r/gaming • u/ausamo2000 • 1d ago
What are some bad or mediocre games that become amazing with a mod or mods?
I was just thinking about long war for x-com(though the base game is already great) and it made me curious if there are any games out there that are bad on their own but saved and turned great due to a mod that changes it for the better. I was thinking more so about large expansion mods but any example would be nice.
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u/Single_Bookkeeper_11 1d ago
Starbound on its own is ok
Starbound + Frackin universe and a bunch QOL mods, is the best game I have ever played and have over 2000 hours in it across many saves
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u/oly_evergreen 1d ago
Man, I haven’t thought about Starbound in years. I remember hoping it was the next Terraria lol.
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u/SilverMedal4Life 1d ago
My friends and I still curse Chucklefish sometimes - but Starbound was decently fun sometimes!
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u/bobsmith93 1d ago
How come? I'm out of the loop and curious
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u/NovusNiveus 18h ago
Guy in charge of the project enlisted a bunch of 'volunteers' to do most of the work on the game, and by volunteers I mean minors, who he knew wouldn't demand payment for their hard work.
The game in its earlier iterations was also a lot more free-form and Terraria-esque, but was changed to be a lot more linear and 'focused' - I'm sure there's some discourse about that, but my wife and I didn't like this particular change and pretty much instantly went off the game when it happened.
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u/Gwen_The_Destroyer 17h ago
The era where the bosses dropped the item you needed you craft your next level engine to move to the next tier of star.
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u/SilverMedal4Life 22h ago
I'll assume you're fully out of the loop so I can talk more instead of going to bed, hah!
So, Chucklefish (a publisher of indie games)'s most popular and successful game is Terraria. That game was so wildly popular that it's still getting updates today, despite being released 15 years ago. It's a game that involves exploring a 2D world to harvest it for various crafting ingredients in order to craft better gear, so that you can challenge the game's myriad of bosses. Doing so will bring changes to the world and its various biomes, leading to more opportunities for progression, and so on.
Starbound was promised to be this same core gameplay loop, on a wider scale. Pre-orders with beta access began in 2013; the game received a huge amount of crowdfunding and preorders, dwarfing the amount of funding that Terraria itself received. It also was the first game I'd ever heard of to speak about 'procedural generation' - this was a few years before No Man's Sky revealed just how bad the term really was at the time, you see - and the idea of a grand Terraria-like adventure in space with my best friends sounded like the best thing ever.
Anyway, Starbound ended up being worse than Terraria rather than a successor to it. The explore-progression-boss system doesn't work nearly as well, not the least of which because a story was placed within it - each boss had a place within that story, but the story itself wasn't interesting, it was very generic. Which is a shame, as the game had a half-dozen playable species (that were entirely cosmetic and had no meaningful differences), each with their own culture and context that wasn't expanded on at all beyond a different set of decorative basebuilding items for each one.
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u/NoodleDoodlesocks 19h ago
Chucklefish wasn't involved with Terraria. One of the sprite artists for Terraria left and founded Chucklefish to create Starbound.
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u/bobsmith93 14h ago
Dang, thanks a lot for the thorough answer! I think I'll still give the base game a try for a bit, then I'll try it with the aforementioned mod(s) from the parent comment since that sounds pretty intriguing
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u/NoodleDoodlesocks 19h ago
It is a good game and by all measures it is 'complete' but it has so much potential to be so much more if they kept working on it but the devs have long moved on to other games.
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u/Pylgrim 23h ago
Why would anybody need another Terraria when Terraria keeps on keeping on?
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u/Single_Bookkeeper_11 21h ago
For me personally they are two completely different games with different gameplay loops. Starbound is closer to a 2D No mans sky with an actually interesting universe
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u/gzafiris 1d ago
My dumbass thought you meant Starfield
A complete overhaul mod could fix that game a ton, imo, but it would be 200GB lol
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u/TinyBard 1d ago
The Star wars overhaul for starfield is peak
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u/Empty-Employment-889 1d ago
Came to mention this when I saw starfield mentioned. I’ve never regretted a console purchase more, but my ole PC just can’t handle it.
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u/TinyBard 1d ago
I just upgraded my PC. My old one could just barely run it at minimum settings, but now my new rig should be able to rock it
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u/WriterV 19h ago
Starfield is getting a new mod that allows for seamless landings, and it's genuinely one of the most incredible mods I've seen. It's not even an AI generated mod too, the dev tackled it as an engineering problem and built a solution over many months.
It still doesn't solve the issue of the planets themselves being shallow in terms of exploration, variety and gameplay feel, but it's a huge step forward.
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u/Bashoopa 1d ago
I haven't touched Starbound in ages. I didn't even know about Frackin universe until now and it looks amazing. Time to take the plunge!
Any chance you could tell me which QoL mods you recommend?
