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Notes -
Tell me about your favorite mods or most interesting fan projects you know. A while back when I was prepping for a roadtrip, I looked into emulator options and games to play during in-between time. Pokemon, was of course, on that list, but since I hadn't played pokemon for over 10 years, and wasn't interested in going thru the grind loop again, I started digging around the ROMhack scene. Most mods were of the usual, outdated, poorly documented, sort. There were only 2-3 polished and highly rated ones but they didn't really grab my interest. But one recently released ROMhack stood out, with its ambitiously vast scope of changes and the author's unwavering dedication. Pokemon Sweltering Sun, a hack based on Ultra Sun (2017, for the 3DS), that in the author's own words, tries:
By every single pokemon, he means every single pokemon, and to wit, has uploaded a 488 video playlist, covering all 800+ pokemon (the hack adds all mons from gen 1-7), explaining each redesign thought process. There's also a neat spreadsheet pokedex with all the changes for "easy" reference (and it will cause your browser to lag). As a modder, I can tell you that is not normally, This very very insane. It is one thing to make an ambitious mod, it is two things to be super disciplined about clean documentation, and it is three things to have so much sustained passion, because in the process off writing this, I noticed the mad lad has still been pumping out content and just announced a brand new romhack project.
The two big FPS mods I've come across are Horizon for Fallout 4 and Gamma for the Stalker trilogy.
Horizon turns Fallout 4 into a very difficult, survival-focused adventure that I found interesting even after 200+ hours. The story/writing is mostly still shit and it's a GIGANTIC mod so almost nothing is compatible with it but it is easily the best way to play Fallout 4 imo.
GAMMA is also a very difficult, very survival-focused mod that is essentially what 15+ years of work prompting up a 2007 game looks like. All the levels from the base game and its 2 expansions, more than 500 different weapons, dozens of mutants, a complete reimagining of the artifact system (and the next patch promises yet another artifact remake), a robust repair/weapon parts system and an overwhelming number of mod options to adjust the game to whatever the player wants it to be.
The best place to find installation instructions and links for these two are their discords. Which is a shame imo but it is what it is.
Incidentally, have you noticed how this type of discussion used to be almost entirely a reddit thing and has sharply moved towards discord in the last few years? Maybe a sign of things to come.
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Fall From Heaven 2 for Civ 4 and the Fall From Heaven ecosystem generally (Erebus in the Balance is the most tame, Wild Mana the richest and Master of Mana the furthest from vanilla). It's basically a dark fantasy total conversion with interesting lore and a bunch of new mechanics: magic, heroes, armageddon counter. All of the civs have their own identity - the Illians have rituals to bring back the God of Ice, the Sheaim are here to end the world and the Calabim are vampires. Later in you can summon factions of demons and angels.
Advanced Civ for Civ 4 because they somehow managed to make the AI much smarter while improving performance significantly. Most mods just add huge amounts of content the AI can't use well, this is the opposite and deserves praise for technical skill.
Anbennar for EU4. Another fantasy total conversion, adding a magic system, non-human races and an enormous new map. Reclaim the empire of the Precursor Elves as Venail, unite the Empire of Anbennar or crush the world under the centaur hoof of Khuraen Ulaeg.
Third Odyssey for EU4. What if the Byzantines left for America in 1444? The mod struck me as overly complicated mechanically but the premise is irresistible. The soundtrack is also pretty good.
Ultimate Apocalypse for Dawn of War Soulstorm. Adds a huge amount of content, many new factions and Titans (that are way too big for the maps). The music also goes hard.
Forged Alliance Forever for Supreme Commander Forged Alliance. It's basically a balance patch/multiplayer community with its own submods.
Zero Entropy 2 for Half-Life 2 - fan made Half Life 3 from the perspective of the Combine's top guy.
Equestria at War for Hearts of Iron IV - enormously rich and detailed atrocity/total war simulator but set in the world of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Like many I was intrinsically sceptical of the premise but the bronies did a very good job.
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Pokemon Unbound deserves all the accolades it gets. The game is so expansive, feature-rich and high quality that it begs the question what Game Freak have been doing all this time.
Enderal, for Skyrim. A passion project made by lunatics.
I hear some buzz about Dark Souls Archthrones recently.
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Moviebattles 2: a mod for Star Wars, Jedi Academy.
Finally, someone figured out how to do sabers vs guns in a multiplayer game. It's basically a standard class based deathmatch - various classes with abilities that you spend points to buy. You could be a bounty hunter with snipers and grenades, a sith who can jump and run and blast people with 2 handed lightning, a droideka with powerful shield and quick movement - possibilities are nearly endless. Playing on a series of movie accurate maps (seriously, the Phantom Menace hangar/throne room map...), 2 teams of various units face off to either kill everyone or complete the objective.
The lightsaber isn't a baseball bat. It's a one hit kill (unless the super battle droid opted for Cortosis!), BUT, when not in blocking stance, you are vulnerable to blaster fire. A skilled jedi could wipe out numerous trooper type units, but working together a good soldier could hold their own. The dueling as well, I never could figure out but was pretty high skill ceilinged. Really really fun, hours and hours of my youth on that.
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The RTS Star Wars: Empire at War has a pretty big modding community even though the vanilla game isn't that polished or popular. The Expanded and Remake mod projects are both significantly better than the base game in different ways, but I have a soft spot for the 2017 release of Republic at War. I find it interesting because of some factors that are pretty easy to call 'flaws' combine to make an unusual experience.
Empire at War is similar to the Total War games in basic structure. Importantly, however, the strategic map is real-time rather than turn-based. The control scheme is clunky - ships have to be transferred between fleets one at a time, and the click-and-drag to order a fleet to move to another planet can be awkward to perform. If a battle starts while you're issuing orders they're interrupted. In the original game this doesn't matter too much for a number of reasons. The maps are pretty small, 33 planets at most. Fleets usually only consist of a dozen or so ships. And the AI is not particularly aggressive. In Republic at War this is very different. The full map has 72 planets and they're spread further apart than the ones in the base game. You start with over 100 ships. And the enemy will attack you every few seconds at times, fueled by massive economic advantages that let them replace ships as fast as you destroy them.
Furthermore, the ships are pretty poorly balanced against each other. The CIS battleships get more bang for their buck than all the Republic ships with the exception of Venator Star Destroyers. These, however, are by far the best in the game, capable of shredding four or five times their cost in enemies when used well. Unfortunately, besides the three you start with, you can't build more until the fourth tech level out of five. Getting there takes about 30 minutes on the strategic map, but that time you'll probably be attacked over a hundred times at least.
It creates an extraordinarily tense and frantic experience that I haven't found in any other strategy game. You are beset by swarms of enemies on all sides, struggling to match them with inferior ships and inferior numbers. The trio of Venators can hold territory, but they can't be everywhere and if one is destroyed it can't be replaced for a long time. There's a big red timer counting down to the next tech level, but every second feels long when a new attack might come at any point. If you manage to hold on long enough, though, it all changes. Suddenly you have fleets that can outmatch the enemy, retake everything you lost and go on the offensive for the first time. It's a great feeling, and it really only works because of what seem like mistakes in game design.
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