This review is as of you reading this only tailored towards the 1.12 version of this mod, but I might come back to it later after it updates a few more times/if a port is made , it is also a mod I have much less experience with than other mods (feel free to correct me by sharing your own point of view on this site)

What is it ?

The Aurorian appears to be a dimension growing in the moon's cold glow under a sky of endless night cycles;
It has a dreamy feeling which is reinforced by its global ambience , especially the short dreamcore-ish intermission tracks, but beside that it is still a world of mysteries with ruins and buildings to explore hidden away deeper in the woods.

What does it offer ?

A new and calmer realm to explore with a couple of biomes containing ruins and dungeons, with various creatures you might encounter along the way.
It adds quite some content in terms of custom made stuff such as crops, ores and simple machines in order to obtain/make things out of these various resources available within this world.

In terms of art style and aesthetics in all honestly it isn't my favorite , but it is good enough and has grown on me quite a bit, and it accompanies the mod's ost calming feeling pretty well in the end.

It runs quite smoothly and I haven't spotted any bugs in my short personal playthrough.

The downsides of the mod in its current version are mostly related to the lack of content which is due to it still being under making or even discontinued, and I wonder if custom game mechanics exclusive to that dimension will be planned later on.

Small quickfire suggestions on things I noticed while playing :
I would like it more if the lockpicking mechanic was less luck-based and a bit more skill-based, like a minigame of sorts.
Ambience . What I mean by that here is adding more custom sound effects and a general sound ambience playing in the background while being inside of the dimension.
Make mobs less generic in terms of behaviors/AI (especially for the bosses, the spider is pretty basic, the dungeon keeper's arrow barrage simply lasts for way too long and the last boss has a bit too much in terms of melee reach) and looks. Most of them unfortunately feel like Minecraft Zombies but slightly modified and I know fighting isn't the core focus of the dimension as the author themselves talked about mostly making it feel cozy , but I believe since it has already stepped into the realm of combat with its structures and bosses (and the new combat-related items such as the sticky spiker ) as well as the various abilities being given to armors and weaponry it could very much focus a bit more on that and improve/add systems related to enemy-encounters .
Making it so you automatically respawn inside the dimension by default (or at least giving a config option for that) could really be interesting as mods like these which aim at making it so you don't need to even go back to the overworld anymore immerse you better in their world when they don't force you out after a single death.

In conclusion

This dimension does gives off a unique feeling of peace which could be improved upon in following updates, and its take on things while certainly interesting is much less interesting than other mods I know as of today.

The dungeons are alright though they could be much better, especially the bosses, but again there is the exception of the last dungeon which I quite liked, and the boss mechanic is much more interesting than the previous two in my mind.

This mod does have an in-game wiki if you play it alongside Patchouli (which is added on top of the advancements in the default mod), detailing everything one might want to know on how to start their journey through this underrated mod. I would have preferred if it had this wiki independently of Patchouli's installation, but hey that's personal preference and doesn't really impact my review. Besides, there is still some decent amount of tutorial inside the mod itself with for example item tooltips , block interactions with the player as well as some structures hinting at features , which I've seen in The Betweenlands too and I always love it when I see things like that in dimension mods.

Overall this mod has great potential if it continues receiving updates, and in its current state its already average .

Look. I really did not want this to be a bad modpack in my books. It looked so interesting at the start! Having to create your earth with nothing but quarks? That's so cool and unique! I adored that, and I really wished that's where it kept on going. I could see this as a really unique space modpack where you have to create your own universe!

But... That's sadly not where it went. Instead, I'm treated to.. Basic tutorials on 2 different mods (Botania and PneumaticCraft) and then a Project E EMC grind. I do think the choice of mods are neat. Botania and PneumaticCraft, atleast for me, are oft neglected mods in other packs I've played. I just wish it was used more together and to push the original theming even further.