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u/EduardoBarreto 23h ago
Enhanced Storage is basically a must have. If you care abouy keeping the balance the same you can keep storage containers vanilla sized but quick stack and quick loot are must haves.
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u/NoodleDoodlesocks 19h ago
I could never get into Frackin Universe. Felt like it was purposefully designed to waste your time with how long it takes to get anything done.
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u/Equivalent-Sector-59 1d ago
Isn't the game abandoned by the devs?
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u/KrazySpike 1d ago
Game hit early access in 2013, 1.0 in 2016, and 1.4 (final update and additional content) in 2019. Not every game has to be worked on by the dev team forever.
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u/ausamo2000 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yea, which sucks because it had so much potential. Glad to hear the community put a lot of that lost potential back into it though. I think I’ll have to reinstall it and give it a go with the mod mentioned above
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u/EduardoBarreto 23h ago
The latest update is 1.4. The game is not abandoned, it's finished and it even had 4 major updates after being considered finished.
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u/francis2559 1d ago
Yes, in part because they used a bunch of child labor and then didn’t pay the children, IIRC.
Frustrating as I really enjoyed it. The music in particular was great.
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u/Taiyaki11 1d ago
Chucklefish is a joke. And the way Witchbrook has been handled shows that hasn't changed
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u/shiek200 1d ago
Genuinely bad or mediocre games don't tend to get the kind of massive overhaul mods that transform them into a suddenly amazing game
However, there are a ton of games that either aged horribly, or we're just down right unplayable on Modern Hardware that got mods that ranged from making them playable to completely overhauling them
One of the first examples that come to mind is Daggerfall, that game may have been revolutionary when it came out but it did not age very well and it's barely playable on Modern hardware, but the unity mod completely changed that while adding a bunch of modern qol
There's still one guy working on an Ultima 7 Unity port
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u/StableManticorePilot 1d ago
Daggerfall Unity is genuinely incredible.
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u/Shepherdsfavestore 1d ago
I was very close to giving it a go but then I saw a streamer (Josh Strife Hayes) try to navigate a few dungeons and I said no thanks. I know there are mods to make dungeons better/easier, but they still look crazy.
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u/Bladebrent 1d ago edited 22h ago
Yeah, I feel like if I game didn't get a following, then its now likely to get mods in the long run. There's a reason people got Mario 64 running on 3D modelling software and Marvel vs Capcom Infinite never got a single character mod (despite the fact character mods would basically fix that game)
edit: fixed typo
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u/DblCrteFtr 1d ago
MvCI has an entire mod expansion.
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u/Bladebrent 22h ago
And it doesn't add a single character. It changes the graphics and rebalances the game but thats cause Maximillian Dood (a single person) paid a bunch of modders to make the mod to hopefully help people see the positives of the game. I also heard (though cant confirm) the reason he didn't pay to add in any characters was a legal thing that might've gotten him in trouble, but again, thats 2nd hand info that I got from his server at one point.
Mad respect for him trying but the biggest thing the game needs IMO is characters which no one's bothered with. People reverse-engineered characters into MvC3 before figuring out how to mod a game made in Unreal. The only mods you'll find to MvCI (as far as im aware at least) is MvCI Beyond (the one Max paid for) and then some costume/music mods back when the game first came out (when it was most popular)
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u/bahumat42 23h ago
Cities skylines
Without "traffic manager president edition" the traffic is downright unmanageable.
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u/Gwen_The_Destroyer 16h ago
Did that even update after the patch over the summer? I tried playing a few months ago and everything was broken
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u/Frosty-Assistance798 1d ago
I think one of them is Minecraft, dont get me wrong, Ita not a bad game. BUT mods make the game so much more fun.
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u/Angelskaya 1d ago
Base Minecraft in 2011 was amazing. Base Minecraft without mods in 2026 always makes me think "wtf have the developers been doing all these years. Sleeping?"
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u/Oseirus 1d ago
Considering Microsoft owns Minecraft now... Probably yeah.
Above all else MS has always been notoriously awful at maintaining any of their products. Their marketing department alone is so hilariously inept that it drags everything else down with it. Never mind how eager the rest of the company is to chew off their own foot to escape the bear trap they set.
And it ain't even the correct foot.
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u/francis2559 1d ago
They could do better, but it seemed even slower before MS bought them. MS kinda kicked their butts to do more.
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u/Stokkolm 1d ago
What is missing from the base Minecraft?
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u/LeastHornyNikkeFan 18h ago
Modding is a personal thing, so the answer to that is totally subjective. You could ask 10 people what MC needs, and you'd get 12 answers.
Having said that, I'll then tell you my personal answer:
• Distant Horizons. It's a LOD system that allows you to increase your render distance to thousands of blocks at no performance loss by rendering distant areas as low-poly, simplified models. I mean, just look at this. My PC with a 1660 Super runs this at 70+ fps no problem.
