Modded Minecraft Reviews

I want to start out by saying that after 200+ hours I am still in early game (Chapter 3) and have probably not reached the main gameplay loop yet.

But anyway, Meatballcraft has seemingly infinite content to offer and makes a lot of use of Content Tweaker and Modular Machinery. So even if you are already experienced in the world of expert modpacks you will still have a new and more or less unique experience. If you are looking for a comparison Divine Journey 2 would probably be the modpack that is most comparable as it too has a rather large amount of RPG content.

The RPG content would also be my first criticism, because while not being a majority or even large part of the pack, it is still there and required for progression. And to be honest I am not the biggest fan of those sections. But that is my fault and not the modpack’s fault, as it literally describes itself as a “tech-RPG” modpack. I still think this is a great modpack, but if you are here just for the automation it might not be the right pack for you. A couple of friends that enjoy exploration playing along with you could also be a solution if you should suffer from this problem.

The questbook might also not be everyone’s jam, as it is pretty linear, while also having kitchen sink characteristics. The main concept is, that there is the central quest line, that roughly guides you through progression and tells you what you should do. And then there all other quest lines which are basically just a wiki of what is in the pack and how it works. This can be just the right way for you, if you want only little regulation/direction, but if you need more guidance you should look into the discord or consider playing with someone more experienced. The same applies for the other direction. Large amounts of content are locked behind progression and you are forced into certain mods at times. That is probably also not for everyone.

The aestectics while they all look like they were done with love and care are stylistically on the older side, with less shading and less saturated colours. For myself this is perfect as I enjoy this sort of texturing, but if you are used to modern mods and modpacks with JAPPA like textures it might feel a bit weird or dated.

All in all Meatballcraft is a great modpack with some unique twists and features, but not one that suits everyone. I can certainly recommend you to try it. But as with almost every modpack I advise you take at least one friend along, especially if you are not the biggest fan of RPG or exploration elements.

E2EE is a great modpack that often gets overshadowed by its ‘predecessor’, E2E.

People often treat it as ‘modpack with bugfixes for E2E’ and then compain that it changed too many things and everything is different, “It is not E2E anymore!’.

What is not obvious that maybe 3-4 years ago it was indeed a small extension + bugfixes modpack that was still majorly E2E, but with years it is already an entirely different modpack. But how can you convey this idea when your modpack is called Enigmatica 2 Expert: Extended?..

We can say that its name is its bane…

And while this modpack was indeed based on E2E, only some basic structure of E2E left – maybe gates system and basic relations between magic and tech mods – everything else was reworked, tuned and fixed. Author is trying to introduce creative ideas and make early, mid and lategame different from any other modpack that you’ve already seen. I may be not the biggest fan of some of these mechanics (singularities, looking at you), but others are creative, interesting and useful. Even Peaceful mode got its unique interaction!

Even skyblock mode, that is usuall ‘add Ex Nihilo and it’s done’ is also an interesting experience – it is no longer ‘sift gravel to get every resource in the pack’, it is much more involved and forces to do small automations and plan routes on how to progress.

Some things that are obtained in Overworld have to be produred via complex processing chains, so Skyblock is considered ‘harder’ version of E2EE that tests player’s knowledge. And you can go Peaceful Skyblock for even more complex progression! But it never boils down to mindless grind like ‘you need 64 cobblestone for 1 furnace’, everything is easy and automatable if you’re ‘expert’ enough.

Still, I personally can’t say this modpack is perfect – a difference from E2E, regular NuclearCraft was removed and NuclearCraft: Overhauled + Quantum Minecraft Dynamics were added. Those mods almost don’t have an exposure to minecraft community and are incredibly complex for a game, in my opinion.

These mods force player to know each small detail on how each multiblock component works and interacts with other components, which can be interesting only for a small subset of players who like tinkering with their reactor in creative or download external Planners. QMD goes even worse – it just offers complex math formulas and expects me to do calculations before I even consider doing something. And no external Planners this time. I personally don’t like mods with such ‘figure out yourself’ approach.

