Minecraft Mod & Modpack Reviews

The only real complaint is that guidebook is incomplete so past nether you have zero ******* clue where to go now.
Cant wait for 3.2.

First modpack in my life that i played up to and even past day 100 mark. Really enjoyable.

Protip: Calamarigold sword has a very cool effect if you use it near your spawn with empty inventory. Helped me get diamond set pre nether.

Enigmatica 9 Expert has very quickly become one of my all-time favorite expert packs to date. Not only was the gameplay stellar as a player, but as an aspiring pack developer, this pack truly opened my eyes to what is possible.

Context: A couple of my friends and I have been playing off and on on a private server. It has been running chunkloaded for a few months so our farms are overflowing - we have yet to update past version 1.12.1 so far because of how long our "off" seasons are, and we have been putting off automating a necessary ingredient from a prior update (abjuration essence for potions). We have only just about gotten to soul steel, which is early in Chapter 3, but it is the final chapter. I feel like we tend to move a bit slower than what I see for reported playtime in most packs, so you may beat the pack in a far shorter period of time.

Highlights:
There are many great things to say about this pack, but here are some I found particularly impactful.

Recipes Respect your Time:
Have you ever been playing a pack when you realize the next step in progression will take hours, and the only thing you can do to speed it up is to upscale your infrastructure? It's kind of like hitting a wall when trying to speed past a Mario level. It gets rid of all of your momentum. E9E attempts to do away with this. First off, there are no singularities in E9E. The closest thing to a resource dump is each of the Tree of Life capstone items, which aren't even close. E9E has very little "grind", and every item or block you need a lot of is designed to take very little time to make. Heck, they even start you out with an unbreaking hoe that has a bone meal effect so you don't have to wait for crops to grow!
This sort of respect for the player's time already been somewhat of a mantra for me as a pack developer, but this pack does it amazingly.
A note, though: while a large portion of the pack can be completed with big batch crafts, I have heard that later in Chapter 3 (we haven't gotten there yet) automation becomes a fair bit more necessary. From what I can tell, the final item that officially beats the pack is probably the most automation and resource intensive. (It's still nowhere near singularities, though!)

Theming:
This really blew my mind. The pack doesn't have much "lore" per se, but the magical theming is baked into the quests, the recipes, the gameplay, and even the item and block names. You may be a player beating a modpack, but in E9E, you are a Witch restoring life to a Tree of Life. You may be plopping down familiar tech mod machines, but in E9E, those are helpful spirits bound to arcane frames, trading your magical energy for their labor. And you may be constructing your workshop of multiblocks and kinetics, but in E9E, those are built out of orichalcum, artificing blocks, and runic manifolds - and probably powered by magical gold-hungry squirrels. It's almost as if they thought, "What if Forge Energy was based entirely on magic?" and then went off the deep end with ideas - and it is amazing!

Attention to Detail:
This pack truly leaves no stone unturned as far as I know it. When I say "You start in the Twilight Forest" it may sound like a cute little detail. Surely it will be just another pack with the TF as a fun little side attraction, right? Not in E9E! The Twilight Forest is fully integrated - Slaying each boss provides a material necessary for your progression. Customized Twilight mobs spawn with knives and bombs. Ironwood serves as an early iron-like alternative, as iron is a midgame material. And much, much more. You can't even get to the overworld until the end of Chapter 2. And did I mention iron was a midgame material? Every single recipe that once required iron has been updated to align with its part in pack progression. Every. Single. Recipe.
To me, this pack is the pinnacle of attention to detail. From rebalanced Apotheosis to overhauled ore processing to modified loot tables, almost nothing is left to the potentially progression-breaking whims of vanilla or any unmodified mods. As far as I know it, E9E is bulletproof. And that has taken a LOT of dedication and time.

