ManaMouse

I really wanted this pack to be good, and I really tried to enjoy it. I have tried to play and enjoy it both by myself and with friends, but it doesn't work.

Gameplay 1/5

The pack is built on the idea of 'Roguelike' runs, where you aim to get deeper into progression while the world becomes more and more dangerous. On the face of it, this sounds like a really fun idea-I love roguelikes, and I liked RLCraft, which the creator seems to have taken some heavy inspirations from.

You spawn into your world, start collecting the basic materials for a pickaxe, or weapons, or mining in general-And then a monster appears out of nowhere and kills you.

The pack has no consideration for the idea that you aren't already experienced with this pack specifically. It has it's own progression system with a lot of unique flavourings and custom modded content, and it does absolutely no work to guide you towards it whatsoever and gives you no time to breathe either.

It has a levelling system based on killing mobs over a certain HP threshold, but the only reason you'll discover this is because you saw someone else use it or you manage to kill several strong monsters without the buffs. This system in no way accounts for bonuses if you kill a mob significantly over the threshold by the way.

There's a whole tool levelling system which I can find no information on whatsoever. I went to the mod page for it and the information it gave me was of no help at all.

There's a rune and affix system but no guides on how to do it.

And most damning of all in my opinion-There's apparently a boss order. As in, there's a specific order to which you're supposed to fight the mobs in the game, and there's no in-game indication as to what that is other than summoning the bosses and looking at their HP Bars.

The developer of the pack, Union, promised to make a series showing how to play the pack/doing his own playthrough, and after nine months there's no sign of it. It's possible some of the information that's sorely lacking in the pack itself is available on the discord, but if I have to join a discord in order to play a Minecraft modpack, I consider that a failing of game design.

I did not have to join a RLCraft discord to progress in RLCraft.

Aesthetics 3/5

Fortunately the Aesthetics of the pack are more reasonable. It looks quite nice with caves that are fun to explore (if not for all the monsters) and varied in design, with prismarine caves, granite caves, stalactites, naturally generating stone stairs and slabs, etc.

The tooltips also add a lot of RPG flavour. The rarities assigned to the items and the borders that surround them feel natural and would be easy to dismiss as simply vanilla behaviour, even though they aren't. It doesn't reinvent the aesthetic wheel, but it does a good job for the pack it's trying to be.

Performance/Stability 4/5

Performance can be a bit tight on lower end computers, but all things considered I think it runs pretty well for a quite heavy modpack. I didn't notice any real significant stutters or frame drops while playing, nor did I experience any crashes.

Closing Thoughts

In the end, I simply cannot in good faith recommend for anyone to play this pack. I'm all for brutally challenging packs, but only if they actually give you a path to move forward. A modpack should be entirely self contained, and if the only way to figure out how to play a pack like this is to join a discord-That's just not good enough.