Minecraft Mod & Modpack Reviews

I get to make a horrible meat factory and commit vile cruelties while entirely* justified. I can make the torment nexus. The sky is bleeding. Amazing. The meat whispers to me great promises!!
I have played a normal amount
Eagerly awaiting the completion of the pack (<-- is a dev)

Runs smoother than Concatenation (we made sure of it), has a focused theme, engaging questlines and fun narrative quest descriptions, and a hard-but-not-hardcore challenge level forcing you to work around the vampire hunters that are on your trail!

This is one of the funniest but stressful mods I've ever played, truly hilarious when playing with friends, but I don't think ANYONE will be able to progress if they keep messing around lol.

My only wish for the mod is try to make customizable options so you can choose the length of the chain, so that it could be at least possible with some mischievous friends.

If you want a brief fun experience with friends, play this! (Not if you have impatient friends tho)

Continuing my journey of rating horror mods, next up I have belowlands! This one is very new in the minecraft horror scene, it was marketed as some sort of Megalophobia mod, so I wasn't expecting much. But ****, the creatures here aren't your average monsters, taking inspiration from Roblox Grace, it has such a cool style. The animations and design here really stand out!

The only gripe I have with it is it doesn't have enough content or an end goal yet. After completing the few dimensions it has, there isn't that much to do, but it still offers a lot with the overworld horror so you aren't bored. It still is a new mod though, so this isn't much of a problem.

I wasn't scared much while playing, but the mod has so much identity and soul that I didn't even care about that, definitely more adventure focused then horror tho! Anyways, amazing mod, recommend.

Look, I have no doubt many of you will like this mod, but for me, it was just boring. I like the ambiance, but nothing really happens, and it becomes very repetitive after a few rooms. The only reason I'm not uninstalling the mod is to have the quartz room all to myself, but aside from that, this is really underwhelming. And maybe it's just not my cup of tea, so I still somewhat recommend you at least try it for yourself.

overall pretty good, the main content of getting gear (early game) was fun going through structures and the different build types you could do was interesting
the different classes were each powerful and the talent tree was super sick allowing you to really go in depth and figure out the best way to build your power (some better than others specifically jewel slots)
the botania felt good although i didnt feel like there was a need to really go into it other than setting up for storage

my main gripes are that after a while you just power straight through all the different dimensions and getting better gear felt like a chore at times since it mostly boils down to luck
also why is the epilogue 30 levels further then the previous chapter? it doesn't really make sense to me
i also wish there was more side content like the first cte with the maps

Great mod has integrated boss fights also nice soundtrack and great visuals and although this mod updates take extremely long.

If you're a fan of how old modpacks would often have many different power systems with interesting ways to convert between them, this is a mod for you. Crossroads implements rotary and thermal power for a variety of machines, a few that use FE, and more that use its color/laser based "magic" system, with various interactions between each of those systems. The mod is balanced around relatively cheap machines that don't individually do the most but can be extremely powerful if you know what you're doing, similar to Botania and Rotarycraft.

The titular "Crossroads" is your choice of which path of the tech tree to go down (configurable, eventually you can unlock all on current versions), between Technomancy (time manipulation, clockwork, entropy management), Alchemy (creating resources via automating highschool level stoichiometry), and Bioengineering (cloning, permanent potion effects at the cost of health, mob farms via respawning mobs, etc). On a multiplayer server this can be very fun with different players specializing in different parts of the mod.

There's tons of potential additions for pack devs as well, everything from the alchemy system and its materials (boiling/freezing points for items, reactions being endo/exothermic or requiring FE) to block conversion when hit by specific colors of lasers are configurable via datapacks. This mod often seems to get overlooked due to pack devs not wanting a separate rotary power system on top of Create, which is really a shame as they work quite well together, you can even use its heat system in place of Create burners.

Textures have improved much since 1.12, and what you don't like can often be covered. Still certainly an aesthetic that many wouldn't be fans of, but it's unique and that has a charm to it.

Due to how much can be done with the mod, there's always many ways to make it laggy, but from our experience if you're responsible with what you build you should be fine, similar to vanilla redstone. The only two times we've had performance issues have been when using it alongside specific other mods, like sound physics or a mod that broke certain saplings.

I have played the 1.12 version the most but have only very recently tried again the most recent version of the base Traverse mod

What is it ?

A biome-adding mod which aims to stay true to vanilla Minecraft as it features few new biomes with little to no new blocks;
Most of the biomes being added remind me of pre-beta 1.8 environments.

What does it offer ?