Uniqueness:
I may not have as much to compare it to because of how few packs I've completed, but this pack is probably one of the most unique packs I have ever played. (From what I've heard, E6E may be the closest? But I haven't played enough E6E to compare.) Iron midgame? Start in the Twilight Forest? Easy examples. However what I wanted to highlight is that you probably will not be doing the same things you do in other packs to progress. If machines are bound spirits, then you will have to bind a spirit to that machine. This probably means you'll have to summon the spirit through an Occultism ritual, and then bind it with another. You don't have much access to pipes, so you'll have to get those magical squirrels to move things around. You can probably use a Nature's Aura altar to summon a few of those. And when you need to transport between dimensions? Modular Routers for small jobs, AE2 Quantum Tunnels for big ones.
Again, I'm not sure how common those are (I may have been playing too many kitchen sinks recently where those almost never show up too significantly) but I have learned so much about so many cool mods from playing E9E and I love it.
Something I'm very certain isn't used much in other packs is potions. You make potions in E9E. Wild!

Negatives:
I absolutely adore E9E so I don't really find these to be too bothersome, but this is what I've heard from some other players that I can agree may turn some people away.

Few Viable Solutions:
In E9E there is a "Golden Path" (or a railroad, if you prefer) that directs you to what you should be doing for progression. If you want power, you should probably make Source. If you want mob drops, Drygmies are best. If you need crops, Whirlisprigs are the way to go. (I know all of those are from the same mod but bear with me) This sort of thing is somewhat common in expert packs (and kitchen sinks, if you really want to optimize things) but it's really limited in E9E, especially for power generation for which there is usually a plethora of options. Some of the mods have been stripped of most of their content for this purpose (Powah comes to mind). If this sounds unplayable, this may not the pack for you.

Short:
I find this to be a positive myself, but if you're a speed demon and you want a pack to keep you occupied for a long time, E9E might be too short for you. The quick recipes and the streamlined progression options lend themselves to a pack that is shorter than many expert packs to the point where some have considered speedrunning it. I think it's cool, but again, that's me.

Unfamiliarity:
I gushed about how unique the pack is, but if you do not feel like learning new mod mechanics you may not care much for E9E. This is, of course, speaking as someone who knew nothing of many of the mods beforehand (PneumaticCraft, Ars Nouveau, Nature's Aura, Occultism, Modular Routers, etc.) so it was a wonderful learning experience for me. I love learning, though, and I understand some may not want to bother with all that in their leisure time.

All that aside, I honestly believe that this pack is a work of art, and it is worth at least a look for any expert pack player (or pack developer) just to see all of the innovation and care that was pumped into it, including those who may dislike it based on my reported negatives.
(I have also heard that many players who claim not to like magic mods have loved it despite all the mystical theming. Seriously folks, give this one a try.)

Before I begin with my rating I want to admit, that I'm really new to modded minecraft and that I've finished these two packs recently: ATM9 and BMC 1.19

Starting with gameplay I must say its a really amazing zombie modpack, if not the best Ive seen in my life. They made a custom data pack which generates many structures and entire cities as well. Also every building / structure has its unique loot which is themed to the building / structure the chest stands in (for example in a sushi restaurant you got lots of sushi and fish).

As for balance and progression. This modpack was not intended to be grindy and I like it. You get around the mods fast. Exploring is always fun and challenging due to the zombies. Traveling from point A to point B can be really hard due to cold sweat installed. I used teleportation in the beginning and decided to cut down on that and to play legit. A problem I have with the balance is the biome called wastelands. In there there are factories and military bases to be found. In these structures you can find lots of high end stuff and useful stuff for building, yet the loot is too much to be called balanced. also to enter these wastelands you need a gas mask which crafting process is really challenging and fun to explore, here also the gas mask can be found in buildings which i dont like. i think the crafting process is something everyone has to do. another thing bad about it is that the gas mask doesnt get used as you stay in the wastelands. the factories always look the same, some more variants would be really nice.
also the modpack doesn't have a real end goal.

To sum it up: Nerf the army base loot and buff the army zombies a bit, dont put full high end armor in the chests instead make it damaged, add more factory variants, make it that the gas mask gets used while you stay in the waste lands and make it that you can refill the gasmask by using filters, make it that the gas mask cannot be found easily and add some kind of end boss to have a real goal besides quests maybe connect them two. then i would consider to put gameplay at 5 stars, dont think of the three stars as bad, the modpack is still in the starting position and if you compare with other zombie modpacks its 4.5 to 5 stars.

as for aesthetics, we dont have any custom texture packs or music but the city generation is really nice. the roads in the city could be a bit more open and wider and maybe a bit more variation with the buildings.