• Also shaders in general, animation mods that makes enemies more expressive, etc. This one is just a resource pack for example and looks really cute.
• Ambient Sounds, adding the sound of wind, the ominous hum of a deep cave, the birds chirping in a forest. Absolute must have.
From here on the answers get really subjective. QoL mods to skip the grind, Terraria-like mods for improved combat and more gear, tech mods if you're into that, roleplaying mods like Origins, voice chat, horror mods, PvP, meme mods..
While not everything would fit the base game, I bet anything with a couple million downloads plus probably would be a sweet fit for vanilla. Just the three ones I listed would've made it much better.
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u/kaiomann 1d ago
Gregtech
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u/ManhwaReaderDude 20h ago
Hilarious answer but also real. I did StarT and had to take a break after 80 hours. I had a cleanroom setup, but needed to expand my ore processing cause my sieves were making wayyy too much ore.
I did get a basic ME system too, but pattern providers couldn’t hold anywhere near the needed amount of patterns (and expanded ones were out of my reach).
I also had to start oil distillation, which was a whole ‘nother headache.
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u/Anakinss 23h ago
Game design. A normal, uninformed and non-wiki run will have you interact with less than half the content. The game is horrible at telling you what you can do with stuff, and that's even IF you find it to begin with. Sunken cities, why would you go there ? Let alone inside. Ancient cities ? You'll probably never go close to them unless you know they exist. Sniffers ? I think less than 1% of players have seen one, and for good reasons, they're useful to find two flowers and that's it. Allays ? Even veteran players aren't sure how they work.
Ever since the End Update, they've added content yet it's not been put anywhere between the start and end of the game. Yeah sure, let's add another useless tier of metal, just after wood, that's what was missing. Oh, weapons ! but that can only realistically be used in PvP. It really takes to play any one mid modpack that tries anything at all to render the game more cohesive to see the absolute piss poor job Mojang's been doing. They have done wonderful things with the performance though, and maybe I'll be wrong when the Sift is released.17
u/suvlub 22h ago
I think you make some valid points, but also fundamentally approach the game with a wrong mindset. This particular sentence rubs me in a really wrong way
it's not been put anywhere between the start and end of the game
End of the game? It's an open-ended sandbox. Sure, it has a "boss", but you are just missing the point completely if you view the game as a linear journey towards killing the boss and expect everything to contribute to that journey.
For example, sure, copper is redundant as a tool material, but I feel like the only reason why it even can be used that way is because people would be complaining that it's weird it cannot because IRL there was a whole copper age etc. It's raison d'etre are all the non-tool things you can craft with it, including the uniquely-behaving block of copper itself. But it's not a relevant tier in character progression, so you write it off as a useless addition.
And what do you even mean by "why would you go there ? Let alone inside." Like, I understand your point about these places being too hard to stumble upon (though, honestly, I do think there is a debate to be had about whether the player being guided towards everything a sandbox game has to offer is desirable, as actually having found everything puts a hard stop on exploration which may not be desirable, but it's a very valid and reasonable take, if not quite as open-and-shut as you think), but why the ever loving heck would you not go inside a cool structure you just found? Like, what are you even doing with your game at that point?
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u/Anakinss 22h ago
I understand I'm maybe not the best "sandbox" player, I need some sort of reward for exploration.
I've seen it repeated that the only useful thing inside Sunken Cities are sponges, and they're not the rarest item inside. Conduits are... Well, the only place they'd be useful is the fight against the Elder Guardian. If I survived the fight, I don't need the conduit anymore.I like finding structures, I just don't like when they're just here to be here, especially when vanilla structures are kinda ass, there's no creative use of blocks and it's bland and repetitive. Even when they're useful, like the Woodland mansion, they feel like they were a new player first "planned" build.
And yeah, not everything has to have the goal to get to the End, but it has to have a goal, to serve a purpose, else I'm not interacting with it, because it's quite literally useless.There was no copper tools for the longest time, and yeah it didn't make sense, but why add them in the worst kind of perfunctory implementation ? Why not make them useful ? They have the whole game as a playground, they could have added interesting mechanics, hell, even something as basic as "it can be made without a crafting table" would have been better.
There are absolutely good additions, copper golems, cushions, the crafter, all really good small additions that add a world of creativity to the game (which is what the game is about !). And then we have the Sniffer.
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u/Kattenb 19h ago
Minecraft isn't a game where you're supposed to do absolutely everything in the game, in a specific order or otherwise.
If you explore an ocean ruin and find a sniffer egg, you find a sniffer egg, if you don't explore an ocean ruin, you don't find a sniffer egg. Why is the sniffer egg something every player should find and use?
