Minecraft Mod & Modpack Reviews

As a player who has been playing modded Minecraft for over a decade, this pack has been an amazing breath of fresh air. The mods feel very well integrated with each other which helps it feel more like an actual mod pack instead of a disparate collection of mods. I may not recommend it to those totally new to modded Minecraft, but as long as you have a good handle on the basics, the questbook and JEI can get you through the bulk of it. If you get stuck though, the Discord server is a great place to go. I'm roughly halfway through the standard ending as of now and I'm still as invested as I was hundreds of hours ago. It's fairly tech-heavy, but even the magic mods feel like they're important too, and it has a really satisfying progression where you can continually upgrade your crafts to be more efficient as you go through the chapters. It has a number of great lag prevention systems in place, many of which were made by members of the community specifically for this pack, so as long as you smartly build your base, you can keep it running smoothly even into late game. There's also enough combat and exploration to keep things interesting as well as puzzles that can unlock more efficient recipes or machines that help break up the base building gameplay and avoids letting the pack become monotonous. Hell, it manages to balance EMC even. By the end of this, it will likely rank as my favorite pack of all time. Can't recommend it enough for those looking for a unique experience.

currently at the end of chapter 3, so this review reflects my experience up until then.

meatballcraft is a very "experimental" modpack, and completely builds 70% of its progression out of contenttweaker, custom multiblocks, and custom structures. this virtue alone makes mbc a completely unique experience in its own right -- even if you've played most of the mods in the pack, you have simply not played meatballcraft.

mbc builds its progression on top of incredibly in-depth quest worldbuilding, and experiments with a bunch of very weird/esoteric progression concepts. i think the uniqueness of this pack's progression is the main appeal: most modpacks are pretty homogenous in terms of content, so the prospect of a pack that blends its own creative and silly progression in-between everything is quite exciting.

however, while this pack is very experimental, it's in a way that often feels like it shoots in the dark. for every brilliantly unique and fun problem the pack offers me, it mixes in a problem that is incredibly grindy and uninteresting, so it's like a constant rollercoaster of "very fun problem" and "tragic grind." it's the modpack equivalent of chasing the dragon, i want to experiment and solve all the cool infrastructure and manufacturing problems and play with the fun toys the pack gives me, but i have to put myself through tedious grinds just to get to it.

several imprecise things that i liked:

• i like a lot of the automation/passive/subnet gameplay
• i like how early AE2 and void worlds are
• i like how the questbook is very helpful at leading me through mods i hadn't touched before
• master spells are so fun. favorite modpack concept ever. absolute highlight of the pack being experimental
• first modpack in 10 years to finally make me care enough to learn how to do forestry bees
• furnace dimension

several precise things that annoyed me:

• warning the player that switching dimensions too frequently will cause severe lagspikes is good to know! but then there's abyssalcraft, which is all nested dimensions, so the modpack actively encourages you to spent several minutes waiting for dimensions to load whenever you need to get to omothol. please put the advanced dislocator in chapter 2
• so many times i have been climbing through a crafting chain, only to think that i'm done, and then find that one item (that i assumed i had/seemed easy to get) was actually a different item altogether that's extremely painful to get. for example, the renewable recipe for ice crystal looks simple, so you spend time getting everything else and then right when you're done, sike! the two ice blocks were actually two perpetual ice blocks, you fool, you utter buffoon. this sounds petty, but this kind of crafting recipe frustration happened to me at least a dozen times in this pack. it's a very oddly frequent phenomenon that feels like trolling every time, but not in a way that's fun for me
• i think the emphasis on dimensions and exploring is really cool, but i play modpacks for overt engineering problems, and something in my brain begins to crumble when i'm asked to spend several minutes finding the last "1 of 8 random structures" on this moon, or "go find a frost (rare overworld mob) and put it in a soul vial". like, idk, i think exploring is cool, but with how rare some things are, it's sometimes like playing a slot machine that's constantly filling up space on my harddrive
• chapter 2's progression is a little sad, and basically just says "ok, every magic mod is now unlocked" and expects you to make a little progress in all of them, and they're not particularly changed/different. this would be less bad if some magic mods were staged later in progression (or if there were less of them), because it's definitely the least "meatballcraft" part of the pack.
• don't really know why the extended pattern processing terminal is locked so late in progression, esp considering its just nice qol to avoid packagedauto for a few recipes
• locking the ultimate warp cleanser behind abyssalcraft sounds great, until you find out that you passively gain 500 points of warp when speedrunning abyssalcraft's progression, and so there's a good amount of time in this pack that you simply have to suffer at max warp. which would be more fine if you also didn't have to do significant thaumcraft progression and make 3 custom multiblocks just to get the warp cleanser
• i think the bee stargate is really cool as an option for skipping space, but the questbook claims you have to make a space station regardless, so its like, idk, does it actually skip space if space is required anyways? i may have misunderstood this, though
• several of my personal gripes are less to do with how meatballcraft frames things and more with how my least favorite parts of some mods are just unchanged. off the top of my head, these would be early ender io (please man i dont wanna mow the lawn and collect hedge trimmings to make green gamer dye), abyssalcraft (just a grindy uninteresting headache especially after you've done it once), and gaia 4 (i tried looking up a video on how to do this fight and i found a german youtuber who cheated in and used 6 charm of life IIs, just to beat the fight with the recommended gear)

