Minecraft Mod & Modpack Reviews

This is easily one of the most unique mods I've ever seen in terms of both the gameplay experience and the aesthetics, and is the one mod that made me invested in modded Minecraft again after a more than ten-year-old break. The feeling of discovery, exploration and puzzle solving at its core is wonderful, and the guidebook strikes a very good balance to tell you just the right amount of things. While there are still some mechanics that might be a bit rough around the edges - at the time of the review - those still do not detract from the overall enjoyment of the mod, especially if you experience it in a spoiler-free way.

Highly recommended,

Been playing since the beginning, after finding out about it by hearing it was alike ChromatiCraft, my favorite mod of all time. Indeed, that similarity rings true, but it too stands alone as the best modern magic mod, and my third favorite in all.

Spectrum has always been an engaging and unique mod with strong aesthetic and theming, rewarding creativity, discovery, and ingenuity. It is unafraid to make players think, which is much appreciated in an era where many mods mindlessly tell you exactly how to play. And for that effort, it rewards you with fun tools and constructs, often novel in their functionality or use.

Progression is based on exploration. The mod gradually reveals things in the world that you'd think weren't there before the deeper you go, encouraging revisiting of some areas and inviting travel to new ones. At present though, I feel there's not as much hidden in the world as there well could be - cold biomes and deserts get nothing unique for example - so truly and deeply searching the world isn't exactly necessary.

Exploration is one of the few areas I feel it is actually lacking in, in more detail: the structures added are few in variety, and while solving them the first time feels great, at length, you can memorize the solutions - they're the same every time, after all. Some randomization, and/or more puzzle variants, would be welcomed. In addition, as mentioned before there is a lack of unique things to find in more than a few areas of the world, making exploring such areas not really worth it for just Spectrum alone.

Overall progression is extremely well done, requiring engaging with the mod, learning its systems, and solving its puzzles to progress - a very welcome breath of fresh air, as aforementioned. It offers extensive hints for major milestones, but I feel they sour the experience of truly finding something out on your own - and in fact this system wasn't always there. The progression also weaves a story, one which takes us on a journey from our first geode to learning this gemstone-based colorful magic, ultimately leading down to the depths of the world, searching for answers and knowledge - though there isn't too much to find, right now.

Art-wise, the mod is excellent, and is only improving with time. Watching it grow from programmer art to where it is today was inspiring to say the least. It has a very strong and recognizable style that lends an already good mod a lasting visual impression. I feel it is so far only lacking in sound and particles, but those too may well get worked on.

In all, Spectrum is a fantastic exploration- and story-driven mod with engaging and puzzley progression, that only continues to get better with time.

I love magic mods. I love the sense of fantasy they install and the exploration and lore, everything about them. But sadly many magic mods feel kind of samey. But Spectrum is unique. It's got a phenomenal progression system, powered by Revelationary, so that you're constantly discovering new things and fulfilling a sense of wonder. The art is incredible for the most part, everything feels so vibrant and polished. It's awesome to craft and discover new things, and explore the various new structures and eventually uncover an entirely new world. From simply satisfying decoration, to committing terrorism and other war crimes, this mod has a lot to explore. That said, there are a few things stopping me from saying this mod is truly perfect

• The mod is a work in progress which can be seen, particularly in some of the structures and worldgen. The structures they add can feel pretty repetitive, with very few options for variation. Additionally, the dimension can feel really annoying to explore, without a tonne of variety and entering the dimension is a bit of a slog.
• It adds a lot of overpowered gear and items but doesn't actually have anything that justifies it. It can get pretty overpowered quite quickly and the threats it adds aren't really enough to justify it. Especially when it gets to the point where a pickaxe is doing more damage than a netherite sword.
• Using it with WTHIT/Jade and Xaero's can sometimes accidentally reveal stuff you shouldn't know, which makes it a bit disappointing to have the surprise ruined and break immersion.

All in all though, the above isn't nearly enough to disregard how much it does well. It's so, so close to being an absolute masterpiece. If I could give it 4.8 stars I would, but for now, 4/5.