Minecraft is very exploration and curiosity driven. I agree its not perfect (especially if you know about everything in the game) but ever since watching About Oliver's blind playtrough of the game I've realized that its honestly really great.
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u/BarkMark 23h ago
You seem like the audience for this thought I love throwing out: Botania is my favorite mod. So imaginative and intuitive.
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u/Desertcow 1d ago
I really tried to do a vanilla forever world so that I could immediately hop onto the newest updates, but frankly the game is unplayable long term without Tom's Simple Storage. They really need an inventory update because storage management is the final boss of the game and it's not a fun one
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u/Bladebrent 1d ago
Sonic the Hedgehog games in recent years. Project '06 is the famous one, but 'Shadow the Hedgehog' and 'Sonic and the Secret Rings' both got mods on emulators that iron out those games rough edges to my understanding.
There's also that guy who Made a mod for a bad Garfield game to make it better
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u/Taiyaki11 1d ago
Somebody just mod in chao garden since Sega apparently would rather die before ever acknowledging the chao garden again I guess lol
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u/ausamo2000 14h ago
That was the last sonic game I played so I didn’t know it was ever removed. I was never a big fan of sonic and then seeing one of my friends brothers being completely obsessed with sonic as a kid just made me not want to play it at all. He was the one I actually played that sonic game with as well lol
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u/jokekiller94 1d ago
Starfield with the like 150gig Star Wars mod pack made it such a fun adventure.
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u/s3xyrandal 1d ago
I have never heard of this till now and it sounds fascinating reading into it. May just have to try it out
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u/Gwen_The_Destroyer 17h ago
Starbound. Was really good in the beta and then the 1.0 release gutted the game. Frackin Universe adds back a majority of that and then a bunch more too
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u/SonOfTrout 1d ago edited 1d ago
Fallout 4 is mid.
Fallout 4 modded survival is one of the best games I've ever experienced, almost 2k hours and still going.
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u/Shmeeglez 1d ago
Now to just replace the story 😞
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u/Chewbacca_The_Wookie 18h ago
There are a few mods for that. Fallout London is the biggest one but it does make you Br*tish so you've got a trade off there.
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u/ErgonomicWoodenShirt 1d ago
I managed ok with just the mod to let me see what I was actually saying in dialogs instead of the stupid 'general feeling' nonsense they went with.
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u/Impossible-Wear-7352 1d ago
That was the only mod I used. It makes a big difference.
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u/ErgonomicWoodenShirt 1d ago
Indeed. Thought I was making a friendly unserious joking answer a few times and ended up pissing people off. Thankfully I was late in starting my play of the game, so that mod was available.
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u/Barf_The_Mawg 1d ago
Vanilla Banished was very barebones. Mods added a lot of jobs and buildings making it a n8ce little colony sim.
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u/Iamironman956 18h ago
I just downloaded the game again a few days ago to play some more, what mods would you recommend?
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u/Empty-Employment-889 1d ago
This is gonna get me flamed hard I think, but I’ve never been able to enjoy vanilla Minecraft for more than the shortest period of time. Modded Minecraft on the other hand? Literally endless high quality entertainment. It’s like the base game was BUILT to mod into anything else you want.
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u/Vykrom 1d ago
I'm the same way. And I'm honestly not sure why. Something about Minecraft doesn't appeal to me even though I love building crafting and survival games. I adore Vintage Story. And I really love some of the more robust mod packs. Legendary, Fear Nightfall, and DawnCraft are super fun to me
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u/SilverMedal4Life 1d ago
For me, I like more involved progression. Minecraft, at least when I played, alternates between pretty limited exploration-based progression (wood -> stone -> iron -> diamond, can be blazed through in an hour or two) and remarkably grindy progression (potions and enchanting).
Modded Minecraft adds way more things to upgrade, stuff to build at your base beyond decoration and storage, and in general is just a lot more involved. Great fun with a small server full of friends.
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u/BanditMcDougal 1d ago
Arma 3 isn't a bad game, but I don't know anybody that doesn't have about 20-30 mods running. Given the age, it was gonna happen.
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u/DevastatorCenturion 20h ago
My units modpack is relatively slim but is still 83 mods. I've been on missions with 100+ mods running.
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u/cerpintaxt44 1d ago
Mount and blade warband
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u/Kingkary 17h ago
Mount and blade is almost cheating becuase it feels like it’s purposely kept at like 85%-95% of the way to the all time game and the devs just go “na I don’t want to work today” pretty much everyday
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u/NeukbareNelia 19h ago
Fallout 4. Mods can save the game from having an uninteresting world and no atmosphere. There are quest mods with quests far superior to those of the base game.
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u/inebriateddandhated 17h ago
Yep, people love to say fallout 4 is amazing, but it's only amazing with mods.
Vanilla it's janky, but alright.
