Incline What mods do you recommend that are better than the core game?

[deama]

Swordflight for NWN I thought was quite good, not just as a NWN module, but as a DnD game in general.

 

[Cosmic]

Oscuro's overhaul for Oblivion. It's not perfect, but it's clearly better than the base game.

Portal Stories: Mel is a standalone mod of Portal 2 that's arguably better than the base game, especially if you want harder puzzles.

The Content Restoration Mod is essential for KOTOR2 but I'm not sure if I should include it since it's more like a patch required to make the game playable than an actual mod.

A Game of Thrones Mod for CK2 is fun if you are into the ASoIaF universe. More interesting than having to deal with obscure Catholic nobles you haven't heard before.

 

[d1r]

The Hell for Diablo 1 Hellfire.

Restores all of the cut content from the original game (+ cut voice acting) and does a great job on increasing the game's difficulty.

 

[Whisper]

Dark mode for Lords of Xulima.

 

[Morenatsu.]

Cinematic Mod

 

[Jonathan "Zee Nekomimi]

I think Pop Demand Mod was the one that started with the majority of those fixes, although nobody plays PDM by itself.

 

[SharkClub]

Restoration Project for Fallout 2, I don't play without it. The only fault is that the new companions at the bottom of the EPA can be quite cringe (though they are easy to ignore entirely), but I don't know how much of that is actually lifted from the EPA design document (a lot of Fallout 2 is pretty cringe as it is). The rest of the dungeon is great and the other additional content and fixes are great.

 

[Baron Dupek]

^
you forgot someone
...
KAGA

 

[Dr Skeleton]

Reign of Terror for Grim Dawn.
https://forums.crateentertainment.com/t/mod-reign-of-terror/35347
It's Diablo 2 (and 1) in Grim Dawn's engine. It's more difficult than base GD and doesn't have level scaling, plus it adds the Diablo 2 classes and stuff on top of the GD content, so you can play the D2 areas with GD classes or make hybrid diablo/GD characters. They also did a really good job recreating the Diablo areas in the new engine.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Reign of Terror for Grim Dawn.
https://forums.crateentertainment.com/t/mod-reign-of-terror/35347
It's Diablo 2 (and 1) in Grim Dawn's engine. It's more difficult than base GD and doesn't have level scaling, plus it adds the Diablo 2 classes and stuff on top of the GD content, so you can play the D2 areas with GD classes or make hybrid diablo/GD characters. They also did a really good job recreating the Diablo areas in the new engine.

It says that there are 6 acts in the game but where that final act takes place?

 

[Dr Skeleton]

Diablo 1.

 

[cretin]

AMK 1.4 for Shadow of Chernobyl.

AMK is pretty perfect as far as mods go; it takes what's already in SoC and simply enhances it without fundamentally altering the gameplay or character of the game.

 

[JarlFrank]

Caveman 2 Cosmos for Civ 4.

 

[Young_Hollow]

Nothing will surpass the original AOE2:The Conquerors but a side-grade is available in the form of Age of Chivalry: Hegemony: https://ageofchivalrymod.wordpress.com/country-profiles/
Is focused on 26 European civs instead of the international 18+5 civs of AoC but its a worthy rebalancing and rethinking of mechanics, bonuses and additions.

 

[Inconceivable]

Ultima V: Lazarus for Dungeon Siege.

Does this really work? I've heard about the DS Ultima V conversion many times, but somehow fail to comprehend how the DS engine translates well into an Ultima game.

 

[Inconceivable]

I second the Enderal Skyrim total conversion. I love Skyrim, it's a great sandbox RPG, but Enderal has such great world-building, dungeon design, and plot, it's something special. Probably the greatest total conversion of all time.

Other than that,
"Requiem" mod for Skyrim
"OOO" for Oblivion
"Vox Populi" mod for Civ V.
"We the People" mod for Civ IV: Colonization
"Viking Conquest" game / mod for Warband
"Long War" mod for XCOM

These are the one's that immediately come to mind.

 

[Ivan]

Just wrapping up my playthrough and having an absolute blast:

Half Life 2 (+episodes)

MMod + Project HL2 (hands). Combat has OOMPH and the reload/hand animations are delicious.

Spoiler

 

[Morenatsu.]

