This mod adds loads of new and detailed interior locations with an enemy stronghold vibe along with loads of new enemies to battle, several main quests, new companions, lots of new items to collect, loads of notes and loads more tricks and traps. The new interiors are all big and heavily cluttered in a realistic and lore-friendly manner. They are also designed to scare and test the player in many unusual ways (especially with MMM running which can fill certain areas up to ridiculous degrees depending on chosen settings). Like AWOP for FNV it’s currently built entirely from vanilla content to show what can be done with just the original game assets so file size is low and installation should be easy.
So I finally completed most of the main content from this mod (I guess?) and ready to write down my impressions.
I used A World Of Pain back in 2013 and must say that quality and stability of mod is really improved throughout the years. Also, you must keep in mind that it was one of the first bigger projects for Fallout 3 back then. And after visiting pretty much all new locations, I have a very mixed feelings about mod.
First of all, yes, I must agree with other users that some new gun variations are pretty overpowered when using against vanilla enemies. But I solved this minor issue by adjusting difficulty with damage rebalance mod and selecting "Very Hard" difficulty option.
As for the new dungeons, some of them are really cool and even have some backstory like Crystal City under Old Olney, Springvale Sewer and Beastlords base. But others don't feel fresh or interesting at all (mostly because it's very little in variety department, more "waves after waves" style of combat).
This mod have two big quests of some sort (no markers, just locations) - Friendship Asylum questline and Zeus's Rumble Zones.
Asylum for my taste is the chunk of new content that didn't work well in the end. Too repetitive and enormously big in my opinion. Also you can't exit Asylum until you completed main objective, so if it was a bit shorter, I would like it more. Too much dark interiors with no background music (I used radio stations) felt a bit lacking of substance. And final option to recruit powerful companion wasn't very satisfying at all.
Rumble Zones and Zeus's challenge were the main point of this mod and, only using vanilla enemies, give an opportunity to really test new guns and armor. I must warn you that some of the rewards, not including armor and weapons, is also pretty OP for the base game mechanics. You can get optional "4d storage containers" items which increase additional weight limit "to the skies". That's why I also installed mod to give every ammo type weight to compensate pretty much OP gear.
Overall, it's understandable that for large mods like this "giant", some elements and content can be potentially weaker than the other parts. But I don't regret using AWOP for my latest playthrough.
I didn't found any big problems or unavoidable bugs and it's seems everything worked as intended.
Should you try this mod in 2023? Yes, if you really somehow like gunplay in Fallout 3 and want to use all your deadly arsenal on new groups of enemies. A World Of Pain can potentially increase your playtime for at least another 5-8 hours to find and conquer all new dungeons.
Even if final revision of this mod isn't as deep as I wanted it to be, A World Of Pain still achieved a special place in pretty much every plugin collection of Fallout 3 mod players. And it is absolutely justified.