Still, it is not mandatory to explore those mods to the fullest and some alternative ways exist (+schematics), so it is passable and you can complete pack almost without exposure to NCO or QMD.

Modpack performance is superb, author definitely has some obsession and constantly tries to make loading time as small as possible and the whole gaming experience smooth. It can be even be migrated to Java 25 in just few steps, adding even more performance gains.

This modpack is still actively supported and new versions with bugfixes or small changes are published almost each month. Together with active community in Discord it is comforting that you’re playing ‘active’ modpack and not some fossil which was abandoned 7 years ago and got no updates at least to such basic mods like AE2.

All in all, it is one of the best modpacks I’ve ever seen and it can hold its stand even compared to such superstars like DJ2 or original E2E, so I urge you to try it.

This modpack takes an incredibly unique spin on exploration/tech packs. I’m typically not a fan of “one block” tech mods like thermal series or ender io, but this mod blends them seamlessly with create to make a well rounded experience.

To get it out of the way, the visuals, atmosphere, and exploration of this pack is immaculate. Every new unique room we found was such a joy, and sometimes scary. (highly recommend using the MCVHC shader pack.) Exploring to find new resources never got old (though we did get lucky by having every renewable resource right by our base.)

The tech progression of this pack is really good. There are a few tedious aspects to it that prevent it from getting 5 stars, mainly the machine frame -> void chassis -> steel casing crafting tree getting old by the end of the pack. This pack fixes my biggest problem with Botania, mostly by skipping early game mana generation and letting you find a Kekimurus if you can brave the poolrooms. It also actually integrates Botania into the main progression in a way that makes sense.

I highly recommend playing this pack with a friend, as I imagine playing it solo could be pretty rough, but that goes for most modpacks. I played it with one friend, so your play time would likely be about double ours, which was 54 hours.

Overall, this is one of my favorite modpacks I’ve played since the classic era. It solves a lot of my gripes with tech packs, and properly integrates exploration into the tech progression. A solid 4.5/5, only brought down by some crafting recipes being a little much, and being disappointed in how little there is in the Nether/Infinite Library compared to the poolrooms, which I hope gets expanded on if this pack continues to get updates.

— The central gameplay loop of the pack is passively crafting increasingly complex and expensive items, but from beginning to end, you explore new, unusual mechanics to unlock these items, giving you breaks from building up your factory and infrastructure.

— Despite hating combat, I find it a fun puzzle in MBC, because you don’t have to be skilled if you can design a weapon build strong enough to beat bosses (at your current stage) in one or two blows, and craft it (which usually requires tech and magic infrastructure). The pack maker changes the metas regularly–the kind of build you’ll need in chapters 9 and 10 is very different from what you’ll need in 6-8, etc.

— About 75% of the pack is factory building. But the factory building is extremely varied. I love GregTech, but GT tends to consolidate all things into itself, while in MBC you’ll juggle single-block machines from multiple different mods and MBC’s own sprawling multiblocks for every build.

— The other 25% is exploring, doing magic crafts, solving puzzles, dimension hopping, and fighting bosses–just often enough to be a good break from the tech, more than varied enough that you never feel like you’re doing the same thing over and over again.

— The automation challenges are always changing. Some setups will be straightforward, but every now and then you’ll face something new, weird, and puzzling, and this never stops, especially not in the final chapters.

— I’ve never felt so committed to finishing a pack and so little like it’s a slog. The packmaker is very anti-machine spam–instead of building dozens of assembly lines, you upgrade different parts of each process, or upgrade multiblocks to run faster by solving puzzles or fighting bosses.

— Vibrant and helpful community in the Discord. Lots of beautiful textures from artists in the Discord, and coders are actively contributing mods to improve performance and push the limitations of 1.12.2 Minecraft. Feels like we’re all in it together.