I hate those kinds of animations. Stiff and minimal > cinematic floppyhands

 

[Luzur]

do you even need any other mod

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

Considering mods that do more than providing fixes or "rebalancing":

New Threat for FFVII - makes everything better, I consider it vastly superior to the original.
HPM for Vic 2 - I haven't played any other Vic 2 mods, so I guess that's recommendation enough.
1.13 for JA2 (although I don't mind vanilla)
Rome Total Realism for RTW (unlikely to play it ever again, but at the time I couldn't do without it)
Ultimate Phantom Pain for MGSV: Phantom Pain -- for letting me play the game the way I want it, as a hardcore military infiltration simulator

As for other favorite mods:

I really like LondonRay's romhacks for FFVIII and IX (the former has some balance issues, while the latter is just right).
Extended NeoScav for NeoScavenger - adds lots of things in a natural way, makes neglected skills more useful.
The MeldPack for Carmageddon gives you a new campaign with Splat Pack cars/maps fully integrated and it runs with an executable straight out of Windows.

 

[Puukko]

Considering mods that do more than providing fixes or "rebalancing":

New Threat for FFVII - makes everything better, I consider it vastly superior to the original.
HPM for Vic 2 - I haven't played any other Vic 2 mods, so I guess that's recommendation enough.
1.13 for JA2 (although I don't mind vanilla)
Rome Total Realism for RTW (unlikely to play it ever again, but at the time I couldn't do without it)
Ultimate Phantom Pain for MGSV: Phantom Pain -- for letting me play the game the way I want it, as a hardcore military infiltration simulator

As for other favorite mods:

I really like LondonRay's romhacks for FFVIII and IX (the former has some balance issues, while the latter is just right).
Extended NeoScav for NeoScavenger - adds lots of things in a natural way, makes neglected skills more useful.
The MeldPack for Carmageddon gives you a new campaign with Splat Pack cars/maps fully integrated and it runs with an executable straight out of Windows.

Can you break down New Threat a bit more? Just curious for when I eventually play OG VII. While I'm not quite confident enough to call them straight up superior to vanilla or that there may not be better mods that do the same thing, I always recommend Ragnarok for VIII and Struggle for Freedom for XII whenever those games come up. Really tough difficulty wise while not fluctuating or becoming so bad it encourages grinding. I had solid experiences with these two 'black sheep' games and I am confident the mods played a major role in that and I'm going to do the same with any future FF games I play as well.

LandonRay's mods come up quite often but I've never finished one and they seem to veer more into the frustrating and imbalanced side of difficulty mods. Then again, when numbers tweaking is all you can really do, the means for creating a quality mod are limited.

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

Can you break down New Threat a bit more? Just curious for when I eventually play OG VII. While I'm not quite confident enough to call them straight up superior to vanilla or that there may not be better mods that do the same thing, I always recommend Ragnarok for VIII and Struggle for Freedom for XII whenever those games come up. Really tough difficulty wise while not fluctuating or becoming so bad it encourages grinding. I had solid experiences with these two 'black sheep' games and I am confident the mods played a major role in that and I'm going to do the same with any future FF games I play as well.

LandonRay's mods come up quite often but I've never finished one and they seem to veer more into the frustrating and imbalanced side of difficulty mods. Then again, when numbers tweaking is all you can really do, the means for creating a quality mod are limited.

I've played New Threat a couple of years ago and there have probably been updates since. I'll sumarize its strengths as follows:

1. Overall challenge from tougher opponents with more complex AI routines. This ties into everything else, as now you have to think about what you're doing. It's not hard enough to be considered "hardcore", but it forces you to always have a battle plan ready. No grinding required.
2. True character diversification. Instead of being blank slates with negligible stat variation, now you get a choice in how to develop your characters. You can turn Cloud into a pure melee fighter, balanced or pure mage, for example. You can turn certain characters into glass cannons, tank mages, offensive mages, etc. exactly in the way that is implied by that characters depiction, or subvert their stereotype in interesting ways. Having specialist characters makes all characters useful and you may switch one for another in certain areas or to try out new strategies.
3. Proper itemization. Instead of the usual routine of buying new improved versions of your characters' equipment each you time you get to a new town, New Threat makes every piece of equipment somewhat unique, with its own set of advantages and drawbacks. You'll keep old equipment for a long time in some casess, due to the way it fits your strategy.
4. Recognizing the potential of the Materia system. I'm not sure how much you know about it, but in the OG game what you do is attach 'Materia' (these glowing orbs imbued with magical power) to equipment in order to cast spells and gain attributes. You can also combine them if you have dual slots in some of your equipment. Due to all the other changes, now you are forced to come up with your creative combinations, as you can't just spam Attack and expect to win. The effects and stat changes of the materia are also more significant to allow for more radical character variation.
5. Miscellaneous: QoL changes for cases where you'd have to backtrack long distances; some (very subtle) changes to the script to make the rather convoluted narrative more understandable (I don't usually approve of such things, but here it was done quite well).

