Minecraft Mod & Modpack Reviews

tldr; Good overall, difficulty spike by gear, need turning for better experience. Think of Payday 2 at launch.

I want to try some zombie pack and roll on some, this is the one I prefer the most. This pack give me swing of taste. I hate it and I like it. Need to tweak something to make it smooth and less annoying. I don't mind the difficulty, but tedious and cheap thick are out of question.

From the point of difficulty can put you in term of real hardcore life and death. It's really, really need proper turn before it become cheap trick and most game just do that. I don't buy with hunter not going to play fair rule of nature. But when you make a game with grinding and stuff, it's just not work. DC almost got it and also fail at it miserably.

• You got lot of stuff to do and use or customize which is really good. Also lot of weapon and gun to play with.
• City is nice, a bit limit but better than other pack for sure. But without city, it fail to deliver anything remarkable.

• The elevation is so bad, too many mountain or high hill that many city look bad.
• Too many subway. Decreased Craft have more subway than the branch IRL.

• Common zombie have lot of diversity from just appearance to different in status. Varies of special zombie is good.
• Tech and stuff that quite good.
• Good quest and clear ending task.

Now for the think that don't sell for me. I know that AI and MC have lot of limit in combat and parkour is a thing.

• Moonflower. It's fast and weak, come it pack. Common trouble maker trait. The bad part is while everything give LOUR alert sound, this one give the same footstep as you and most of the time don't. The hitbox is on top of worst in MC history. Both attack and hit. It's wonky and ruin all the fun. Many time I can't even hit it with melee at any angle and need to switch to creative to actually 'hit it' ... That much of cheap.
• The explosive special infect, forget the name. The attack is alright, but 90% of the time I can't find this thing. Even turn creative and demolish the whole building just for testing... So it's just keep attacking freely while player can't do **** until it despawn. Fun and challenging indeed.
• The baby that can spawn from the group in range wherever they want. No need to say why it bad.
• OHK stuff boss/miniboss. Okay, you got gun. But why bother make a **** health system if you going to die from OHK? Only reason is the lack of creativity to design interesting fight. (Most 'hard pack' also do, so nothing special here)
• Random infected chance. I don't think it work here since there is too many cheap hit you can take. Unless you want to use sandbox to fullest. Which ruin the building design and role play, but well...
• Random body part dmg. As same as above.
• Again with bloat biome that don't served anything for the pack itself. Why the season thingy is address here too?
• Sometime with enough luck, you can mine less than 20 stone for a whole day since zombie don't stop spawning and bee line to you.

I usually try to not die in any circumstance. But when the game fail to deliver proper turn difficulty. It'll become 'well, just die and you good' which make it no longer a challenge but a chore. When player choose or just die instead of avoid death. You seriously fail at adjusting difficulty.
Because it's feel unfair and try to cure those problem are more boring than a need to overcome mistake. Add more death penalty will backfire even more since it dug deep in unfair territory already.

Still, it better than other zombie pack out there. If you want some gun and zombie, I still recommend this one. Just deal with some cheap trick and don't think much like watch a popcorn movie and you should be fine. Or better yet, try to remove those Moonflower and explosive one. You'll miss nothing and feel more enjoyable.

From the very beginning you are greeted by balanced mobs, great world generation (with some bugs but oh well), elaborate quest line, lore and invite to discord where people will help you to get going. I enojoyed every second of it, although I played for 50h+ and cannot judge optimization/performance of this modpack, but I can share my happiness instead. MAN THAT PACK PACK A HELL OF A PUNCH. Resourses are easy to get, everything can be automated, there are a lot of bees (biggest fan) and they are made easier. There are tons of dimensions where you can loose yourlsef. Its regularly updated, dev makes reports on what he is working on and so on. Enjoy your time

This pack is not hard. It's filled with unfair trolls. This is a troll pack.

EVERYTHING kills you.. including picking up clam shells. This is not dark souls hard. This is "haha the carrots exploded" hard. If you enjoy this kind of experience, you can just set a timer that randomly kills you - same effect. This feels like a "getting pranked by falling anvils randomly" pack more then any cohesive story or magic pack.

The mod author nerfs the player to 5 hearts (which might as well be half a heart since mobs one-shot you anyway) and then gives every mob the ability to one-shot you and teleport to you. There is NO counterplay, no tactics, no defense... it's just getting killed over and over and over again for the sake of "difficulty".

If you want this to be anything other then an immediate uninstall and blacklist, then you need to make the starting experience a LOT better. Set the pack to peaceful until the player at least can aquire some hearts / armor / weapons (and I am not talking about your nerfed swords that break in 2-3 hits... if they even hit anything... another braindead decision...).

And for the love of... why give mobs armor that reduces the damage you do to literally 0 with early game weapons.. and then set them against players that don't even have an axe yet? How did you expect this to go? Have you done ANY balance checking or do you just cheat in armor / tools when you test? It shows...

Go play a good pack like RLCraft if you want to know what difficult is. This ain't it.

Rebirth of the Night is a survival-focused Minecraft modpack that emphasizes deliberate, rewarding progression in a hostile and immersive world. Unlike most modpacks that hand you tools and freedom up front, RoTN forces you to claw your way forward. Progression is tightly controlled—dimensions, high-tier gear, and key resources are all boss-gated or locked behind specific milestones. Every achievement feels earned, not given.