Performance is great. everything works fine and there is rarely a bug or glitch that messes with the game. also i know its not the performance of the game but i like how to creators of the pack interact with the community in the discord. suggestions and questions get taken care of in minutes.

All in all a very good modpack, im happy to be able to enjoy this and im really looking forward to future updates since were still in the beginning of the pack.

When I get in an can play in a world it's a nice modpack, however 95% of the time doesn't even start, crashes when loading world, lag, etc. Reinstalling doesn't help either.

I have played GTNH for a few months now, and am in very late MV. This pack can be grindy, but is very rewardable in terms of satisfaction. The progression is very good, and the quest book is helpful if needed. I find that JEI surfing is hypnotizing, but that may be just be me. One unfortunate part is that the magic mods are not required until late endgame, such as getting the infinity armor. The late endgame is still being worked on, so we shall see how it turns out. Kharax82 is an amazing GTNH youtuber working towards the stargate currently in UXV+. Watching him or listening to him while you play is useful, as his early powergen strategy is exactly what I am doing.

Extremely fun and adds great content to the game. Enchanting setups are fun to progress through and the affixes are just amazing

Now look I may be slightly biased, this is my mod after all. But I can safely say that both I and my friend that has played it both think it's really cool.

In one server that we played this mod we could obtain a lot of machines of mods easily with the Iluminati Pet, in our case it was with the Ender IO mod.

The good thing is that it has a blacklist that you can configure it to avoid this pet breaks your game.

This mod Increases the difficulty of the Ender Dragon:

• It doesn't allow to kill the Ender Dragon with beds anymore
• It summons Blaze every time that the player breaks an Ender Crystal with an arrow
• It summons Endermans on respawn

I like it but personally I would reduce the default difficulty a little, nothing that can be fixed changing the config file.

Some context: I played this pack on a community server with 10-20 people, usually less than 10 online at any given time.

Coming from someone who hasn't played much of modern versions and tech, E9 serves as a pretty good introduction to its mods. I mainly used Mekanism throughout the whole pack, with a couple other mods throughout. It's beginner friendly with good quest descriptions, not the greatest but it told me what I needed to know to get started. Late-game Mekanism, the quests started to degrade and I was forced to use the wiki and multiple tutorial videos. Quests weren't in the best order either and the quest rewards in the beginning felt super OP. However, for a kitchen sink pack, this felt rather polished compared to others I've played in the past but definitely not perfect. I still enjoyed this much more than E6, that's for sure. I recommend picking a specific mod in this pack and going through it fully, especially if you're new.

I will say the exploration, caves, and mobs felt pretty barebones. The modlist is fairly tame compared to most kitchen sinks, but it seems like it's intentional. Personally I think this pack could've used a bit more to spice it up (especially the caving) but it wasn't a big deal to me as I was inside my base working on tech 95% of the time. I rarely even went to other dimensions as there wasn't much reason to, aside from plopping a digital miner in the Nether and going back home.

E9 has a lot of potential for a polished experienced with great inter-mod compatibility but drops the ball on a few aspects. A big pet peeve of mine was the fact that there were multiple versions of the same ingot. Osmium for example had the Mekanism version and the "enigmatica" version. It was really annoying when going through recipes and having to find recipes and uses for a specific ingot.

I'm very curious to see how E9: Expert compares to this, but as a beginner when it comes to tech, I still had a blast learning all the systems. It felt open-ended with enough direction to not have me completely lost. EMI is a blessing and blew my mind when I first saw what it offers. Plenty of QoL in the pack but could use more (cough, Carry On). E9 could use more building blocks as well, definitely sad at the lack of chisel (i like the cool tech blocks 😭). You really gotta get creative to make some nice looking factories.

As far as performance and stability, the first half was pretty much perfectly fine. I would've rated it 5 stars if the server crashes didn't start coming in half-way through. Issues and crashes started to become common as more players got ahold of complicated tech, but I don't entirely blame the pack for that. Any kitchen sink would struggle with the amount of players we had, so I only deducted 1 star.

All in all, if you want a somewhat-polished, easy, and fun kitchen sink pack to play with a bunch of friends where everyone can be satisfied, give E9 a try :)