Another thing, a good bit of the quest book is vague on what to do to progress, especially on getting the basic metals (iron and copper). To even get some of these ingots to start out with, you must travel to the purgatory area in this and loot villager(?) houses. NOTE FOR NEW PLAYERS: When you enter a house, look up. You'll thank me later.

What really drops this for me, and what made me call quits, is the grind for EMC. The end game of the modpack is to kill the Wither Storm and create the Withered Nether Star, and for completionists, to create the Final Power Flower. Sadly, good luck generating that EMC bucko! This pack's only way of creating EMC is through Power Flowers or creating a boat load of chemistry items from cosmic dust (see first picture). Neither are truly viable for EMC farming, as the power flowers don't create enough EMC to get to the next tier in a reasonable time, and you cannot get EMC links that support the amount of items you create from dust farming unless you have a ridiculous amount of EMC to start.

All in all, as I kept on playing, it kept getting worse. It's sad that this modpack came out after the creator's genuinely great pack, Encrypted_. Also is this pack supposed to be the teased pack in Encrypted? Really doesn't live up if so. Eitherway, back on point. I do hope the creator returns to this concept and ground up redo it. Lean more into the chemistry and crafting the universe atom by atom, as that's what made this pack truly special at the start.

What is it ?

A full revamp of four biomes (+ a few smaller features on beach biomes) including aesthetic improvements through diverse and often useful flora, fauna with interesting mechanics and related items, building blocks and features adding content to other systems such as enchantment or redstone;
There is also one added structure for each biome overhaul.

What does it offer ?

A complete vanilla-style update on four biomes : Mushroom islands , Badlands , Swamps and Roofed forests

Spoilers down here for the first biome they improved :

The Mushroom islands

In this biome upgrade they added glowshrooms underground, lots of decorative mushroom patches, plenty of mushroom related building blocks (+ new white tree as well, added way before the pale forest was introduced to vanilla minecraft) as well as two new entities being the glowfish and the mushroom trader. Beside that there simply isn't much to add to the mushroom island revamp and since it is a biome on the rarer side it makes sense to me why they might not want to lock away more interesting features for those who have yet to find it .

Spoilers down here for the second biome they improved :

The Badlands

In this biome upgrade was added cowboy pillagers, ghost towns with a new poltergeist block acting as a redstone randomizer through possession of nearby blocks which I find a cool take on this concept, terracotta decorative blocks, new cactis and a little critter which allows for the craft to an antidote against poison. A nice detail I like and isn't mentioned often is the dirt variant near badlands lakes, containing gold nuggets at times; it really gives you a taste of the amount of gold you will find in caves under this biome

Spoilers down here for the third biome they improved :

The Swamps

In this biome upgrade (which btw they did before Mojang's wild update like many) they added sunken witch ruins, two new types of exclusive swamp trees being the classic willow tree and the cool swamp cypress (anew flower is here too); they added peat, which is a both a good block to dry and use then as a furnace fuel as well as the best ground to use to grow crops on. They also added a bunch of critters in this biome, such as the useful lightning bug, to be used as a light source or a throwable electric flask depending on the method for its collection; That said beware as the swamps house a surprise within its sometimes deep pools : the decayed, a shield wielding undead using the depths to its advantage. The best feature for this update has to be the witch quest system : by disguising yourself as a witch you can accept item fetch quests for rewards, with the rarer the items the better the gift, including exclusive potions combining sometimes several stronger versions of vanilla potion effects in one bottle

Spoilers down here for the fourth biome they improved :

