Minecraft Mod & Modpack Reviews

North American Fishes is very underrated. Over 150 fish is nothing to scoff at, and they are all beautiful. The mod's designs are in a style that is close to vanilla, and often feels exactly like it with the smaller fish, but diagonal cubes and generally more cubes and planes than the vanilla fish definitely separate it from the vanilla style. This is particularly noticeable with the mob's largest fishes, the White sturgeon and paddlefish. I personally love this artstyle, and its done extraordinarily well here. This mod also adds a lot of vegetation to the waters, and it looks stunning, particularly in the swamp.

In the Gameplay department, this mod adds some new food from the fish, a new sword crafted from the Sawfish, a new stone type, 'Creekcoble', and a new small block set crafted from freshwater sponge. However from here the mod suffers a bit gameplay-wise. Some gameplay features involving the Fish aren't implemented, which hampers my enjoyment of the mod. Fish have the exact same behavior as vanilla fish, which makes sense for most of them, although I would have preferred some variety for particular fish, such as making the walking catfish walk on land rather than flopping, or have the sawfish fight back. But definitely the most damning is the lack of fishing support. None of the 150+ fish are able to be caught with a rod. To the mod's credit, it adds a fishing trap that allows you to passively get fish from the trap after putting in bait, but it really isn't the same, and even then only includes some fish. The lack of fishing support could be solved with datapacks, but this feel like such a vital feature to a mod about fish so often caught with a line in North America that it feels a bit disappointing. Also, the mod has a fair few spelling errors, likely a result of the author not being an English native. It's minor but noticeable.

TL;DR: The fish are lovely, and the plants and algae are stunning. It adds a lot of fun new items, but the integration of the fish into gameplay is lacking.

Raspberry Flavoured is a modpack so great that I married the lead developer. You may think that this would make me a biased reviewer, but fear not, for I fell for her due to how amazing her pack was, not the other way around! That's how you know it's good.

I have extremely high standards when it comes to Minecraft mods and modpacks, as I am a game designer, Minecraft is my longest running hyperfixation, and I am a perfectionist, sometimes to a fault. But when I first played RF, it pleased me in a way that no other pack had done before. Mind you, it has been a while since that first playthrough, and both my tastes and the pack itself have been refined for a couple of years since, but even then there was something special about it. And refined now it is, you will not find a pack as cohesive or with as much polish and attention to detail as RF.

Despite its tags, it's hard for me to say if I would really call RF vanilla+, or even vanilla-, as it focuses more on what raspmary believes would be good design, rather than emulating what Mojang would believe to be good design. Though in my opinion, vanilla+ is kind of just used as a blanket term for mods that are intended to be well designed for the game, so it's not exactly incorrect. Whatever the case, this design philosophy is what makes the pack great. There's no arbitrary restrictions, it's well designed, and there is a clear vision; to make Minecraft not suck. Some of my favourite designed parts of RF are the tool progression, advancement tree, crop & fish selection, and general lack of content bloat, though it's very hard to list everything great about it concisely.

The only criticism I've seen for this pack that I believe is valid, and that hasn't since been addressed in an update / is being addressed in a future update, is that it can have poor performance. This has never really been a problem for me personally, but I have seen other people struggle to run the pack. I'm not really sure what could be done about this though, RF has a lot of mods so it's not really a surprise.

The most controversial part of RF is its feature removals. It removes a lot of stuff from vanilla, such as the end and villagers, and guts almost every mod integrated into it. I think this is a great thing that makes the pack a million times better, which shouldn't be a shock at this point of my review, but I do understand that it can be hard to accept for some. Personally though I think the pack doesn't remove things enough! I would love to one day see Create gutted of even more features, but that would take a lot of work.

Ultimately, RF is a modpack for people who like to take the game slow, and for those who are cursed with the knowledge of how to design a game good. There's nothing crazily flashy or out of this world, it's just a version of Minecraft that is cohesive and passionate. And passionate about it I am, it got me a wife after all!

Iron's spells and spellbooks is fantastic

the spells weave into the game seamlessly, no spell is too powerful unless you try to make it work in a way that is powerful, progression is great, the spritework is top-notch, and of course, to top it all off; the mod is extremely configurable, so you can balance your modpacks and kitchen sinks to your heart's content.

Though its not very vanilla-styled, the UI is sleek and really quite nice to look at and use, and of course, the performance it beings to the game for free is incredible

Even though it doesn't significantly alter the gameplay to remove mineraft's big negatives with the food mechanics; The spritework and gameplay culminate in such a perfect blend, it almost feels like you're actually eating the foods in real life... not just meaninglessly munching on steak or golden carrots for eternity.

This should've been in the vanilla game, its great. one problem with this mod though, is that it doesn't have more dynamic color options, such as border color by average player color, or randomized uuid color.

It's really good i think, despite the small performance cost in ui's

a fan of souls like and minecraft?

yep, this is the pack. no other pack ever comes close to the combat system this one has. extremely addictive, linear progression with a decent storyline like very few, stunning combat visuals and unique bosses with movesets i cant even complete counting.

This should be the standard in todays modpack making. it grabs some of the aspects of the game and customized it in the most stunning way possible. Hoping to see something even bigger in future.

this pack gifted me some of my most memorable modded mc experience. its unfair and BS hard at early game but it gradually gets so much fun. only pack Ive completed 3 times and i will do once more after the update they are currently working for drops. Would suggest giving it a fair amount of time and those ugly looking lycanite mobs will become the best friend of yours.

10/10

I’m currently in the process of completing this pack, and I’m now entering the endgame phase. I have to say, it has been great all around. From everything I’ve seen and heard, however, the best is yet to come. Xtreme Crafting, the 9×9 Avaritia recipes, is the bread and butter of this modpack. Today, Minecraft 1.7.10 is justifiably considered retro, but if you want a pack from this era, I highly recommend this one. It truly is great.