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u/igwbuffalo 15h ago
I will give fallout 4 credit that to me, it had some of the best vanilla gameplay experience.
The world building needed lots of help but the gameplay core was solid at least.
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u/Caesar_35 16h ago
Pretty much every BGS game. Don't get me wrong, I love them and they're not bad games at all. But mods just elevate them to a whole new level.
Probably most impressive: Morrowind's got an entire engine remake (OpenMW), and Project Tamriel/Tamriel Rebuilt that are aiming to remake the entire Tamriel in Morrowind's worldspace.
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u/trighap 1d ago
There was/is a game called Medieval Engineer, which was an OK-ish game that served too limited a playing field (run around mining resources and building homes and misc. items, apparently not what people wanted). So few played the game that the developers basically gave up on the game which is why I type 'was'. The modding community on that game is insane, well over 1000 mods even though that seems to be like a mod per player that played the game. It's a fantastic game if you like that type of game in the first place, once you add the mods that kick it up to level 11.
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u/ThruuLottleDats 1d ago
I am still salty about that game. The devs mucked up when they did that Earth update; they should've just stuck to premade maps; or atleast kept the option for premade maps.
The whole structural integrity of the game is what made it for fun me; build a castle; save; yeet dozens of cannonballs at it; enjoy the destruction; load and continue.
Havent opened the game in years sadly.
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u/Dman20111 1d ago edited 19h ago
Arma 3 is the perfect game if you want to play with the bucket of plastic soldiers you had as a kid. Except it has a half baked 2035 setting where it's not quite sci-fi but also not the modern setting (2013).
Thankfully you can just have modders bring you to a battlefield theater in essentially any point of history or fiction.
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u/DevastatorCenturion 20h ago
Looking back, Arma 3 got a surprising amount of near future combat right. NATO is falling apart at the seams and an alliance between Russia, Iran, and China is steadily gaining power. The US is about to adopt a 6.8mm rifle, only marginally different in design from the MX in game. Drones are rapidly becoming the game changer for combat, with Arma 3 showcasing reconnaissance, IED, gun, medical, and leaflet dispensing drones that can be FPV controlled with a UAV terminal. UGVs are showing their worth, which Contact predicted with the ED-1D and E variants as well as the larger 6 wheeled armed UGV. There's even a UAV attack chopper and stealth bomber.
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u/Dman20111 19h ago
Maybe it was harsh to say half-baked. The lore is great but you only have as much of it as Arma offers you. With a historical setting you have all the records to work with, with something like Star Wars you have enough supplementary material and spin offs to make your own scenarios. With the vanilla setting you have the modern NATO vs sci-fi like CSAT, The rebellion in Altis, CTRG spec ops in Tanoa or Altis and then if you want to go for anything else you need mods. AAF doesn't really work if you want to go outside of Greece so if you want to go to some alpine, temperate, desert setting you gotta get yourself another greenfor faction. And then they also can't just be the current military force of X country, they have to be 2035'd to work with the others.
So I guess I'm just trying to say the setting is well made, it just stands in the way of the sandbox. It's limiting to expand on too because you can't go full sci-fi but also can't just insert modern military forces.
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u/ew435890 1d ago
SkyrimVR. Skyrim is a fantastic game, but the VR version of it was very poorly done. Once you apply like 500 mods, its one of the best VR games out there.
Same with Fallout 4 VR. That one may actually be worse in vanilla form too.
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u/StableManticorePilot 1d ago
Imo vanilla Skyrim/FO4 VR are literally unplayable. Mods are essentially required. But when properly modded? Absolutely incredible experiences.
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u/ShortChapter5246 1d ago
Exactly the same for Subnautica, except that you only need one mod to fix the VR (Submersed)
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u/mrcchapman 1d ago
Mechwarrior 5 base game was very Spartan. The DLCs were transformative but the mods just expanded everything.
See also Battletech. I quite like the base game but the mods just increase the scope to epic scale.
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u/FlyingRhenquest 12h ago
Rimworld base is pretty good, but Rimworld is also the game I think of when I think of game-changing mods. They just upgraded their engine too!
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u/ausamo2000 12h ago
Oh wow I completely missed the steam update about their engine getting an update. I always have a tough time choosing between playing rim world and caves of qud when I’m wanting to play one of them lol
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u/Caiden_The_Stoic 1d ago
Unpopular opinion, but in my enjoyment of previous Elder Scrolls game, Skyrim was 'okay'. Fun enough unmodded, but exponentially more enjoyable with them.
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u/LastTourniquet 1d ago
This is probably the most popular "unpopular" opinion I have ever seen..
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u/kaskayde 1d ago
It's a hip thing to say lately but it is def unpopular on the whole. Vanilla Skyrim was and is one of the most beloved games of all time.