The Roofed forest

In this biome was added some new flowers, a glowy one being added on dark oak leaves with itchy ivy slowing you down, discouraging people from traveling above the trees and producing enough light to attract a new hostile flying creature being the moth. Small cute plant-like living creatures are added in the forest and serve as a sort of crop/mob which can get you most if not all types of dyes in minecraft. There's owls too. Crystal clusters can be found on the biome's surface, those crystals are needed for an a new take on going beyond the enchantement max levels which does not involve an anvil (unlike quark's ancient tome system which isn't bad, but honestly the anvil really needs a rework), as a random enchantement on an item can be improved past its limits at the cost of of a random curse (with new ones added by the mod too, and probably compatible with modded curses). Changes were made to pillagers too, as they rarely can now drop crude fragments and crude cladding which can be used in one of two ways : upgrading minecraft's leather armor into a cladded armor, reducing and sometimes ignoring arrows and projectile related damage. the second use of crude cladding is for making stone golems out of cladded stone, those golems being crossbow wielding turrets. One thing I have to say is that unfortunately their aim is not that good and they take their time between each shot, making them not that useful for the cost they require. Instead of a new structure, this biome actually replaced the woodland mansion with its own overhauled version, which contains some of the things mentioned earlier as well as new content that is only found there : a special decoration type similar to banners is found here, depicting mostly minecraft mobs. Now not only the mansion houses a few floors, but it also contains a dark basement with a new boss at the end; this boss in terms of attacks and behaviors really seem like a "vanilla +" boss and doesn't go too crazy with his patterns, but it is nice to finally see a new basic illager boss which isn't tied to raids in any way

This mod's performance is good, its content are to me really interesting and add a lot to their respective biomes.

In conclusion

So far my favorite content has to be what's been added for the fourth biome as it is clearly the one with the most in terms of features, and I do hope somebody else makes a fork of this mod and make the desert update they were planning on adding before stopping updates (check their discord server for info). I really love this mod, and it is probably my favorite fabric mod (even though this mod is now available on forge too)
They have their own official wiki detailing everything one might want to know if advancements aren't enough so that's always a plus in my books.
I would like to finally precise that the fact this mod covers these four biomes stated earlier makes it quite compatible with Ecologics , as they add content to different biomes and both do it in a vanilla+ style (throw-in Environmental for the best biome-improvement experience, though they will have overlapping content which may break your immersion a little)

What is it ?

A mod adding a new weapon : the musket , the closest we might get to a vanilla-ish pistol in modded minecraft. It also adds a new gunslinger illager, which wield this weapon in outposts and he rarely appears during raids (similar to evoker spawn chance).

What does it offer ?

A new craftable range weapon with its own selection of enchantments (as well as some cartridge variety ) and tons of compatibilities with other mods.
The Gunslinger's AI is pretty basic, but still better than vanilla pillagers as it actually tries to use some hit and run strategy, which works quite well in raids. He also looks good (doesn't have much in terms of unique sounds though).
Small note : some undeads such as skeletons and their variants can rarely spawn with a musket when this mod is present

Cons :
The weapon is not that easy to use, and by that I mean it's quite hard to tell if you'll actually hit your target. More than once I managed to hurt enemies in fights by not actually taking the time to aim properly, so for a regular player it would seems more useful to use in closer range and with little aiming.
I would recommend increasing the base damage of the gun as since its hard to aim you might as well make it stronger, that said you can sort of do that in the configs already. Also the Gunslinger illager has quite the good aim, maybe a bit too good, making raids harder (that said he doesn't appear in big numbers, but note that having this mod installed means raid will become a bit more of a late game thing). I would also like it more if you were able to properly configure the exact amount of gunslinger illagers in each wave.
ed : Forgot to mention that the Gunslinger has a sort of hit-and-run AI , meaning that he will have good aim + run away if too close, making it an interesting mob but dangerous foe in raids.

In conclusion

Even though I quite like the mod, its flaws prevent me from giving it the best of ratings, plus there is plenty of similar gun mods out there which add more content than this one. But yeah it's a pretty average mod overall and has its uses in survival modpacks too.

What is it ?

This is a mod which aims at adding new and challenging illagers to encounter in the overworld and during raids.

What does it offer ?

New illagers to play around with in raids, which can also spawn naturally in the overworld. The mod also adds a few illager beast type mobs (similar to the ravager), which can also be tamed and brought to battle.
It also adds new materials and illager costumes which is quite nice.