in spite of all of this, i do think the modpack is definitely worth checking out for anyone interested. i think folks less burnt out of mods than i am will enjoy it, especially since the uniqueness of the pack does a very good job at making it feel distinct to play. just be warned that it is very experimental, both in good ways, but also in ways that will make you want to cheat in an item every so often, and if you ever get that urge, you should take a break and come back later. unless it's abyssalcraft. then cheat that **** in immediately. its a singleplayer game nobody's stopping ya man. ok you could play it in multiplayer too, but if you've read this far, then you're definitely playing in singleplayer. i know your kind

tldr: experimental pack that offers a lot of fun problems, but held back by a lot of frustrating design points that haven't been cleaned up yet. in the first few chapters, the largest ones i experienced were: rarer structures should be more common, advanced dislocator should be ch2, gaia 4 should be optional, and add options to skip abyssalcraft

FTB Quests is one of if not the most popular questing mod out there. An essential mod if you are creating a modpack that has quests in mind.

Gameplay.
Lots of useful tools for creating quests. It features a visual editor that lets anyone, even a beginner, create quests and chapters. It's fairly easy to use and learn. It has lots of useful features and tools for quest creators, like chapters, quests (ofc), tasks, rewards for completing tasks and quests, making quests repetitive, useful commands which in my experience help make quests more multiplayer friendly and more advanced especially for the clear progress command, and just the customizability is amazing.

Performance.
I have noticed nothing performance wise related to FTB Quests, and making quests doesn't seem to affect my performance.

Aesthetics.
I love that it has a visual editor, even more so that everything is nicely designed. The UI is easy on the eyes as well. Honestly not much else to say, it's all nicely designed visually.

One thing that affects my overall rating is that it's only available on CurseForge. There isn't anything wrong with that, but being such a huge mod and again one of if not the most popular questing mod (and also just choosing not to support Modrinth), it's unfortunate it's not on Modrinth as lots of packs, especially those that use FTB Quests such as my studios packs, can't have their packs on Modrinth without having to redo lots of things and have to make do without FTB Quests.

The overly-complicated chemistry chains are satisfying to automate and plan for, with some of the most realistic chemical processes you can make your factory so large that it starts to turn into a liminal space.

I have played Cursed Walking a lot back then, and one of the packs i've played the most. It's a pretty good and fun modpack, and avoids being too much of a 'kitchen sick' pack. If you love zombie apocalypses, definitely try this pack out.

Gameplay.
There's quite a bit to do in Cursed Walking. You can create machines and contraptions to automate weapon and ammo, you can explore the world and scavenge cities, or you can go full berserk and battle hordes of zombies. There's lots of playstyles and approaches you can do. There's also quests you can complete alongside playing. Cursed Walking is most fun with friends, which i've done lots before on the official MC server. It's a great take on the zombie apocalypse genre.

Performance.
It does take a while to load up, around a minute or more to load into the main menu upon starting. Same with world creation, however it still performs well and has the important and popular performance mods.

Aesthetics.
It does have some world generation mods that help spice things up, and make it different from vanilla. It also has very nicely done custom cities, and unique zombies using Tissou's Zombie Pack. However i feel like it can be made more visually more unique with more custom content.

Disclaimer.
I was previously affiliated with the modpack, being a previous member of the team/studio behind the modpack though have resigned a while ago. However, this is my honest and unbiased review. It has also been a while since i last played it fully, but i've been meaning to play it again.

I've used Create in lots of packs, and for my own as well.

Gameplay.
There is a lot to Create, and they add more every major update. You can do quite a lot with it, even outside of it's intended purpose. You can create a small farm, a really sick big door, literal trains, and whole sorts of contraption that comes to mind. That's just the surface of what you can do, and without mentioning any of its addons which add a whole new area of gameplay to the mod. You can do almost anything with Create, and it lives up to its name.

Performance.
Performance is alright, however with big or lots of contraptions you can get some FPS drops or lag. It is also a bit memory demanding as it is a pretty big mod with lots of blocks, items, and features. Some performance mods can help a bit but still a beefy mod, however that's to be expected as it's again a pretty big mod.

Aesthetics.
Textures and models are amazing, all of them are unique and very much vanilla friendly. The animations of some blocks are also really well done, and are very impressive.

Create is a very well done mod, truly one of the best and biggest mods out there. It's also one of my favourites, and it's perfect for lots of packs, even those that don't focus primarily on automation.

I've played many modpacks with TaCZ, in my own packs as well. If the pack is military/apocalypse related, TaCZ is a perfect choice.