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u/teddytwelvetoes 1d ago
game launched with no mod tools and its reception was based on the vanilla version lol the idea that mods turned an average game into an all-timer is in fact an unpopular opinion despite all of the 'jerkin on gaming subs
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u/Nanergy 1d ago
Mods didn't make it a classic or anything, but the idea that Skyrim gets a lot more fun with mods is extremely common and not really an unpopular take. It is the most modded game on nexus by an enormous margin.
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u/xVaran 1d ago
Sure, but this post is not "what game got better with mods", it's specifically about bad and mediocre games, and to say that skyrim was mediocre or bad before mods isn't really fair. By today's standard maybe, but it got game of the year in 2011.
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u/SEND_ME_REAL_PICS 1d ago edited 1d ago
It was an incredibly popular and beloved game in its vanilla version, but the active modding scene exposed many of its flaws after modders addressed them, while the constant re-releases also made it start showing its age when comparing it with newly released games. There is a lot of revisionism around it.
The lack of RPG mechanics, poor storytelling, potato-sack combat and overall jank are hard to ignore these days. However, there's probably nothing quite like it when it comes to making that mix of story-driven sandbox RPG.
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u/Instantcoffees 1d ago
Nah, Skyrim was widely seen as a great game even before a lot of the great mods. So calling it mediocre without mods is definitely something a lot of people would disagree with.
I personally think it went from an already good game to an amazing game with mods, which is probably the popular opinion I recon.
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u/Caiden_The_Stoic 1d ago
Is it? Ha. My bad. I haven't played Skyrim in years. Wasn't sure how folks viewed it these days.
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u/Ironwall1 1d ago
mostly an aged classic but people have started pointing out the glaring flaws more than a decade in. back in 2011 it was a phenomenal game even unmodded
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u/Angelskaya 1d ago
Idk there's been a lot of Fallout 4 and Starfield glazing lately. Sometime after Starfield's first year people started talking like as if all the dislike the game got was paid actors or something.
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u/kaskayde 1d ago
People seem to say this more often recently in a rewriting history sort of way, but make no mistake the vanilla game was and is one of the most beloved games of all time.
Skyrims not unique in that tho. There isn't a single widely celebrated thing that after some time passes, some people start going "actually that was overrated"
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u/Gromle81 1d ago
Skyrim wasn't so bad unmodded. Oblivion on the other hand.. The vanilla level scaling ruined the game imo.
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u/InterloperPrime 1d ago
I have never played a single Bethesda game in vanilla form. I mod 1st play through. Can't stand leveled lists and console UIs.
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u/RandyJackson 1d ago
Only Skyrim mod worth using is the one that turns the dragons into macho man Randy savage
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u/toxicatedscientist 1d ago
This shouldn’t be a hot take when it’s very clear that, for many people, modding IS the game
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u/Aveziel 23h ago
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines if that counts considering you need it or you won't make it to the menu.
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u/fidelacchius42 1d ago
Phoenix Point: Terror From The Void
It balances the game so that all the DLC can be used without making the game so unreasonably difficult and unbalanced that you just can't seem to keep up.
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u/Crowmanhunter 1d ago
Every single Fromsoft game is an amazing single player experience, but the multiplayer experience is kind just there. Some people even disconnect the internet just to avoid it because it's not even worth bothering with. I myself typically play my entire first playthrough single-player only.
But man oh man, the Seamless Coop Mod has taken the community by storm. It started with Elden Ring, there was one for Dark Souls III, and recently one for Dark Souls II just came out. And my god, what a wonderful expereince it is to be able to play these games with actual genuine multiplayer with your friends.
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u/Crysack 1d ago
The original STALKER games come to mind. Not sure I would say they are “bad” as such, but the Eurojank was certainly prevalent. All the QoL mods and total overhauls were game changers.
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u/ErgonomicWoodenShirt 1d ago
I used Stalker Complete when I gave it a second go and it pretty much fixed all the issues that stopped me the first time around. I haven't checked out what changed in the Enhanced Editions that were given out at free upgrades on Steam last year.
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u/Billazilla PC 1d ago
I played it a long time ago with an older mod, "Oblivion" I think, that added driveable cars to the game. Though there wasn't a lot of space to drive around in, it was remarkably fun. The cars made travel a cinch, were too clunky to overbalance combat (maybe you hit one or two guys, but it you didn't exit the vehicle right away, the rest would shoot you up in the car Godfather style), and they were fast, but that made anomalies all the more dangerous because it was way easier to run into one going that fast. I grazed a whirligig anomaly once and oddly, it did not snag the vehicle and spin me to death, but it released the car from gravity altogether. I bounced up into the sky, which was hilarious until I realized that I wasn't coming back down unless I jumped, and I was already too high... That was an exceptional rare situation, though. Usually the anomalies would just deal their damage to me in the car anyway.