There are probably more things that I'm forgetting, but I that's the gist of it.

Regarding LondonRay's romhacks, it's been quite a while since I've played those. There weren't many alternatives back then (I don't remember hearing about Ragnarok, tbh). I wouldn't recommend playing the FFVIII one unless you're a masochist and truly love the game (as I do for several reasons, but mainly out of nostalgia). I imagine it's much harder to balance than the others, given how unbalanced the Limit Breaks are. His FFIX mod I found hard but fair and I'd recommend it over vanilla for non-casual players. I haven't checked for any new mods in the last years, though.

 

[Ash]

I've played New Threat a couple of years ago and there have probably been updates since. I'll sumarize its strengths as follows:

now you get a choice in how to develop your characters. You can turn Cloud into a pure melee fighter, balanced or pure mage, for example. You can turn certain characters into glass cannons, tank mages, offensive mages, etc. exactly in the way that is implied by that characters depiction, or subvert their stereotype in interesting ways. Having specialist characters makes all characters useful and you may switch one for another in certain areas or to try out new strategies.

Except ALL of this rings true about the vanilla game. You have absolute choice in how to build characters as there are few restrictions. Stealing your words for a moment: "You can turn Cloud into a pure melee fighter, balanced or pure mage, for example. You can turn certain characters into glass cannons, tank mages, offensive mages, etc"...You can do all that vanilla with the correct materia and equipment setup. What New Threat does here is allow you to select certain attributes to specialize in which actually forces a character into a particular class type rather than being solely defined by materia and equipment that you can swap into a completely different build at any time by selectively swapping out Materia (e.g all greens and reds = cloud is a mage. All purples and yellows = cloud is a fighter).
I love permanent meaningful choices, C&C, class specialization and all that stuff so I consider NT's SP system a net positive, yet not without downsides and you're not quite accurate in your summary here. Vanilla is highly diverse in the builds/characters you can create, and the fact that the builds you can create are never permanent should be considered a positive; a different kind of positive to traditional RPG builds that force you down a specific role with specialization. There is in fact more freedom to build characters in the vanilla game. You can set up a team of all fighters, discover that strategy for a particular boss doesn't work, and swap immediately to all mages regardless of character/party. This is an extreme example of course but it highlights the ultimate build freedom the original game gave you by not forcing any characters down any particular path. I don't think people understand that they're blank slates by design, which allows you to customize them at any time as you see fit. Use tifa as a mage for half the game, decide later she should be a fighter and no problem, you can do that without issue. That is your choice. Still, overall I believe NT to be the better option because specialisation forces more long-term strategy, and having direct permanent influence over attributes is always fun. Nonetheless, the vanilla RPG systems are great in the level of freedom provided. You the player defined the characters as you saw fit at any time and little got between that concept, not even permanent attribute specialization.

Due to all the other changes, now you are forced to come up with your creative combinations, as you can't just spam Attack and expect to win. The effects and stat changes of the materia are also more significant to allow for more radical character variation.

I find that FF7 Hardtype does this better. But that is because it is more hardcore than NT, yet still not that hard. Precisely what I want.

5. Miscellaneous: QoL changes for cases where you'd have to backtrack long distances; some (very subtle) changes to the script to make the rather convoluted narrative more understandable (I don't usually approve of such things, but here it was done quite well).

Here's one of my major issues with FF7 NT over just using the Hardtype mod: some of the "QoL" features should just not be a thing, and the script changes are NOT subtle at times. They can be rather weird and jarring.

His FFIX mod I found hard but fair and I'd recommend it over vanilla for non-casual players. I haven't checked for any new mods in the last years, though.

I too recommend FFIX Unleashed.

 

[luj1]

Arcane Dimensions (Quake)
Wake of Gods (Heroes III)
Median XL early versions (Diablo II)
Swordflight (Neverwinter Nights)
GMDX (Deus Ex)

 

[Ash]

Who was the OP lol? Seems they got banned and renamed to "CancerUnlimited'

Oh and since I shouldn't disappoint the codex:

Arcane Dimensions (Quake)
Wake of Gods (Heroes III)
Median XL early versions (Diablo II)
Swordflight (Neverwinter Nights)
GMDX (Deus Ex)

I'm hoping my quake mod, huge final version soon to be released, can provide a good competitor to AD in terms of quality. Can't ever replace AD and nor should it, but my intent is for it to be ideal when playing non-AD, non-progs user-created maps, of which there are hundreds if not thousands. I've put a lot of time and thought into it already and I hope you guys give it a chance.