Better than Adventure is a modded version of Minecraft which treats itself as a de-facto fork. It forks off of Minecraft Beta 1.7.3. Though it makes a number of changes which makes it feel very different from modern Minecraft.

I’ll be honest: not really into it. This is definitely a me thing though, as the aspect I dislike about Minecraft the most is the “aimless sandbox” part. BtA kinda goes all-in on that specific part of the game so, naturally, this appeals to me a little less.

Though, plot twist, that’s not really the case. I’m not 100% sure why, but I find the idea of playing BtA more pleasant than any modern version of Minecraft. I think it’s because there is so little to do (as compared to modern Minecraft) that it’s less overwhelming.

BtA also has many additions which I think are net positives and really raise questions about why they’re not in vanilla Minecraft. Dyed wood and chests for one. Though the biggest draw is Photo Mode…which re-introduces the isometric screenshot feature from the earliest versions of the game…only better.
Actually, the above is not the full story: photo mode is definitely one of the big reasons I’d like to play this over vanilla Minecraft. Though if it’s ported to vanilla…that’s it.

The biggest disadvantage that BtA has over vanilla is that it doesn’t use the client/server approach to Singleplayer that vanilla has. This means that, unlike in vanilla, it’s significantly more difficult to play multiplayer…as you have to set up a dedicated server. In vanilla, you can just install Essentials and you’re good to go.

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