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u/SmurfInHell 16h ago
Starfield with the Star Wars Genesis mod. One of the best examples that I have played. The genesis mod accomplishes so much with a gameplay loop that originally had plenty of problems. Despite this the world setting and fun of the subject material manage to make starfield's typical gameplay loop bearable enough to play more of and actually enjoy exploring.
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u/StarpoweredSteamship 15h ago
I would love to try this, but then I'm still paying for Starfield. I saw Kevduit did two(!) videos on it and he was not his usual crazy meme self in it. Looks really fun
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u/Skeletonzac 1d ago
Probably an unpopular opinion but I didn't really like stalker 2 until I started playing with mods. I removed carry weight restrictions and increased weapon damage. Now I'm actually having a really good time with it.
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u/Angelskaya 1d ago
I must have a thousand+ hours in Fallout 4 thanks to mods. In that time ive completed the main quest only 3 or 4 times.
If it wasn't for mods I'd probably have only played it for like 20 hours despite loving Fallout.
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u/Menirz Xbox 23h ago
Minecraft. Don't get me wrong, Vanilla was fun for a bit, but unless I'm dicking around with friends, it gets boring quick. Mods add such a depth of play and so many more exploration/RPG elements that it's endless fun.
Probably also gonna get flack for this one, but Skyrim. I just don't care for the way Bethesda games play, and the story wasn't all that intriguing, but the mod-ability of creation engine is almost unmatched. So much fun with crazy Skyrim mods all piled together until the game breaks.
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u/_Benzka_ 22h ago
Yeah I'm playing with my wife together local co-op with shaders and round about 130mods in total xD, sure 20 of them are just for optimising mods the rest is QOL and a lot of extra stuff :), distance horizon alone made a big difference for me!
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u/nico1207 22h ago
Valheim is unplayable without mods
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u/ProIapsedGoose 20h ago
Was thinking of getting this
Which mods specifically?
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u/Vicioustiger 17h ago
Common quality of life mods are things like
-crafting from containers
-sort/quick stack buttons
-equipment slots
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u/Cl0udwolfe 1d ago
Most Total War games. Or well, they're great on their own at first, but when you start to dabble in mods, the base games will feel so barebones there's no going back.
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u/Cinnamon__Sasquatch 23h ago
I still play Medieval Total War 2 and the full LOTR conversion for it.
And then there are submods of the LOTR mod that go deeper into the lore or cover different time periods/factions.
But The Third Age + Divide and Conquer is fantastic.
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u/Stebsis 1d ago
One Piece Odyssey. The run speed is abysmal, like running through molasses, and the gameplay is so piss poor easy you never have to engage with the actually quite fun combat and gear system. It also looks quite bad with the black outlines on everything. Run speed mod, difficulty mod on the hardest setting and some graphics mods make it genuinely a really good turn based JRPG.
Only time I had to tone down the difficulty were the very last 3 superbosses on their harder mode, those one shot my fully geared and leveled party, but for everything else it was perfect.
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u/njdeatheater 1d ago
Sims.. but install some Wicked Whims and... Whelp. Giggity giggity.
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u/Taiyaki11 1d ago
Wonder how long before Paralives and Inzoi get their inevitable "whicked whims" lol
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u/InfernalBiryani 15h ago
Surprised that Skyrim isn’t one of the top answers.
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u/Alternative_Tank_139 10h ago
Not sure if it counts but you need Skyrim to play Enderal, which isn't really a mod but it's own game based on it.
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u/Voltron_McYeti 7h ago
The question isn't "which games are the best with mods?"
It's "which bad or mediocre games are good with mods?"
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u/a_rabid_anti_dentite 14h ago
Well Skyrim on its own is still one the greatest games ever.
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u/Nat1Only 13h ago
That's really a matter of opinion. Had I played it like, 10, 13 years ago then maybe I'd agree but I simply can't enjoy it today.
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u/a_rabid_anti_dentite 12h ago
That's like me playing the original Ocarina of Time and calling it "trash" because its control scheme has aged poorly. Would that make sense?
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u/Nat1Only 12h ago
You can have that opinion, yes. That's what an opinion is.
For example I like spicey food, but when I cook I have to tone it down because what I consider a good amount of heat is mouth on fire amounts of spice for other people.
Opinions vary from person to person. I might have enjoyed Skyrim a long time ago. But just like many games I used to enjoy and don't anymore, I don't enjoy it today.
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u/Wenai 20h ago
There's this little-known indie RPG called Fallout: New Vegas, developed by a small, underfunded studio called Obsidian. It's a bit of a hidden gem, honestly.
There are some genuinely interesting ideas buried in there. Branching dialogue, morally ambiguous factions, player choice, consequences, that sort of thing. You can tell the developers were really ambitious, even if they didn't quite have the resources or experience to pull it all together.
