What's your favorite mods for games you've emulated?

[trickybus]

I'm only now dipping my toes into mods, so I've started with something simple: an HD texture overhaul for Pandora's Tower, which can be accessed here.* It's been mind-blowing to see how much visual improvement a texture pack can grant. As much of a fan as I am, Pandora's Tower debuted on the Wii, so the graphics are...not great. The textures were considered ugly even back in 2013 ?

This got me wondering about other folks' experience with emulation mods. Which ones do you love? How has it affected your gaming experience? Feel free to flex your favorites, include links, screenshots, etc.
*Unfortunately, all the image links for the before/after screenshots are broken

 

[Yousef]

Sindacco Chronicles, for sure! It’s practically a full blown game!

 

[MasterEn]

many of the pikmin 2 mods are pretty good. brawl has a decent amount of them too. and dissidia has some good costume mods too. breath of the wild has some mods that striaght up change the whole game, adding in other mechanics from other games or vastly improving the basic stuff already in the game. and there's plenty more out there too.

 

[Cu-Neo]

Not an emulation but, The tale of two Wastelands for Fallout New Vegas: basically you can begin in fallout 3 and then go to the mojave as the same character and viceversa, the best thing is that adds a lot of perks of new vegas to 3 and is a really fun mod, hard to install but really fun at the end.

 

[Evaccaneer Doom]

Auto dash boots Castlevania games. I own a Mac so my arrow keys are tiny. Can't consistently press a direction twice in a row

 

[Ikagura]

SA-1 hacks for SNES games?

 

[trickybus]

SA-1 hacks for SNES games?

Got any specific ones in mind?

 

[fake-kun]

Mega Man 4 Voyage.

 

[Ikagura]

Got any specific ones in mind?

Gradius III.

 

[trickybus]

Mega Man 4 Voyage.

The description for that one sounds amazing!

 

[jankusanagi]

Probably RE: Unicorn Cut, RE2 modified with FF8 characters. It's mostly done to play the "EX Battle" mode, but you can just play the Leon part of the story, but being Squall and with "interesting" weaponry

 

[OmegaPunch's iconOmegaPunch]

Tactics Ogre: One Vision mod.
I'm never playing the vanilla Tactics Ogre ever again after playing this mod.

 

[nathman]

Either Gran Turismo 4 Spec II or SM64 B3313. Both for different reasons, but they're both fantastic.

For GT4 Spec II, I think it's now the optimal way to experience Gran Turismo 4. It adds so many little and big things that just makes GT4 a much better package than it originally was. B3313 transforms SM64 into an entirely different genre of game that you can just get lost in; it's more akin to LSD Dream Simulator than the original SM64.

 

[_oBSOLEte_]

Best mods for me are EmuVR and Helixmod's Geo-11. And I use them similarly to what CitraVR did with 3DS games for Duckstation and PCSX2.

 

[Azure_mc]

Freedom unite complete for monster hunter freedom unite

It's currently the definitive way to play the game, no reason not to use it

 

[RageBurner]

I mostly enjoy hacks that fix games that have either terribly misguided design decisions, unacknowledged critical bugs or glaring omissions.

Under that light, I'll cite a few.

First, the RNG fix for Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate. This fixes the botched RNG routine in the game allowing it to function like all the games before it and the ones after it, with the RNG seeds rerolled properly at each game load. Capcom at the time said they designed it this way, but I don't believe it, they copped out and didn't want to issue patches.

Second, Mega Man X3 - Zero Project v4.8. The most advanced iteration of a patch that does so much good for the game that it singlehandedly removes it from the quagmire of mediocrity it wallows in and elevates it to be closer to its kin by fixing gameplay issues (botched buster mechanics, awful, unusable up dash and that pathetic, distracting shield effect), not to mention the bonus of adding Zero properly and removing the randomness associated with certain events.

Third, Mega Man 7 Refit - A weak buster and pathetically short iframes really bring this otherwise solid game down quite a bit. This hack fixes that.

 

[Mazerkist]

Fire emblem hacks are pretty much my go to when I'm feeling like playing strategy, I tend to stick to new story or characters not those hard type hacks as most of them require lots and lots of grinding/RNG manipulation and I don't care enough to waste hours on one game for that.

Tons and tons of mods for PC games I play I can't even name most of them but off the top of my head, fallout new vegas being my comfort game I go back to since I like fallout so much, it makes the game even more interesting with huge assorted mods added in.

 

[LaserMoose]

Mega Man X's Air Dash/Wall Jump QoL is a great way to replay the game. It lets you start the game with dash from the get-go rather than being forced to play Chill Penguin's stage first.

I also second MasterEn's suggestion of Super Smash Bros. Brawl mods. I haven't played the game in a long time at this point, but Project M significantly improved the gameplay by removing the tripping mechanic and buffing character movesets considerably. Some characters, like Lucario, had their moveset completely reworked.

After Project M's discontinuation, Legacy XP took over the mantle as its successor and added even more characters like Geno, Shadow, and Waluigi to the roster.

 

[RageBurner]

Mega Man X's Air Dash/Wall Jump QoL is a great way to replay the game. It lets you start the game with dash from the get-go rather than being forced to play Chill Penguin's stage first.

I also second MasterEn's suggestion of Super Smash Bros. Brawl mods. I haven't played the game in a long time at this point, but Project M significantly improved the gameplay by removing the tripping mechanic and buffing character movesets considerably. Some characters, like Lucario, had their moveset completely reworked.

After Project M's discontinuation, Legacy XP took over the mantle as its successor and added even more characters like Geno, Shadow, and Waluigi to the roster.

New characters is pretty rad. I always thought it would be a much better use for clone characters' slots.