I was going into the modpack thinking it was going to be way too easy for me, however I think the modpack excels at allowing you to learn things at a good pace and has a very interesting progression. I would highly reccomend trying with a friend, as I would say that’s the best way to experience the pack. I enjoyed having to manage different aspects of automation, and with the strainers it made it a lot more interesting to do I think. This is the first time I’ve spent so little time on a modpack, but I enjoyed it for not overstaying and for providing a consistently enjoyable experience throughout.

I played a total of 15 hours on Craftoria, for me, someone with not a lot of time, is quite good meaning I really enjoyed the modpack. My opinion on this pack is it was extremely fun for someone who likes boss fights, dungeon crawling, and magic. The modpack balanced these all quite well even if you become really powerful some bosses still take some effort and require skill. One of the down sides is that the skill tree is quite basic and hard to level up and gain skill points. Otherwise amazing RPG modpack, definitely playing again.

Ive been playing modpacks for like 4/5 years now and to be honest This modpack is one of the best if not the best modpacks ive ever played. The progression is very good and motivates you to grind more by unlocking ores by the time and defeating more bosses. i Stronly reccomend this modpack to players who want to fight more bosses and experience the new way of progression. Keep up the good work on this modpack

Prominence 2: Hasturion Era is an ambitious Minecraft modpack that offers deep progression and the illusion of huge build diversity. While there are many possible playstyles and setups, in reality you’re often forced into the “correct” or most optimal path to stay efficient. The pack is heavily grind-focused and relies a lot on RNG, which can make progression feel repetitive and sometimes frustrating. It’s rewarding for persistent players, but less flexible than it first appears.

This modpack is awesome it has everything it really makes you feel apocalpyse aesthetic if you love crafting designing complicated machines and fighting zombies that get stronger everyday this is what you are looking for but it may be hard too if you are new to create and immersive engineering and it was hard for me bc i dont know anything about these mods but overall its 10/10 modpack play it.

The mod is pretty good for the small amount of events that happen but i do think that it goes a bit fast like in the first 5 to 10 minutes you would have already had about 4 entities spawned in and it just feels like a bit too much.

Also i like the idea of a corruption meter 🙂

Playtime – 13 hours. There wasn’t a good representative option between Short (5 hours) and Moderate (20 hours) when making this review.

Frankly speaking, I genuinely do not understand why people were so insistent on this modpack’s quality. The modpack is focused on the combat and progression through combat, but the bosses themselves are poor in quality, and the progression is extraordinarily restrictive. Prodigium attempts to transform Minecraft closer to Terraria, but mostly takes more negatives than positives from Terraria, which is exacerbated by Minecraft being in a 3D space.

For the most part, a large amount of the gripe regarding combat comes solely from the mod Terra Entity, which are required for progression. They are essentially buggy 1 to 1 replicas of Terraria bosses and enemies. This might sound fine on paper, but the bosses only really work and are only fun to fight with Terraria’s relatively high mobility (both vertically and horizontally) 2D platforming. However, with Terra Entity for Minecraft, these bosses instead speedily clip and teleport through walls and floors, while the player lumbers along at a snail’s pace. While the quick movement is fine with Terraria given said bosses will always be within vision regardless, this translates incredibly poorly for Minecraft. Keeping proper line of sight on these bosses is very difficult. Combined with a general lack of tells for when a boss is going to actually attack, it makes fighting them generally very draining. This is also exacerbated by the bosses being incredible health sponges.

Let me detail how awful it is to fight these transplanted Terraria bosses, starting with the literal first one of the pack. The first boss, an incredibly buggy King Slime, has a whopping **700+ HP**, even ignoring the armor it gets. The player, at this time, really has only an iron sword as the highest damaging weapon, which might have some degree of Sharpness on it. King Slime, like in Terraria, teleports in order to approach the player. Unlike in Terraria, *it cares absolutely nothing about distance*, and spams small blue slime minions at a far greater frequency than in Terraria. So what ends up happening is that King Slime will constantly and persistently teleport regardless of distance from the player (during which he is invincible), spawn minions to soak up damage, and then proceed to jump out of the player’s damaging range every 2 or so seconds to do a ground slam attack. So that 700+ HP ends up being a lot more when the enemy cannot be damaged for the vast majority of the time. It took me from dawn to dusk, in Minecraft, to finish the fight. Just under 20 minutes, for a boss that was incapable of hurting me due to low damage, and I was only barely capable of hurting it due to its obscene tankiness and perpetually disappearing hitbox.