Unfortunately, the vanilla game is borderline unplayable. The faction system is a complete mess, the reputation mechanics barely function, the writing is wildly inconsistent, and the developers apparently forgot to implement a proper ending where you can establish a functioning liberal democracy.
Thankfully, the modding community has spent the last 15 years fixing Obsidian's mistakes. With about 2000 essential mods, you can finally turn it into a reasonably competent RPG. There's even a mod that removes all the tedious political ambiguity and makes it immediately obvious which faction is objectively correct.
It's a shame, really. With a bigger budget, a more experienced studio, and perhaps another decade in development, New Vegas might have been something special.
Still, not bad for a first attempt. I hope the developers went on to find work in the industry.
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u/NessaMagick 16h ago
I don't actually know how many levels of irony this comment is on because I have actually seen people claim that NV has a bad faction/reputation system, pretty much because you can't take over and become the leader of any factions (except the one you can).
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u/Wenai 15h ago
Exactly. New Vegas has an objectively terrible faction system because it expects factions to have their own ideologies, interests, and political structures independent of the player. What's the point of an RPG if a centuries-old institution doesn't immediately appoint a random mailman as its supreme leader after he retrieves three objects? Bethesda understood that meaningful roleplaying means becoming the head of every major organization in the country, preferably without having to make a single difficult decision or alienate anyone. Obsidian's biggest mistake was thinking factions should behave like actual factions instead of LinkedIn career progression systems.
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u/-Xiphon- 1d ago
Kotor 2
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u/Flight_Harbinger 1d ago
RCM is amazing but KOTOR 2 is still a great game even without it. It was actually reviewed higher than KOTOR when it released. I did probably a dozen playthroughs over a couple hundred hours back in the day just on the OG Xbox. I've played it later in life many times on RCM and while I still love it, the atrociously long slog that is the HK factory sequence really knocks it down a couple points for me. IIRC, there's literally another mod that disables or greatly streamlines the HK factory sequence in RCM lmao.
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u/loklanc 1d ago
My unpopular opinion: Project Zomboid is an objectively bad, unfinished, work in progress mess without mods.
PZ 5/10, 9/10 with mods.
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u/Catty_C PC 1d ago
Can you explain what mods would being the game to be a 9/10? I find the game fairly good for what it is already without mods.
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u/hamptont2010 19h ago
Common Sense and Britas Weapon Pack are two that immediately elevate the game imo. But there's a ton of other good ones: inside RVs, Bandits, clothing mods, pick up rocks on the ground, vehicle mods, organization/proximity inventory mods. There are seriously a ton that can really elevate the game to the most realistic survival game I've ever played.
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u/baddude1337 1d ago
Mods are one of the only reasons that games gotten away with its lengthy EA period. Any other game in EA for that long has the community rioting.
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u/Buzz_Lightbeer_ 1d ago
God, if they would just fix the fucking atrocious UI, that alone would make it actually decent.
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u/ForAllMankind_ 1d ago
Viewpoint is literally game changing. Can’t play Zomboid in ISO anymore.
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u/Vlaxilla 21h ago
What does it do?
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u/hamptont2010 19h ago
Puts the camera behind your back so you're no longer in isometric view. There are two big ones right now, Viewpoint and another one whose name escapes me. I think one of them is first person exclusively and the other one lets you switch between first and third
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u/martygod12 21h ago
I would not say bad or mediocre. But okay or good games that mods can make an absolute legends you spend thousands and thousands hours in are basically any Bethesda or Total War games.
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u/MrMichaelElectric 11h ago
I know it is widely loved but I find base game Skyrim to be so boring. I need at least a combat overhaul mod to even start to slightly enjoy it.
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u/Birdman915 10h ago
Most Bethesda Gamestudios games. People always remember them modded, but the base games are always buggy, unbalanced and at least on PC the interface is terrible.
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u/Significant_Walk_664 9h ago
Not meh as vanilla but I cannot play Xcom or Darkest Dungeon or DAO or Skyrim or Slay the Spire or a good deal of Total War or Wotr or FVII-IX and many other without mods
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u/Wolvenworks 17h ago
Bethesda games.
Would include CK3, but it is fun even without mods. It’s just inherently better with the mods.
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u/Necrifyre 17h ago
Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall
Daggerfall Unity just gives it the kind of kick it always needed.
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u/Tripdrakony 1d ago
Skyrim, yes it's a good game if you where there at the time. Nowadays? Medicore. Oh but mods... a few texture additions, some animation addons and fitting overhauls (and a few loverslab additions for those who preffer it.) And you have a genuinely amazing and fun game.
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u/CraftyPackage 1d ago
Alien colonial marines, someone fixed the AI and it changed the alien behavior completely