aongreyfox

I'm not entirely sure about this pack. On the surface, it's Superior, as it name to Cisco. Most of mods are identical. They also seem to fall on the same route. "Grind like it's an overwork or lose it."

Archevoker, your first tutorial boss, rules this out clearly. Your normal gear that isn't fully upgraded at that time will not cut it. While Cisco plays on "Who hit first win" as a one-shot game. Superior tries to make it like Terraria in 3D. Tbh, mobility doesn't help much if it's hit scan / too fast projectile. Due to the limitations of Minecraft, it's either tank it well enough, move too stupidly fast or die quickly, and all MC boss mods never deliver a good fight when they turn to fast pace, ever. At least I don't get one shot by a dragon or a sea serpent. But undergear will be a quick dead anyway :v

While I feel like Superior can be a better alternative choice, it seems to fall into the same problem. Is my gear under or overpowered? Souls have their weapon cap with a smiting stone. Terraria cap by boss progression. Superior and Cisco failed to deliver a good checkpoint. (While you can dodge fang and vex. You can't dodge an explosion, so it's a gear check. It can also rush at vex speed to yeet you into the sky for no reason...)

I'm also not sure about balance. You know, when Apotheosis, Modular, Enchant, Spell... mix and match together. You need heavy testing to see how far it can go. (Like Cisco where you deal 5 dmg -> 500m). Which leads me to another question. Will mod author balance it by expecting the player to min-max it or average power level? (As I mentioned early, where is the good checkpoint/cap?)

BGM choice is the most questionable to me. The passive BGM turned me down completely. That peaw peaw peaw track turned it off like Issac's chanting. Imagine you explore cave, nether and this track is playing...

Limiting the way of teleport to Bonfire for each boss ruins the fun of mod MC for me too. Especially when you like to hoard resources and revisit a lot of places. (Apotheosis with a single warden in each ancient city?.... ouch)

The last thing about this mod is the quest line. Only reveal after finishing the tutorial is fine in most game. But for this pack, I would recommend changing the Evoker to something like a checkpoint for gear that needs to fight the evoker instead. Once obtained, they reveal the entire quest line, starting with the journey to Evoker...

Overall, Superior to Cisco for sure. But I can't say much about balance and progression. May be good for hard player, but for slow burn like me... it's hard to draw a line.

BTW : Due to some world gen or something. Finding Andesite/Gra/Dio in this pack is a real nightmare. To the point that just removing create is a better choice if you want to make it too costly in shops. It's say alternative to grind... No, it's not if you make the world gen this needlessly grind for basic setup. -1 point for this.

Also, the aoe explode on death for easy player dead gitgud trope is cheap and lame. Especially when there is no clear virtual clue. Any modder should stop this sad trend. Try to make a cool and good one instead of a gitgud meme for once. Superior fell into Cisco-like because of this.

Edit ->

After massing around for more, especially on boss, yeah. The Balance is either gib or chill. (Your first goal is not die by any on-death or any enemy spell that just randomly selects from the pool without a good indicator.)
Enchantment is bloated with silver bullet thingy, as always.

Most special bows are as bad as in Prominence II. Different modules are not interesting without traits like Tinker (or good varies between each other). Modulars also waste too much material/ingot just to upgrade that it is far harder to farm in this pack. It's not even funny when you look at the steep cost. Way too grindy (again, look at apotheosis and 'one warden for each ancient city.') This doesn't count nether star and some other mat.

Another problem I found is memory leak. While overall performance is great. But due to mass spells, mob, tame. You'll experience hiccups, Tick rate froze for a while, even on singleplayer. I can't imagine how performance will be on the server. Once leaked enough, the game crashes along with your explorer. The author also doesn't clean up the config properly. (Why Simple plane config is here?)

Some skills and weapons are just bad or outright OP. Arrow damage from diamond/netherite does almost nothing. While Life steal arrow is another thing. 1/6 current hp dmg for each hit (it's actually about 1/20 for boss, but you get the idea) while heal up to 10 HP per hit.
Battlemage skill also seemed to focus too much on projectile type. Making things like Ball Lighting the most op spamable spell in the pack. Cast once, and you have 50 more ball lighting flying around. Spam it and your ear, enemy is rip.

I remember at least 1-2 years ago, this pack did have a lot of things for everyone. But the latest update seems to try to turn down / lock some progression for tech.

The problem of P2HE is it's failed to deliver a good experience from anything this pack try to offer.

• Story ..... they try.
• RPG class is very unbalanced.
• Progression is a mass. .
• Why does this pack need a high-tech mod for ore processing?
• It even has space travel!? (that barely has anything to do with this pack)
• Performance is okay, except huge craft lag.

► RPG
It does have rpg element with a weapon mod here and there. The problem is they are not working well with each other. Do rpg series work with enhance netherite? How can mages and archers use soul-like weapons effectively? (Mage is the worst experience here too).