In terms of flaws this mod has quite a bit of them :
The Blade Knight is basically a strong damage sponge , as he is not that interesting to fight and requires taking a lot of hits to kill which is really annoying in raids , and some of his abilities are awful : he can teleport you to him (which would be fine if he wasn't so resilient) and he can increase his stats permanently after mobs die around him (which is bound to happen in raids as villagers or illagers will die while this guy is still alive).
The beast tamer is also very infuriating , especially when other illagers are around, because sometimes he shoots arrows which give a potion effect preventing healing of any kind, which is too deadly even with full netherite enchanted with protection IV (and that is without taking into account the fact that he also always summons a dangerous beast which fights alongside him).

Aesthetically speaking this mod's mobs look pretty bland with the exception of the Blade Knight , and I have even noticed they have inconsistent textures : for example the beast tamer clearly has the 1.14+ texture style while the scavenger have the pixel art style of the programmer art textures from 1.12 and prior versions, so much so to the point I am questioning the origin of the art used in the mod. I have seen the Scavenger slide on the ground during a raid more than once I am not making this up it had little to no animation at all.

In terms of performances I haven't noticed any problem, that said many report crashes even in the latest version of the mod in the comments under the mod's original curseforge page, so this tells me this mod is likely also impacting the game in term of a lack of stability .

In conclusion

This mod adds in a few illagers to raids, but they are too challenging to the point where they are really unfair at times.
Unfortunately, this mod lacking a config file is a big con for it as some of the mobs are so hard to deal with that you can hardly combine this mod with basically any other raider mod .
For a one off challenge or to fill hordes with more enemies for something more specific it could have a use , but it is still a very bad mod that I would not recommend for any serious modpack.

Edit : I would like to mention that I have recently learned that this mod may or may not get a total rework of its code in the future; if that is the case, I will make sure it gets suggested here and I will review it when it eventually does get reworked/update this review if it is a replacement

What is it ?

A mod which adds first person animations to attacking, which vary in order to adapt to the type of weapon you attack with (includes sound effects too) ;
This mod also affects certain properties about the weapon depending on the config (with certain mods such as spartan weaponry already in mind), properties such as Sweeping, Potion effects to give to the target or you on certain conditions, Critical hit chance, if it's Onehanded or Twohanded, amount of Knockback, Reach distance and ability to parry.
Finally the last but quite important thing this mod does is delete spam attacking. This means in order to attack you will have to precisely wait for the cooldown to end, instead of having the ability to attack earlier but deal considerably less damage.

What does it offer ?

A greatly configurable mod which by default applies properties and first person animations to melee weapons based on part of their "modid:name" (if it's written as "modid:warhammer_dragonsteel" it will automatically receive the warhammer animations and properties found in the config, which again is configurable). Dual wielding as well as parrying is a possibility and you can very much slaughter enemies with one sword in each hand if you'd like.
It also adds config on shields such as ability to shieldbash (with related configurable damage, knockback and cooldown), as well as configurable amount of shield disabling depending on the type of axe used against a player's shield. You can also tweak some stuff about bows but I have not personally used that part of the config, so I don't really know how useful or interesting this is.
Nausea and Blindness will now affect entities, and a few custom potions effects have been added with the mod. This mod also comes with a few generic enchantments, which are quite basic, but again they can be disabled if you don't want them.

I can't really think of any major cons for this specific mod, as I have not experienced any major performance issue while playin with its latest version at the time, though I would like to point out that since dynamic surroundings also adds sound effects to sword swipes while this mod does too, I would recommend checking dynamic surrounding's in game mod config section in order to avoid having double the sound effects. This mod also does break some mods with the new way melee weapons are handled, for example when put with Atum II you probably will have to remake a whole custom configuration to properly integrate Atum II's artifacts and the potion effects they should apply on hit (and this probably happens with other mods I haven't tried with Immersive Combat too).

