orca29

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.