I took a looong break from bossing after winning this fight, because it was awful despite the victory. I ended up exploring the various structures for hours, with each structure rewarding me with… maybe 5 iron or gold ingots if I’m lucky and maybe a curio that will do absolutely nothing for me. Though usually it’ll be useless stuff like 50 million wheat seeds, flint, or feathers, and nothing that will actually help with progression. I’m slowly chipping away at the other goals around this time. Setting up and building nice houses for the NPCs, taming whatever I can find for fun and having an easier time with the next boss (BTW, the pack DOES have Domestication Innovation… which it does NOT tell you about! It doesn’t even tell new players what the hell pets can even do, nevermind that they’re immortal if you use pet beds!), and completing tertiary goals. Eye of Cthulhu wasn’t as awful as King Slime, though it did fall into the “too fast to damage or see properly without playing on Quake Pro FoV” category in the 2nd stage. Bellringer and Swampjaw were… okay. Meet Your Fight is kind of a mediocre bossing mod as well, but isn’t particularly offensive like Terra Entity. It more or less just exists. Then, with decent confidence, I went in with my melee build into fighting a **buggy invincible second-phase Brain of Cthulhu, who then proceeded to spawncamp me despite me initiating the fight over 9 chunks away from my spawn point**. This isn’t even Terra Entity, this is a custom boss made for the Prodigium modpack, and it’s impossibly buggy, and what made me stop my playthrough completely. The first phase was excruciating due to the horrible hitboxes on the eye minions, and second phase it took literally no damage from any melee attack (And I mean 0 damage. Sword swings weren’t even registering.) but the 3 or so damage from the Eye of Cthulhu shield bash. It then proceeded to heal to full health and attack me in my house before I could even consider preparing for a rematch, despite having fought it about 9 chunks away.

Now, I might have actually powered through this had I even been given the chance to actually respec early without having to enter creative mode. Because for some reason, **UNLIKE IN TERRARIA**, the armor that you can even equip is **RESTRICTED** based on an intrinsic EXP based skill system, and **SWAPPING IS FURTHER PUNISHED** by draining EXP put into specializations, if the player ever decides to change their mind. It takes away player flexibility to focus on shoehorning in equipment restricted classes, which effectively add nothing except various flavors of “more damage” or “more health”. Don’t get me started on restricting item pickups like the occasional diamond until after the player’s slogged through about 5+ completely unrelated bosses that don’t offer rewards relevant or useful for the player’s class, like an arbitrary checklist. The “progression” is mostly defined by arbitrary rules and artificial restrictions that don’t serve to do anything but pad out game length rather than add actual depth.

This pack appears to be great but quickly melts under scrutiny. Unfortunately there’s rarely a good way to tell if a pack is good without sinking significant amounts of time into it. This pack contains an enormous amount of mods, most pointless, redundant or poorly balanced. Just figuring out how to progress is a nightmare because the pack is so overrun with filler you can’t sift through it all. A good example is armor. This pack contains around15+ sets of slightly different looking Iron armor with near identical stats. All of which is pointless because you can just make the vanilla armor the same way you do normally. This also applies to weapons. Every random weapon and enemy pack is present and none of them are consistent. Boss fights feel impossible until you try a weapon from a different mod and discover it does 10x the damage. This is a sloppily constructed kitchen sink pack that promises a full fledged RPG and delivers infinite jank. I’m not angry, just disappointed in every youtuber that clickbaited this without testing.