Initially the modpack seems very promising as it drops you in this cool void area, Nihil. Starting the game you get lore, cool quark crafting to elements. You get this awesome teleport mod, Tempad, that feels like the GMan doors. It hooks you in. Aesthetics are like 5/5 at this point because you expect nothing and everything is new and different.
Throughout the modpack, the controls are not set up very well and often you find conflictions you have to change. (Crafting at the start with C, drawers with shift + left click, waypoints, backpacks, etc...) The quests are buggy and you cant even access crafting from it directly so you have to search and bookmark recipes manually. Dragging items around your inventory feels slow and unresponsive with this weird grabbing icon. I like the mod that when you drop items on the floor you have to shift over or right click to pick up (forgot the name of the mod), but this modpack somehow made it annoying, and that baffles me. Thematically, along with the name and description, you would assume UniversIO would be about building a universe. Not really. That stops almost immediately after you are dropped into earth and quickly it becomes very boring and grindy.
I thought it was going to be [Quarks --> Matter --> Elements --> Stardust --> Earth --> Other planets? --> Solar system --> Galaxy --> Many Galaxies --> Universe!!], but instead it stops at Earth like the person ran out of energy for the Universil mod. Nihil is like 10 minutes of progression and 10 minutes of getting acclimated. Nihil is barely seen so the aesthetics drops to a compromise between low and high and sits at 3/5.
It doesn't even really keep the magic theme from the description, either. Botania is used but HexCrafting and the Alchemy Mod are things that you barely touch on. You don't even focus on Botania, either. I would literally have better magic-inclusive experience downloading another modpack like R.A.D. and focusing on a single mod, even an incomplete one like ThaumCraft. Magic is insignificant in UniversIO. UNIVERSE CREATING is insignificant in "Univers[e]"IO. (UNniversIO)
The starting progression, the stone age if you will, is kind of uneventful. I have nothing to say about the experience with Botania in UniversIO. It's fine at the start and doesn't feel too grindy. The quests even give you black lotuses after some dedication so you don't need to focus on mana generation. You dip back a bit into Botania from time to time in UniversIO for some stuff, but for the most part it's pretty easy to do. Sleeping speeds up time like Time in a Bottle and that's one of the few unique things about the mod that I find helpful. For some reason they still have phantoms enabled, though, so now you HAVE to speed up time to get rid of them. If night just started that means you often need to wait for around 40 seconds until it becomes daytime again. So, HOORAY! Phantoms are even MORE annoying and a BIGGER nuisance than they usually are.
Industrial age starts, and you get dropped into the grinder immediately. Or, rather, grindfest. You make this little stardust generating multiblock structure and at this point you've completely removed any point going back to the initial starting area, Nihil. Now you barely see anything close to space. Sure, I don't mind automation and I actually found the multiblock to be very helpful, but there's no substance to the Universil modpack after this, so now you are just stuck in your sad little superflat. The only cool thing you keep from the start is the Tempad teleportation. Universil has a mod manual and it's literally one page for the multiblock. That's it. The theme is dead from now on. No more universe, no more cool magic, just lame grindy progression.
Now here's the point where you get bored and probably drop the pack. Pneumatic Craft: Repressurized is a nice mod by default and aesthetically it looks great, but this modPACK, UniversIO, makes it an absolute grind and completely stomps the life out of the mod until you get bored and regret playing it. The only way to get some ores at this point is to use the stardust you get and right click at a wall until you get enough iron. Considering you get random stuff and it's mostly Quickly you feel less like a universe creator and more like a bottlenecked dummy spamming star dust until you can make things with the tiny amount of iron it gives you. You literally have to break the reactor and drop iron in to pressurize it so that you can make ingots for a hopper to get the insertion faces to the reactor. You also need SIXTEEN of the elements to get an ingot, and those get processed one by one slower than a snail so it takes like a minute to craft an ingot. The REI recipes are not really well explained, and again the tediousness of not being able to use the quest book to jump to recipes really hurts. The quests have no life to them (Craft this. Craft that. This block does this-- go make it. Go here because that's where all of the would-be overworld stuff is now... nothing else is there but the stuff we moved. Get oil to make this plastic for more grinding. Want to use the oil you got? Now you have to make the horrible fluid hoppers [if you even know about them] that take even MORE iron, so back to grinding.) It has no life to it.
Even when you get the transmutation table with the intention to get rid of the grind, it's not even fun because almost NO ITEMS have EMC. All it provides is removing the iron/gold/copper grind. You can't even EMC normal stuff like glass or smooth stone so you still have to make things super slowly. It's almost useless for helping you in the industrial age despite being crafted there.
Get to the digital age or whatever and now you're making big reactors and drives for no apparent reason since the game is basically only using 4 mods at this point (Botania, Universil, Pneumatic Craft: Repressurized, ProjectE), so extra storage is redundant. Most of the stuff you're storing are the elements from the first stage of the game that completely bloat your chests, and all of the Botania knickknacks. The rest of the stuff is easy to store with drawers, like wood and cobblestone. Now time to afk for a while so you can get EMC because that's fun, right!?
--SOILERS for the unrewarding ending below if you even care about it--
Now you get to the end of the game and for some reason we have to fight the Wither Storm? I thought this was about building a universe and now we're fighting a Minecraft story mode enemy for some reason. It makes no sense and is completely unoriginal. When you beat it it gives you a little "You win. Thanks for beating the modpack!" Yeah, and thanks for wasting my time and leading me on with your universe modpack, completely robbing me of the universe creation I was promised.
--SPOILERS above end here. Below are my final thoughts.--
Rarely did I feel accomplished or that work I did had made things easier for me. I want those hours back. Why focus on industrial progression in a space and magic pack? Rename the modpack to something else if the theme isn't even followed.
I honestly do not think this modpack is irredeemable or flawed on a foundational level, but there is much to be desired. Major part: cut the grind. Reduce the cost of making things like iron down from 16. Add back EMC values to at least the most generic items like glass, coal, etc. Players do not want to spend twenty minutes right clicking a wall with stardust until they can make a transmutation table just to find out they can only use it for like 5 items. Here's two ideas as for directions you can go from there:
-- Idea 1. Finish Universil. Actually have the modpack about making a universe post the industrial age stage of the game. Once you have enough to make a universe, do it. Fulfill your function and see a new, beautiful world. Look back at Earth and all the other places not as superflats but as a world with terrain generation. Evil mobs cower before your amazing power, and you stand before all as both a creator and a destroyer. Perhaps you even leave others a road of ascension to take your place after you are gone, much how the book did the same for you.
-- Idea 2. Focus on magic with the intention of looping it back to the universe theme. Add more stuff related to the universe, stars, or at least how magic ties into that. Instead of fighting a boss at the end, reach a state of magical ascension where you can "recreate" the universe, but you are all powerful now, thus winning the pack.
As it stands, I would have had more fun playing a demo that stopped when you got to Earth.
This Pack Is A 1.19.2 Modpack Featuring mods Such As:
