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:

• FTB Academy seems to be a pack specifically meant to teach the basics of modded play.
• Project Ozone 3 comes up quite often as a pack with a good quest book that guides you through everything.
• Cottage Witch is what I’m currently starting, it’s (so far) a chill magic vanilla+ pack. New creatures, new plants, some new mechanics, tons of new decorations for building.
• Peace of Mind is an older pack made specifically for playing on Peaceful, if mobs are stressing you out. It’s got a good questbook too.
• and if you want to jump straight into the deep end… Enigmatica 2 (or 6) Expert, Gregtech New Horizons. Expert packs in which you need to automate everything to progress. Gregtech in particular is infamous for its complexity, difficulty, and length, but if you enjoy solving hard problems it might be for you.

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 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.

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).

I grabbed Yakuza: Like a Dragon and Sleeping Dogs Definitive Editon, both of these are supposed to be great on the deck! Still stuck in Packaged purgatory though, so it’s going to be a while before I actually get the chance to play them. There were some other games I was considering, but I gotta stop spending so much money right after buying a new piece of hardware… One day Sekiro will be at 70+% off, and that is the day I’ll buy it.