Gameplay.
TaCZ has lots of guns, like a lot. From small handguns, to heavy machine guns. All or most of the guns have unique SFX, stats, and well done overall design. There's also support for gunpacks, which are community addons, which offer lots of choices for the player if you want to keep the mechanics and feel of TaCZ but want a whole separate loadout of guns. TaCZ has a lot of features that makes it a good choice for lots of modpacks.

Performance.
Performance is decent, only real issue i've encountered is when you are holding out a gun when using shaders, which then causes lag/FPS drops.

Aesthetics.
The models and textures are absolutely amazing, very detailed yet still mostly vanilla looking, which i find impressive.

Not much of a fan of the tooltip descriptions, as i consider them a bit unnecessary and just bloats the tooltip from important information like the damage and ammo count, though it's just a small nitpick.

Every Zombie Survival pack I've seen before DeceasedCraft was either underwhelming or overstimulating.

The version of DeceasedCraft I played managed to walk the line very well. I think the core gameplay loop of looting buildings and fighting off zombies that grow in strength as you do is absolutely perfect. I cannot remember more than a few deaths that didn't feel like my fault (at least until the endgame).

I played this pack with a group of 4 people, which I think added to the experience immensely (after all, what's the point of surviving a zombie apocalypse without some friends?). My biggest gripe with the pack lied in the endgame. The final area (at least at the time, the pack has updated significantly since I played) was filled with incredibly OP enemies that were 3-4x as fast as the player and did significant damage even through endgame armor. They were supposed to be protecting the best loot in the game, a laboratory that would rarely spawn in this already rare biome. I never ended up finding a laboratory, not helped by the terrible car mod at the time and had many a teammate lose their entire inventory to a donkey turning them into red paste at mach 4. The visual cohesion was also not there at the time, with these incredibly well done structures juxtaposed by very ugly special zombies.

I'm hoping that the newer versions of the pack fixed these issues, and I'll be starting a playthrough next month with the same group to see what's changed. Overall, I'd certainly recommend this pack to anyone who wants a very polished Zombie Survival looter shooter experience.

To start, this mod provides a very unique dimension which executes a style i havent really seen before in a minecraft mod (atleast in modern versions). Though there are some very visible issues such as having issues with map mods due to no blocks having any assigned map colors, along with the scrapyard mud block taking up even the deepest parts of the underground which doesnt really make that much sense.

In terms of atmosphere and the general feeling, its absolutely amazing and everything was just done so well, the sounds, the visuals, the mobs even and the dark degraded colors of it all just makes it fit perfectly together and it creates this really great feeling.

For gameplay though, is where its issues can really be seen, there arent that many items and blocks to start off with, and every item except for the building blocks have only like 1 or 2 uses. both the 'Survey' and 'Utility' mobs seem to be hostile but are incredibly easy to avoid, along with their drops needed for specific things being super low for some reason. There isn't much greater progression than creating a Scrap Reactor which doesnt really do much though did have a planned greater use which never ended up happening.

So while its good in a lot of ways, the standalone gameplay isn't that interesting, though the mod was abandoned at a very early stage of its development, and most of its issues can be fixed through a combination of kubejs, structurify, and incontrol.

Overall a nice mod that really shouldn't have been abandoned so early.

I, like many people, am not a big fan of the Create mod being shoved into every pack on modern versions.

Generally, the Create mod is poorly implemented or left entirely optional as an automation toolkit. It's because of this that I only tend to enjoy Create in settings where it's properly integrated into progression in a way that feels unique. A pack that is notable for being centered around Create is Create Above and Beyond. CABIN is a remastered version of that pack, bringing it forward into 1.20.1, letting you play around with Trains and Create 6's logistics system. The pack is split into chapters, each one with a type of mechanism to automate that unlocks new tiers of machines, therefore unlocking new ways to automate different things.

My experience with this pack was nothing but wonderful, I played with a group of 4 (myself included), and it was wonderful having everyone work on different ingredients for the different chapters' mechanism automation. The first chapter had everyone working on a different base component (clay, kelp, and andesite) for the first mechanism and then combining it into one coherent system that produced andesite mechanisms. Moving onto the second chapter, I ended up doing a lot of the automation myself, ending up with a more compact system than previous. I'd say my only gripe with this chapter was the seemingly haphazard integration of Tinker's Construct for making brass and melting iron. I never felt a need to make any sort of Tinker's tool or armor, and it felt almost shoehorned in just for the melter & smeltery. I have no such gripes about chapter three however, where I felt the automation took a big step forward in complexity, requiring systems to safely blow up a bunch of items, collect said items without blowing them up, and a system to perpetually duplicate three items without clogging the conveyor. Unfortunately, this is where my group got really busy with life stuff and had to stop playing. They've since been consistently busy and we haven't been able to revisit this pack (even though I really want to!).

Overall, I'd say that this was the best time I had using Create in any modpack I've played. If you like setting up fully passive Create automation lines, I'd say that this is the pack for you.