As equipment is a freebie from exploration and lacks proper balance. Making a lot of them useless compared to others. Reforge is also annoying at best, especially early with stone/iron tools.

Talent trees are also meh at best. +1 this +5% that until choose only 1 big node. That's hardly called a build or forge your endgame or whatever.

► Tech
WHY? Why does a rpg, middle-aged class pack have a high-tech mod!? Create and Botany seem.... okay at best if you really want it.

But Tech reborn, Modern Industrial, Industrial Revolution... Do they have anything good for this pack besides 'I want tech guy to play this too.' It's not a duck, it's an abomination now. Wiki say you don't need to play with tech, then why do you add them, a lot. Now ores is a total mass. Space is empty too...

Also, previously. You can enjoy mix and match each mod for best optimize/processing. Now the authors seems to have started working on a liner line. Force to use powah or shitty Tech Reborn for power storage and alike. At this point, you can just add greg-like to this pack and done with it.

They still keep gaming axe and power armor for some reason...

► Progression
You can walk right away to Minecell and get tons of iron/diamond with good equipment on the first day. Find a saddle and tame phoenix to bypass all exploration and loot anything above ground (and sky). Skip all non-vanilla ore for non-slog experience.

The only thing that locks you is that beloved 12 end-portal eye mod. But it's just soft lock to a bit more content and some boss. You backtrack or travel 10k blocks to hunt that boss in the story line.

Quest guide you poorly, and the boss is not balanced based on that progression .... or class. Nothing is more fun than committing to a class and getting puked by boss that was not designed for your class.

Overall, threat it as a weird kitchen sink with quest book and a boss hunting list. Nothing more.
At least, this pack don't try to one-shot you with every mob.

tldr; Good overall, difficulty spike by gear, need turning for better experience. Think of Payday 2 at launch.

I want to try some zombie pack and roll on some, this is the one I prefer the most. This pack give me swing of taste. I hate it and I like it. Need to tweak something to make it smooth and less annoying. I don't mind the difficulty, but tedious and cheap thick are out of question.

From the point of difficulty can put you in term of real hardcore life and death. It's really, really need proper turn before it become cheap trick and most game just do that. I don't buy with hunter not going to play fair rule of nature. But when you make a game with grinding and stuff, it's just not work. DC almost got it and also fail at it miserably.

• You got lot of stuff to do and use or customize which is really good. Also lot of weapon and gun to play with.
• City is nice, a bit limit but better than other pack for sure. But without city, it fail to deliver anything remarkable.

• The elevation is so bad, too many mountain or high hill that many city look bad.
• Too many subway. Decreased Craft have more subway than the branch IRL.

• Common zombie have lot of diversity from just appearance to different in status. Varies of special zombie is good.
• Tech and stuff that quite good.
• Good quest and clear ending task.

Now for the think that don't sell for me. I know that AI and MC have lot of limit in combat and parkour is a thing.

• Moonflower. It's fast and weak, come it pack. Common trouble maker trait. The bad part is while everything give LOUR alert sound, this one give the same footstep as you and most of the time don't. The hitbox is on top of worst in MC history. Both attack and hit. It's wonky and ruin all the fun. Many time I can't even hit it with melee at any angle and need to switch to creative to actually 'hit it' ... That much of cheap.
• The explosive special infect, forget the name. The attack is alright, but 90% of the time I can't find this thing. Even turn creative and demolish the whole building just for testing... So it's just keep attacking freely while player can't do shit until it despawn. Fun and challenging indeed.
• The baby that can spawn from the group in range wherever they want. No need to say why it bad.
• OHK stuff boss/miniboss. Okay, you got gun. But why bother make a damn health system if you going to die from OHK? Only reason is the lack of creativity to design interesting fight. (Most 'hard pack' also do, so nothing special here)
• Random infected chance. I don't think it work here since there is too many cheap hit you can take. Unless you want to use sandbox to fullest. Which ruin the building design and role play, but well...
• Random body part dmg. As same as above.
• Again with bloat biome that don't served anything for the pack itself. Why the season thingy is address here too?
• Sometime with enough luck, you can mine less than 20 stone for a whole day since zombie don't stop spawning and bee line to you.

I usually try to not die in any circumstance. But when the game fail to deliver proper turn difficulty. It'll become 'well, just die and you good' which make it no longer a challenge but a chore. When player choose or just die instead of avoid death. You seriously fail at adjusting difficulty.
Because it's feel unfair and try to cure those problem are more boring than a need to overcome mistake. Add more death penalty will backfire even more since it dug deep in unfair territory already.

Still, it better than other zombie pack out there. If you want some gun and zombie, I still recommend this one. Just deal with some cheap trick and don't think much like watch a popcorn movie and you should be fine. Or better yet, try to remove those Moonflower and explosive one. You'll miss nothing and feel more enjoyable.

Revisit at 4.0.9 version.

Sunlit Valley (SLV) still holds a place in my heart. It's just good pack, care and love. Properly tailor instead of spamming more mods just for the sake of it's popular to lure people in.