New biomes to explore added to the vanilla worldgen, which feel closer to older now removed biome concepts such as with the oak forests (here as the woodlands) , the seasonal forest (autumnal woods, now most unique, featuring new blocks/trees) and the shrubland (now as desert shrubland) ;
Most of them are actually ideas inspired by another older mod called Extra Biomes (which while not known by me seems to have been a great influence in the older days of the modding community as a whole when it comes to biome mods), which have been implemented in recent versions.
Short Biome list (found on the mod page too) : Autumnal Woods , Coniferous Forest , Desert Shrubland , Flatlands , Lush Swamp , Snowy Coniferous Forest , Woodlands

It doesn't really have any major issue (none that I have noticed at least), outside of the fact that making custom biomes or even dimensions using vanilla materials has been done time and time again using datapacks in modern versions of the game, which means that this mod while certainly Good Enough is not really doing anything exceptional.
One flaw I have noticed (and that is even more apparent now) is the lack of decorations. Many biome mods come with either larger terrain modifications or more smaller-scale improvements like the presence of more ferns/tallgrass/bushes/rocks or more unique patterns for their soil and it seems this biome mod keeps the ground somewhat barren making them feel less interesting to traverse through compared to many other biome mods.

Here a section about the mod's 1.12 version (note that some biomes stayed around until 1.18 maximum) :
In 1.12, Traverse used to have a larger biome variety
Old Biome list here :
Autumnal Woods , Mini Jungle , Woodlands , Meadow , Lush Swamp , Red Desert , Coniferous Forest , Badlands , Mountainous Desert , Rocky Plateau , Forested Hills , Birch Forested Hills , Autumnal Wooded Hills , Cliffs , Glacier , Glacier Spikes , Snowy Coniferous Forest , Lush Hills , Desert Shrubland , Arid Highland , Thicket , Rocky Plains

Not only that, but despite these biomes not reaching their fullest potential in terms of details in my opinion, they still end up having much more depth than the ones in recent versions, and considering the lower competition for biome-adding mods in 1.12 (basically only Biomes o' plenty in terms of equivalent mods in a somewhat vanilla wordgen style as of writing this, though more will most likely arise in the future, remember to check the 1.12 Modding Coalition's discord server for this kind of news) as well as the lower amount of decor in vanilla 1.12, I would dare to say that Traverse was better in 1.12 than now.

In conclusion

This mod can serve some purposes, but is outshined by plenty worldgen datapacks and current mods in recent versions at least (such as Environmental, Regions Unexplored, Terralith... among others of course).
There is a wiki giving more information about each biomes added, and you can decide in the configs which biomes appear (even if you cannot do much more).
Finally, in 1.12, this mod is actually very good, adding even more biomes which are often larger and more interesting to look at from the ground, but since it is a loss-of-content situation I'm going to go with the a lower rating, which corresponds and takes into account what are the most maintained versions of the mod.

This is such a fun modpack to play once I got used to the controls and objectives. My experience is limited, but I ended up having a ton of fun with the werewolf. The feel of combat is great, with backstabs and stealth that make it feel more complete than standard combat. The weapons add a nice touch as well since they're diverse enough to give different combat styles for each class. The aesthetics of the modpack makes this stand out the most, especially with the more dark fantasy elements of the setting. The models for each of the classes are phenomenal as well, which is a shame since the werewolf model's head obstructs your view when you're casting certain spells (though you're not limited to those models and can change them). Other than that, it's a very creative interpretation on Minecraft-esque creatures. The actual mechanics of the modpack very much scratches that roguelike itch while feeling like something totally unique.
There are a few minor annoyances that I did experience, which aren't deal breakers, but are something to keep in mind. Objectives can be very far away, with my best run having two objectives being over 5k km in opposite directions from each other. Some of the classes, like the vampire and werewolf, have some strong movement, but it still makes the distances feel sluggish to cross. This gets even worse in the Nether if you spawn in a pocket somewhere and need to mine out, especially if you didn't find or craft a pickaxe since you can only get the materials for one (or just find one) from chests and drops (excluding the wanderer class that can break and collect blocks like normal Minecraft). Thankfully, there's a good amount of enemies strewn around that makes the exploration more interesting, so it's not that big of an issue even if many of them become pushovers. While I really like the enemies, some of them feel iffy, mainly the witch. The witch is fairly rare, which makes this issue not that prevalent, but it's such an annoying enemy. It can use the ISS Blackhole spell semi-frequently and teleports (and goes invisible) when hit, which can lead to either very quick deaths if you don't have good gear or just being stuck for several seconds. I'd honestly love if witches could cast multiple different spells instead of only using Blackhole, though that's just a preference for me.

I've played through this modpack twice, once last year and another time this year, both times with friends. Honestly, I would recommend it to anyone who wants something more interesting than vanilla but not as bloated (for lack of a better word) as some of the other RPG modpacks out there. It also works perfectly as an introductory modpack if your friends haven't played much modded Minecraft before and just want to dip their toes in.

While I do wish there was more content, I was satisifed by the amount time I was able to spend and it being consistently updated is already good enough for me. It might just be me looking through rose-tinted glasses at the past, but I do truly believe that you, whether alone or with a group, will enjoy this as much as I have.