Board 8 > What are some games that are just way better modded/fun to mod?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Topic. I know Bethesda RPGs are generally the standard for this but wanted to play around and tinker a bit to get more comfortable with modding.

stellar blade

wRPGs (Bethesda, Witcher, Cyberpunk)
"Building" games (Minecraft, Factorio, Stardew Valley)
Roguelikes (Slay the Spire, Balatro, Darkest Dungeon)
Pretty much every Valve game

I love mods. Even if a game isn't really moddable, I'll find some tweaks to use.

Stardew has one absolutely massive modpack that actually slowed my FPS to a crawl until I upgraded my CPU. It basically tripled the size of the world and number of NPCs, plus has a million little optional tweaks involving automation, information display, new skills, etc. You can install it pretty easily with wabbajack, a modpack installer, but it'll take an afternoon without a nexus mods subscription: https://www.wabbajack.org/

Satisfactory has a ton a little quality of life mods that make the game better, though to the game's credit they've implemented a lot of them in the base game (most notably mass building). Mods do remove the limits the game imposes on itself though so if you want to make miles of foundations at once you totally can. Factorio and Dyson Sphere Program also have a bunch of little mods.

Total War: Warhammer 3 has some great mods, but the one I'd like to point out is SFO. It rebalances every faction in the game to be closer to tabletop and warhammer lore (so mobs of Skaven are MUCH more numerous, while units of Brettonian knights are smaller in number but have superhuman strength). Old factions without modern gimmicks are given unique toys to play around with or are totally reworked, and new ones have major tweaks. Honestly, it changes so much a lot of people don't like it, but I think it's a fun alternative to the main game regardless.

Octopath Traveller 2 has a really fun total conversion mod called New Dawn that's sort of a difficulty mod, but it also rebalances your damage potential to be insane if you play correctly. Like, Osvald and the Scholar class are even more focused on dumping extra power into one turn, and despite bosses having inflated HP pools, playing properly will still let you oneshot or twoshot them. It's extremely satisfying. Also, there's item/spell description mods that actually tell you what things do.

Elden Ring's got seamless coop which should deserve a mention by itself! Played through the whole game like that a few months ago with three friends. It was definitely easier and a bit buggy at times but still, really fun.

Cassette Beasts has one really cool mod that makes random and named NPCs a lot more active in the world. Instead of team battles being a rare scripted occurrence, others will seek out boss fights and join them with you. It does make the game easier but the game has a lot of difficulty sliders to compensate.

Also look into Reshade if your PC can handle it, it makes some games look really good. Notably in my experience, Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma has some weird visual effects that reshade can tone down and make the game look a lot better. It does drop my fps by like 10-15, though.

XCOM and XCOM 2

Not that the original versions are bad, and I'd definitely recommend playing a few games vanilla first, but holy hell the mods for these games are amazing. They practically give them infinite replayability.

Came in to say XCOM 2.

The Sims 4

I assume you mean games where modding isn't native to the game, but Cities Skylines has modding support directly in the game and some very essential QoL mods.

Uppity up, had XCOM 1 and 2 on my waitlist because I was waiting until I had something more powerful for them then just completely forgot about them. Definitely keeping them in mind

azuarc posted...

I assume you mean games where modding isn't native to the game, but Cities Skylines has modding support directly in the game and some very essential QoL mods.

Eithers fine! Cities isnt normally my type of game but maybe modding it with QOL makes it easier

I tried Stardew once and bounced off of it hard. I came back to it recently, years later, with a few QoL mods, and really enjoyed it. And I definitely the credit the mods for that.

Oh yeah, Mount and Blade: Warband (and Bannerlord; modding scene's less developed but it's a newer game). Whole new game with overhaul mods, and there's a lot of them. Pendor's like straight upgrades to vanilla, but there's also overhauls set in A Song of Ice and Fire, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and a bunch more. I'd say it's arguably a game you should mod, it feels made for modding

Brawl

Playing sims games with mods is the correct way to play tbh. Any sandbox-y game fits for modding, like Minecraft or stardew valley

One of my fave games to mod though is sonic adventure 2, specifically its chao garden. There are tons of mods that enhance chao gameplay, reimplement cut content, and for customising them. Don't think I could go back to vanilla chao garden at this point

I REALLY didn't like Stardew Valley when I first played it. Now that I've modded it I've put in about 100 hours into it.

Also, I loved FF9 as a kid, but in this day and age it really is a lot better to mod it to speed it up, fix some of the quirks about the gameplay, and add the HD graphics.

Grand_Kirby posted...

Also, I loved FF9 as a kid, but in this day and age it really is a lot better to mod it to speed it up, fix some of the quirks about the gameplay, and add the HD graphics.

FF9 has 4x speed on PC! one great trend of modern releases of classic games is that they'll incorporate hacks like 2-4x speed or no encounter rate natively, made my FF10 and FF12 replays a lot smoother

Minecraft

The Sims were the only games that I really got into modding. I prefer vanilla in 99% of games

Paradox grand strategy games have lots of fun stuff, including a bunch of total conversion mods (Crusader Kings Game of Thrones being the most famous). Anbennar for EU4 has taken over base game for me completely.

Owlcat CRPGs are borderline unplayable without mods

Oh an actual answer:
Final Fantasy IX has a mod that updates the low-res prerendered backgrounds.

Battlefield 1942

EA will never be fun ever again.