In conclusion

This mod really gives each weapon (especially when spartan weaponry is involved) a different feeling through their animations and sounds, as well as little quircks and the fact that all can be easily changed and tweaked adds to the help this mod might give to future modpacks in feeling immersive in their combat. The config file has quite a lot of details on how everything works, and is basically its own tutorial on how to configure the mod and its properties-system.

What is it ?

This mod adds in a few medieval-themed illagers, as well as one or two structures incorporating them.

What does it offer ?

More or less generic raiders but still somewhat interesting in middle ages-esque settings. The archer is pretty much a regular bow wielder without any special abilities nor purpose, he's basically the illager equivalent to a skeleton , and the skirmisher is also just a vindicator variant. I think the most interesting one is the legioner as it is a interesting concept of an illager knight which means he is both fast and resilient , while also being able to use a shield to defend himself.

It also replaces the iron golems naturally found in villages with custom clay ones, making villagers more prone to invasions, and the mod replaces the always-dropping saddle from ravagers with a custom ravager horn which can sometimes be obtained, allowing you to start another raid wherever you want (less interesting in post 1.21 now that ominous bottles exist as it plays a very similar role); there's also a new music disc I_I
There isn't much uniqueness in terms of sounds as the illagers mostly use other illagers' sound effects, with the exception of the legioner sounding like a vindicator wearing a bucket over his head which I find quite amusing.

There also isn't much in terms of custom items or anything which isn't directly a mob or structure really, so do not expect more than 3 illagers and 2 structures out of this mod.

That said the structures added by the mod are really nice, especially the bastille , which can be challenging to take over early game and again works well in a more medieval setting .

In conclusion

If you are looking to add more challenge to raids, or spice up your world with a bit harder raids and one or two new medieval illager-themed structures alongside it this is a good mod to put in, however if you are looking for more interesting illager concepts this may not be the mod for you.
I would like to point out however that this mod is now discontinued and It Takes a Pillage Continuation is the mod you might want to download especially if you intent to play with this mod on newer versions.

What is it ?

It is a mod adding a new ranged illager to the mix, which is both found in raids as well as in its own structure .

What does it offer ?

A new illager-type fighter mob, which is both found in raids as well as in its own cabin hidden away in certain forest-ish biomes.
This mob is pretty simple and straightforward : this is an illager with decent health which attacks from far using medieval ranged weaponry ( dual-wielding crossbow goes brr ) ; the weapon in question can vary and a custom boomerang was also added to this list of possibilities at some point. Where this mob shines however is in its custom ability, as it will attack passive animals and eat their meat in order to heal just like the player does, making it an interesting foe to come across and giving it its own role in raids as the animal-pen cleaner.

This new mob also has great animations in its 1.20.1 iteration.

In conclusion

This new illager is quite interesting, and still has its place in the grand scheme of illager-adding mods, even after all those years.
Besides, I always like it when a mod/game adds creatures which make use or showcase abilities that the player can exploit or acquire for themselves at some point, they can act as a form of tutorial even.

From my time played (Around 19 hours) Caramel seems to strike a nearly perfect balance between the nostalgic charm of vanilla gameplay and the depth of a well curated modpack. It keeps the familiar feel of Minecraft alive while adding just enough new mechanics, biomes, and progression to make the world feel alive again. And surprisingly, nothing feels out of place and everything blends really naturally with the base game. Performance is solid, stability is excellent, and the mod selection feels intentional rather than overwhelming like other "Vanilla+ Modpacks". If you’ve ever wanted a true “vanilla, but better” modpack Caramel nails that vision nearly perfectly.

One of the few mods that is both massive and high-quality the entire way. Amazing art style, massive structures that consistently provide great sights. I can’t give 4.9 stars, but some small problems:

• after spending 50 hours, you start to see the same structures again and raiding gets repetitive
• ai is sometimes funky
• you need a pretty powerful computer to run this

Positives:

• Very fun tech research tree
• Many items and tech blocks work with other mods
• tech is intuitive and accessible
• consistent art style
• great community and devs that listen to feedback