you on your toes.
   Food is pretty easy to take care of as mushrooms are pretty much everywhere .

COMBAT AND SKILLS
You have extra reach by default (only for combat) and knockback seems to have been increased as well.
The increased reach + knockback means juggling enemies is way more effective than waiting for your weapon to come off cooldown. (dev has noted this and will fix)
Since spam clicking is the meta, and since you will rarely encounter swarms of 4+ enemies, the AOE sword attack is kinda useless.
In the skill book you spawn with, you can swap your XP and "Souls" into minimum wage skills!
I realise now that the skill book tells you to use the arrows on the bottom left and right to flip pages but I completely missed this (maybe add an outline to the buttons?).
I'm honestly not a fan of the skill book and rarely ended up using it. It's just not necessary since it's easy to escape the nether without touching it. This might not be the case for the other dimensions. (dev has noted this and said the skill book will only be available until you unlock something in the later dimensions)
I didn't play with the skills much due to this, but upon reading the skill descriptions, they seem really powerful. Especially ranged skills (allowing you to fight lava spewers without crafting a bow/arrows) .

PROBLEMS/COMPLAINTS
I found myself wandering around quite a bit trying to find pyridium, then i realised it can look just like neridium if it's in the dark (maybe change this?).
Step: it's useful but quickly gets annoying as i can't find a way to toggle it off when i don't need it.
Fire: No way to mitigate this early game which pretty much makes it a death sentence. inb4 skill issue.
Mobs drop loot which is nice but they drop a bit too much + it's enchanted, idk i feel this made it too easy (they drop lots of garbage loot as well which just clogs up your inventory).
Sometimes mining dirt with a pickaxe can result in a whoosh whoosh whoosh sound as if i'm hitting the air, it's just the sound that's bugged, mining works.
Flame spewers are OP af. Could be by design, requiring bow/arrow to counter but this makes bone harvesting very unviable since they take time to acquire.
Magma eggs and dark wheat are essential items for bone harvesting (30 sec fire resistance) but I have found no way to obtain them.
Dashing. I mention this in the movement section.
It's easy to be unaware of the advancements which give you hints as to what you're supposed to be doing.
That viney stuff that hangs underneath blocks, yeah it adds to the atmosphere but man it gets annoying fast.
Cannot view detailed info for skills until you buy them.

THE GOOD STUFF
Controls are pre-configured for you! Man, the polish that adds to a modpack cannot be understated.
The last thing you want to see when you install a modpack is a billion unconfigured/conflicting bindings.
The visuals are stunning. Glowstone and leaves glow a little too much but everything else adds to the atmosphere greatly.
This is one of the few packs that uses sound design very well, it's hard to tell if mobs are close or far away.
that + spooky music = :skull: :poop:
A quick "Reset Run" button to start a new run once you inevitably fail. You will become very familiar with it.
The level generation is great, it's not the modern nether, it's the old one but with lots of polish.
Balance. Despite what I've written in this review, the modpack is pretty balanced overall, mobs are fun to fight and it's action packed.
Novel gameplay! Finally, a combat-focused pack that gives you a timer, a goal, and leaves the rest up to you instead of slapping you with a guide book that has a billion crafting quests with the same old formula we've seen many times before.
Replicating the vanilla-like progression is something I really appreciated with this pack. I could realistically see speedrunners doing the rounds with this and optimising their strats just like with vanilla minecraft.

'-A pack focused on speedrunning your way through dimensions, collecting the various resources needed to progress.
-Combat is mobility driven, centered around the player's ability to double jump and dash
-Progression is Nether -> Erebus -> Underdark -> Overworld -> End
-Loot consists mostly of trinkets, as well as experience for skills, and items to progress (food/resources)

A few notable warnings:
-To play the pack well, you need to use shaders. From experience, AMD devices can have issues running Chocapic Shaders, the recommended ones, and they can run slowly, especially on extreme settings
-Content after the nether is largely unfinished, although the nether is mostly complete and provides a fun experience

As it stands, this is a fun pack to give a try, but will not give you nearly as long an experience as RotN. Worth playing though, as a challenge try and get a time of under 10 minutes to escape the nether (post on the discord to show off 😎)

I'm not sure if "Speedrun modpack" is even a category, but if it was, then Trepidation would be # 1. This modpack may not have a lot of depth but that's not the point. Trepidation makes speedrunning minecraft into an actually fun experience and not just RNG. And because no other modpack does it better, Trepidation gets 5 stars, and you should absolutely try it. Also, don't forget to install the recommended shaders.

This modpack turns Minecraft into a roguelike horror game that is very fun to play. It starts you in the nether with all the resources you need to get the gear to survive like it's just another Tuesday. As you make your way through you'll encounter many cool new stuff throughout the dimensions (You have to go up to travel to the next one) so that you can progress to beat the game. It is still in development right now (as of April of 2023) and already has enough for you to make it through just about every single dimension if you know what to do (Possibly the End too, but you would need to be very quick to survive those... things) All in all, a great modpack to play alone or with friends (Maybe with friends. Don't have any to play this with myself)