Also, technically randomizers are modded versions of the base game.

it's not strictly "way better" but there are hundreds of great Doom and Doom II mods

crucially, Brutal Doom is not one of them, never play that shitty ass nazi shit

I find Pokmon kinda unplayable these days unless it's modded. There's far too little thinking necessary for how much downtime there is. Pretty much any sports, simulation or management game (FIFA and Football Manager are the main ones I've done this with, but Cities Skylines, The Sims and Planet Zoo were all vastly improved) will benefit hugely from mods. Just for licensing, asset and UI fixes or additions a lot of the time, but a lot of those games have mods that make fundamental mechanics so much better.

Civilization VI

ok i'll bite

if i play one pokemon mod in my life, which one is it?

moemon
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/8/8ecb404e.png

also Terraria. Not essential but it's pretty fun to

RikkuAlmighty posted...

ok i'll bite

if i play one pokemon mod in my life, which one is it?

Pokemon Unbound

RikkuAlmighty posted...

ok i'll bite

if i play one pokemon mod in my life, which one is it?

Sorry for the wall - I know you only asked for one... but my answer is it depends on which generation you enjoy and what you're looking for. I would say the first 5 gens all have mods that significantly improve them - modding gets harder once you get to the 3D games. Renegade Platinum is for Gen 4, and is probably the best one - it feels exactly the way I always imagined the series would if it had enough difficulty to be actually challenging, without ever being a Kaizo sort of game, and has a lot of QoL improvements.

Sacred Gold and Volt White 2 Redux are similar games, but for HGSS and BW2 - I'd say both are a bit weaker, and Sacred Gold is a bit easier and has less QoL, while Volt White 2 has about as much QoL but is much harder. Both have every Pokemon from their original gens available.

Pokemon Unbound is probably the best one that feels kind of original. There's a custom region, OST, and an original story, quests, lots of original art and QoL changes. It doesn't quite have some of the charm of the old games because of that, so it really depends on what you're playing for.

Radical Red is a really good difficulty mod of Fire Red, though it's sort of got competitive players and skillsets in mind and is tending towards a Kaizo game or just straight up a puzzle in places, especially on higher difficulties (most Gen 3 hacks have difficulty settings). Elite Redux is for Emerald and is nuts - every Pokemon has three abilities and crazy movesets, with a lot of fakemons, and it's incredibly difficult to wrap your head around, but also very satisfying. Emerald Rogue is kinda what it says on the tin - it's a roguelite, I'd say a bit better and a lot harder than Pokerogue (if you ever played that), with a lot more luck involved, but it's also way more varied and (imo) satisfying.

This thread https://www.reddit.com/r/PokemonROMhacks/comments/1chx77r/compilation_of_vanilla_quality_of_life_qol_hacks/ has just about every pure QoL mod out there as well, which change a lot of the more insufferable aspects of the originals.

I played a bit of emerald rogue, it was a pretty neat idea. it even goes up to gen 8

Giving the rifle with lots of ammo to both Chris and Claire in Code Veronica.

Having 2 of them removes the issue of swapping the weapon back to the item box when the character switch happens.

Sheep007 posted...

Sorry for the wall - I know you only asked for one... but my answer is it depends on which generation you enjoy and what you're looking for. I would say the first 5 gens all have mods that significantly improve them - modding gets harder once you get to the 3D games. Renegade Platinum is for Gen 4, and is probably the best one - it feels exactly the way I always imagined the series would if it had enough difficulty to be actually challenging, without ever being a Kaizo sort of game, and has a lot of QoL improvements.

Sacred Gold and Volt White 2 Redux are similar games, but for HGSS and BW2 - I'd say both are a bit weaker, and Sacred Gold is a bit easier and has less QoL, while Volt White 2 has about as much QoL but is much harder. Both have every Pokemon from their original gens available.

Pokemon Unbound is probably the best one that feels kind of original. There's a custom region, OST, and an original story, quests, lots of original art and QoL changes. It doesn't quite have some of the charm of the old games because of that, so it really depends on what you're playing for.

Radical Red is a really good difficulty mod of Fire Red, though it's sort of got competitive players and skillsets in mind and is tending towards a Kaizo game or just straight up a puzzle in places, especially on higher difficulties (most Gen 3 hacks have difficulty settings). Elite Redux is for Emerald and is nuts - every Pokemon has three abilities and crazy movesets, with a lot of fakemons, and it's incredibly difficult to wrap your head around, but also very satisfying. Emerald Rogue is kinda what it says on the tin - it's a roguelite, I'd say a bit better and a lot harder than Pokerogue (if you ever played that), with a lot more luck involved, but it's also way more varied and (imo) satisfying.

This thread https://www.reddit.com/r/PokemonROMhacks/comments/1chx77r/compilation_of_vanilla_quality_of_life_qol_hacks/ has just about every pure QoL mod out there as well, which change a lot of the more insufferable aspects of the originals.

thanks! i'm not sure exactly what i want, as long as it's not punishing difficulty for the sake of difficulty. maybe a mod that makes a region i'm familiar with (RBY/GSC) a bit more rewarding to play.

or i could just finally get around to playing BW2

it's less of a mod than others, but if you just want to revisit old games, pokemmo is a fun way to do that. levelling's slower especially around the E4, and enemies are in general smarter with better movesets, but it's not punishing until you get to like, E4/cynthia/etc rematches in the postgame. especially since you can trade for something busted like a starmie with the right nature or a scrafty with moxie to completely sweep most gyms (you can't be overlevelled, but having good TMs makes up for it)

it goes up to BW1, and after you get four gym badges you can freely swap between regions. can pick any to start with

Grand_Kirby posted...

I REALLY didn't like Stardew Valley when I first played it. Now that I've modded it I've put in about 100 hours into it.

100 hours in stardew sounds like you hated it to me