One of its standout features is the game's dynamic escalation: the world reacts to you. Mob AI is significantly improved—enemies flank, break blocks, and behave with unnerving cunning. As if that weren’t enough, every 9 or so in-game days, full-scale mob hordes descend upon you. These events ratchet up the tension and keep you from ever feeling safe, even in your own base.

Balancing is sharp: food, light, and shelter are strategic concerns, not afterthoughts. The game encourages planning, exploration, and caution over brute force. However, some long-standing issues remain, such as the ToroQuest mod’s king quests being bugged and unfinishable. It’s understandable—RoTN’s devs didn’t create that mod and fixing it would be a challenge—but it’s still a persistent blemish on an otherwise polished and deeply engaging experience.

For players looking for progression-driven survival with teeth, Rebirth of the Night is one of the most compelling and punishingly satisfying modpacks out there.

I'm very much enjoying this modpack. While it's difficult, the progression is clearly well thought-out and the mod integration is done wonderfully. While it's not a building-focused pack, builders (including myself) will find no dearth of options, between Wizard's Reborn, Create, Supplementaries, and Quark, not to mention Oh the Biomes We've gone and Astrological, there are more than enough building options to make all your magic automation beautiful. The dev is active on Discord and the community is great. If you want some challenging gameplay with amazing mod integration, I would highly recommend!

I'll go from what I deem most important to least.
Also, I'm playing on 1.16.1, which should be the latest version on curseforge. If you play on FTB launcher you will likely have a newer version
Performance! I used to play this on a really bad computer. There are a couple of things that will send you back to the title screen but overall it runs well.

There are quests in this pack, but to properly play the pack you should know about lots of mods. The end goal of the pack can be thought of as Infinity Ingots but there is a special item called "Balanced Clay" which I would say is the true end goal. It's not in the quest book on the version I played so I reckon I'll mention it here.

As for some things you may dislike, good luck trying to beat the pack without chickens, emc, draconic evolution, or AE2. You will have to build a mob farm but you can hold off for quite a while.

Playtime!
My first playthrough years ago lasted over 2 weeks of playtime, I got a full set of infinity armor without much use of EMC. It was my first ever mod pack, so I except a complete noob to take about this long if they have never touched modded minecraft and don't have much of a grasp on it.
My playthrough with a friend recently lasted only 50 hours, and we both spent a lot of time AFK so I can't give a good estimate. This is the speed you'll go if you know what you are doing.
I reckon now that I know the actual progression route, I might be able to beat it in one sitting if I focus.

TIPS!
Make a time in a bottle asap for chickens, I have more but spoilers doesn't work

it's been a year since i played this, but it really feels like the gold standard of modern modpacks. the progression is great, the quests aren't too much or too little, and the difficulty feels fair.

pros:

• EMC is fun
• interesting custom(?) resource generators
• power flowers/similar removed (imo)
• items without EMC make sense and are consistent
• fun and interesting gates between mods

negatives:

• there's an endgame block that duplicates anything you put into it as fast as you can pipe the item out except it's way too easy to craft for how broken it is. I felt like I was in the midgame and all of a sudden I had effectively infinite EMC and infinite of any non-EMC item
• with the tiered resource generators, you just generate one of each item to have it learned and then focus on the one with the best EMC per generation, which feels like an underwhelming use of the mod
• quests seem outdated or something? like one of the quests asks you to get what would be a decent amount of dirt if it didn't cost 1 EMC per dirt.
• chapter rewards are randomly very strong and i felt like i was skipping too much progression using them because they aren't hard to achieve (one gives you every hard item needed for the above-mentioned endgame block)

FancyMenu is a Minecraft mod that completely transforms the menu system, letting you design and animate interfaces with a level of detail rarely seen in the modding scene. From the moment you install it, the creative potential is clear.

Pros

• Full customization: You can change everything – buttons, backgrounds, music, text, images, and even add animations.
• No coding needed: While it's packed with features, you don’t need programming knowledge to start creating.
• Broad compatibility: It works well with many other mods and is ideal for custom modpacks.
• Dynamic features: You can add interactive animations, sounds, and timed events to menus.

Cons

• Steep learning curve: The settings and editor can be overwhelming for new users.
• Minor compatibility issues: Some visual glitches can appear when used with certain shaders or mods (though the mod is updated regularly).
• (Performance impact): Heavy animations and effects might affect performance on lower-end systems.

Conclusion

FancyMenu isn’t for everyone, but if you enjoy customizing your game deeply, this mod offers endless possibilities. It’s a powerful tool for modpack creators, content designers, or anyone who wants Minecraft to look and feel unique. The learning curve is worth it for the creative freedom it offers.

Hopefully more mods will follow this level of visual flexibility without needing code.

honestly didn’t expect to get this into it. I just wanted a vampire server to mess around on for a weekend and ended up sinking like every other evenings into this over a few weeks. The vampire/werewolf/hunter thing actually feels pretty balanced most of the time.really good vibes, def recommend if you’re into roleplay, or just want something different from the usual tech/magic modpacks. late game could use more stuff to do, and server can lag like **** sometimes but I’ll come back for the next season (world resets annually) not just another kitchen sink pack.