This modpack was the filled with content unlike other apocalypse modpacks

My boyfriend and I are playing together (we live together so it is local) it seems to be a little laggy but over all it has been a super fun experience!

Create is already an incredible mod. But then, Garnished comes along and makes it even MORE incredible. And not just for the fact that I can now make nuts jokes with my friends in Minecraft. It's well balanced, has INCREDIBLE textures, and fits into the aesthetics of other completely unrelated mods like Biomes O' Plenty or Farmer's Delight. Definitely would recommend!

THIS MODPACK IS THE ONLY THING I BEEN LOOKING FOR IN MINECRAFT SINCE 1.12.2 , I BEEN LOOKING FOR AN MODPACK WHICH GAVE U AN PRE BUILD STRUCTURES LIKE CITIES , VECHICALS , BETTER AI ZOMBIES WHICH ARE CAPABLE TO DO THINGS LIKE BREAKING BLOCKS , ZOMBIES DIFFUCLITY EVERY 10 DAY , BLOOD MOON , DIFFERENT EVENTS , LOOT , SO FAR IS BEST MODPACK SPECIALLY IF UR PLAYING CO OP.

Great mod pack that's still being updated. Has active discord with people willing to help with any issues. This pack can easily take hundreds of hours to complete and is lot of fun alone or with friends

I played Vault Hunters with a friend, and while all the special made content (vaults, skills and so on) feels well-made and high quality, we ultimately stopped playing. This was do to a feeling of even though you spent some 40-50 hours in a world, you don't feel like you made any major progress. You rarely get a feeling of: "wow, this is a milestone". Of course you level up but except from the first few level, that doesn't feel very exciting.

Another problem with the pack is the recipes.
I usually play more classic expert modpacks, like DJ2 and E2E (which i have completed) and some gregtech modpacks, so I'm used to having difficult recipes but as you progress, you usually get the means to makes does recipes less demanding. In Vault Hunters, many modded recipes require gems found in the vault which in the beginning are pretty demanding. But the thing is, the recipes don't really get easier.
Before you even get access to a mod, you have to unlock it, which takes a good amount of grind but you this is actually one of the few parts of the mod I felt gave a sense of: "you have progressed". A mod like storage drawers takes quite a grind but when you finally unlock it you're happy, but then you see the a single compacting drawer takes the same amount of grind as a netherite chestplate in vanilla. Of cause a compacting drawer shouldn't be easy, but the cost of the recipe doesn't go down as it require alot of vault gems.
Vault gems are only found in randomly spawned rooms in the vault. Of cause you get fortune and so on, but the amount of gems you get increases very slowly. Way slower then the demand increases, which in the end means you got to run more vaults. Of cause that's the point of the pack, but having to grind for six hours for single drawer isn't fun, especially as the cost of the vault increases. This leads to you having to go out and grind for resources, sometimes for pretty long time when you need a chest worth of beetroot seeds and cocoa beans, which you don't have the means to automate, as that would require vault gems.

This pack starts out as a pack very firmly focused on exploration, with many dungeons and dimensions to explore. This pack makes Alex's Caves separate dimensions, as well as adds several other dimension mods. One of the interesting things is that to get Thermal Expansion ores, instead of mining, you have to run specific dimensional dungeons - a nice twist that emphasizes the exploration at the heart of the beginning of the pack.

And then you hit the crafting portion of the pack. Lots of Create, a bit of Thermal Expansion, tons of time spent in one place, crafting. This is the expert portion of the pack, and in my opinion, it felt like running into a wall at a sprint and coming to a dead stop. All the time was spent between two locations - my oil pump and my Create base. There were two more dimensions I had yet to open up, but by that point, I had lost interest.

I'm not a huge fan of expert packs, but I have enjoyed them in the past. This one just felt like a tonal whiplash, switching between the exploration focus to the 'stay in one place and craft' focus. If you think you can handle that better, I really enjoyed the first half of this modpack.