Yeah, one of the only games I’ve 100%ed, the achievements are deliberately set up so that you can get most of them organically by the time you get to the true ending. The rarest achievement on Steam has like a 6% obtainment rate, which is a lot.
The real juice of modded minecraft is in the modpacks - curated sets of mods that were configured to work well with each other, frequently with some custom recipes added by the pack developer, and sometimes some kind of a quest line to guide you through the pack and provide a more structured experience. There are many different types of modpacks - kitchen sinks (large collections of mods, frequently without a lot of balance tweaks or changes, for a more sandbox experience), questing packs (with the aforementioned quest books to guide you through the mods), vanilla+ packs that intend to expand on the vanilla minecraft experience and not change the gameplay loop significantly, packs focused exclusively on magic or technology mods (or both), expert packs (questing packs with heavily reworked recipes, where you need to build elaborate machines and automate stuff Factorio-style)…
I’m not up to date with the modpack scene, so can’t really make you a definitive list - back on reddit (sigh) there is a r/feedthebeast community that specializes in modded play.
That said:
You’ll also need a launcher to install these packs - FTB have their own if you want FTB Academy, otherwise there are some options such as Curseforge (do not recommend, eats resources just by existing), Prism (seems to come up a lot as a recommendation), or GDLauncher (what I’m using).
All of these are classic roguelikes, a genre of games which frequently aren’t much to look at. The tradeoff for the looks is that they offer vast depth and complexity… and (usually) permadeath and a learning curve that’s more of a cliff. I recommend watching some yt videos about any roguelike you want to learn more about, just so a fan can explain the appeal and show off all the basics.
That said:
Caves of Qud - actually one of the prettier classic roguelikes, if you can belive it. You’re a traveller in a strange and unique world of vast salt deserts, jungles, and the titular caves. There is a ton of flavorful, semi-randomly generated history (especially the ever-important tales of the sultans) and cultures, so every run feels different. There is technically a main plot, but you can just ignore it and go exploring - it’s a sandbox experience. The best parts, to me, are the aforementioned flavour, the tactical combat (that can get incredibly chaotic, with screen-warping effects going off every turn), the build diversity, and delving too greedily and too deeply into the caves.
Cogmind - haven’t played this one, but it’s on a list. You’re a robot. You’re building yourself from parts as you go, fighting other robots and stealing their parts.
CDDA - one of my faves, but definitely not something I’d recommend as an intro to this genre. You’re a survivor in a zombie apocalypse. Go do things and don’t get bitten. It’s a sandbox - survive as long as you can, achieve a self-set goal. The distinguishing feature of CDDA is how realistic it tries to be - crafting is very complex, you need to track your thirst, nutrition, and sleep, you can easily get sick or get your arm broken, the zombies can track you by sight, noise, and lingering scent… My favourite part is surviving long enough to build elaborate apocalypse death mobiles, Mad Max style.
I’ll be a contrarian and throw in my vote for the second game - it’s rushed and flawed and the asset reuse is blatant to the point of being legendary, but the setting and story are the best and most original of these 3 games. Just being a hero of one single city instead of the entire world is surprisingly refreshing.
In general I’d say that 1 has the best combat/tone, 2 has the best setting/story, 3 has the best characters. I’ve heard that 3 can be quite enjoyable if you pretty much only do the main story and companion quests - but I wouldn’t know, I’m one of the poor fools who got stuck in the Hinterlands, and that mistake + the very underwhelming main story sapped my will to continue playing.
I had a N3DS, it was my first handheld and it was great! Really good selection of games. My most played were Monster Hunter Generations (which was my introduction to the series) and Fantasy Life - one of my absolute faves, a charming and colorful fantasy adventure with life sim elements. The story is a bit meh but the gameplay loop is incredibly satisfying and there’s nothing else quite like it. I’ve been replaying it on an emulator (rip Yuzu/Citra devs) recently and it’s still a blast.
…wait, you just throw socks onto the pile without putting matching pairs together beforehand? I’ve learned that an alternate universe exists, and I’m not okay with it.
I have a T450, I’m dual booting Windows 10 and Ubuntu (…I know, I know, I’m just too lazy to swap) on it and it works great, I get better performance on Ubuntu than I do on Windows. The fans worked oob.
Nothing quite like Hardspace: Shipbreaker, but farming games/life sims often fill this niche for me. The classic one to recommend is Stardew Valley, I also really like Graveyard Keeper, Slime Rancher and Fantasy Life (3ds, works well on emulators).
ARPGs (Diablo style, so kill stuff to get loot to get your numbers up to kill bigger stuff) can be nice zone out games too, I recommend Grim Dawn (going to get an expansion soon, quite complex), recently released Last Epoch (very enjoyable, but might want to hold off for a while if you want to play online - the servers are a mess right now), and Chronicon (most casual of these three, very cheap, colorful explosions across the screens).
Other games I’ve tagged as “Space Maintenance” : Planet Crafter (pretty chill number go up/building kind of game where you’re slowly making a planet livable), Deep Sixed (short roguelike, try to keep a ship together enough to get through the game, very hectic and no progression between runs so may not be what you’re looking for), Delta V Rings of Saturn (top down space mining).
Not mentioned yet: Chronicon. A small indie game that doesn’t take itself very seriously. It has much less build variety than something like Grim Dawn (obviously) but it’s got some, and it’s aiming to be a much more streamlined/casual experience. Won’t demand as much of your time and attention, will deliver hugely satisfying colorful explosions across the screen. When I’m in the mood for an ARPG it’s a toss up whether I’ll install this or Grim Dawn.
All of them, honestly.
The Crucible is the weakest - it’s just an arena mode, but it’s got a lot of utility for speed leveling new characters + some QoL for existing ones.
Ashes of Malmouth is the direct continuation of the base game’s story, adds Necromancer and Inquisitor which are both very well-loved masteries, and you need it for Forgotten Gods anyway. The zones are a bit meh - great overall mood but you spend a lot of time in cramped corridors.
Forgotten Gods adds Oathkeeper (very fun) and tons of huge new zones with a refreshingly different vibe to the rest of the game. And you can go to this expansion’s zones from the start! (Except that you probably shouldn’t on your first playthrough, you’d get destroyed and you probably want to focus on the main story anyway.)
I’d wait for a sale and get them all if you like this genre, or just base game + AoM if you just want to give it a shot (and technically you could hold off on AoM until you’re close to the end of the campaign).
Just finished Lies of P. My hands are still shaking from fighting the final boss, that one was a nightmare, took me 3 hours of attempts.
(yes, the true final boss)
Still, this is a great game for fans of Soulslikes - more of an iterative improvement than anything revolutionary, and not as thematically interesting as Fromsoft titles, but a very polished experience. Really good boss fights.
Maybe Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente? Her Orphan’s Tales have some interesting cities too, but that’s a bit of a stretch.
Again, not just one city, but take a look at Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino - it was a direct inspiration for Fallen London.
China Miéville might be worth checking out - go for either the City and the City or for Perdido Street Station.
It is fun, but buggy + doesn’t have great performance in some areas. I’ve recently played it for a bit on 1.1 patch drop, and lasted for about 6 hours until I hit a brick wall of a progression blocking bug. There was a decently large thread about it on the forum, no dev response, no fix in the next 3 hotfixes, so I stopped playing. Might come back for 1.3 or something.