Its Stardew Valley (SV) recreated in Minecraft. It's still Minecraft you know and love, but also Stardew Valley.

Your goal is to try to get rich, build your own way of farming and processing while having a clear goal in the quest book to help guide you.

► Gameplay

Instead of mining and making good gear for boss. You are doing just like SV. Spending most of your time in your farm. Taking care of crops and animals, then spending spare time fishing or mining.

Many elements in SL also make it here. Skill, Skull cavern, NPC (still in process) and more, like Slime ranching. Most of the things in this pack run on the day counter, farm, animals, processing. You'll want to manage your time even more than most survival packs "if you like efficiency."

While there are so many things to do, which can feel super overwhelming at first. But just like freedom in SV. You don't have to be the best efficiency to enjoy the pack. There is no rush, no contest and nothing forcing you to play out of your pace.

Combat is very basic without bloated mod (including mob). So, if you are looking for combat intensive, this pack might not suit your taste. I still wish it had a little bit more, but as we all know. Balance combat in Minecraft mod NEVER exists. Either too easy or stupidly annoying (not hard). It might be a better idea to keep it quite bare-bone too.

► Quest

A little guide that includes both helping hand and the main goal of the pack. There is no storyline (yet?) but the author cares a lot to add even art to the book for a more fancy look.

While some sections are a bit lacking and might miss some pieces. But overall, Quest book helps you get used to the pack nicely, not too handheld and not too vague. If you have experience with the pack, you can even skip it completely.

As with SV. Quest book has a bundle (including reward) set as a soft goal to complete the pack and Perfection that have lot of things to do for the real goal of this pack. So you have a clear goal to chase if you need one when you play any pack.

► Downside

This pack is the most need to be a session base instead of drop-in anytime than any survival with day counter pack. Making multi-player or server a bit weird when not everybody plays together at once and can easily miss out a lot of things or huge follow-up.

NPC still needs more work to make it inline with SV. Since author don't want just a genetic one. We can hope for something much more unique, given enough time.

As we also understand that BGM is very pricey to commission. SLV does lack it while playing. Because the author really cares about licensing and actual work without AI. I guess that is why we didn't have other game BGM slapped in this pack or sloppy AI generate one.

Balancing is still a bit questionable. While author try to adjust a lot, some still stand out and some do get cripple for some reason beyond my knowledge.

//---

This is one of a pack that I give it 5/5 or 10/10 easily. I highly recommend it if you like farming, especially farm game like Harvestmoon, Stardew Valley. While it's lacking romance with NPC like those games. But other elements are here to enjoy, and it is still Minecraft, you know.

I pick this one due to my friend want some magic / adventure pack that not too complex or overpower. (We just got a bad taste after finish 'Dragonfyre')

Oh my, one of a pack that performance is very questionable. I let it load for like 1 minute and tps / lag spike not even stable. Most non vanilla+ pack will already stable at around 30+ seconds.
I may run other game while doing so, but in my defense. Other pack run just fine and I even run more of same game / program in the background while doing so... so yes, very questionable performance.

I usually drop in modpack to see the content, check the key craft to see how it goes. It's vanilla+ as advertise which is good. But the quest require you to follow step by step to reveal the next one is quite ... not fit for 'my' minecraft style of free-explore I think. It's may work better with progression lock pack like Prodigium (which don't do this either)

Hope other get better experience than mine.

ARPG in minecraft is quite refreshing to be honest. Crafting your skill tree in PoE style is something I really like. Still, they need a bit more experience with this in minecraft and their weapon skill set through. Many support gem are not even useful than PoE itself.

The downside is the tedious grind 1000 gear for single useful piece is also fit perfectly into C2E. It's fun when you can keep progressing, even by a little. But it drop to dead once you stuck for hour and hour. Author also put a lot of effort to penalty mob grind and automate as much as they can.

After recent change that gate spawn every where every time, result in clutter mob / item management a lot - make it a totally mass. I try new save after update for better experience.... and I spend 2 in-game day just to deal with them one after another while my base have a single bed, chest here and there on the half dig dirt hill... because killing a zombie or two result in chaos. While I'm being penalty for killing them around my base all the time because they spawn non stop?

Remove of create into botania for power generation shut me down. I not a create person, but botania is a big no for me. It also look mass up in general compare to any tech, magic or create when you try to integrate into base.... at least for non-builder like me.

Force change vanilla villager to a new one? ..... no, a choice would be best.

Overall, if you like unique experience, sure C2E can give you that. One way or another. Just like PoE, you'll love it or hate it. Sadly, recent update make me the later.

A good pack for who prefer more of Vanilla+, but not too much lot of mod to roll around. Good introduction for one who like to get into modpack after playing vanilla, but worry about too much to learn from kitchen sink.

Quest is not much and content is limited, but due to that... it's a good gateway. If you are modpack player who look for pack that give a unique feeling. Avoid this one.