Any essential mods?

[Bluepill]

I loved AC6 and mecha but I'm on the fence about buying this game.

I heard the game is unbalanced for the user weapons. People recommended installing mods to fix this issue.
Is there any essential mods to alleviate this issue? And does mods still work with the latest game version?

[ebolaisamongus]

The weapon's balancing has to do more with BP. BP is basically like FP/mana in Elden Ring where weapons cost mana to use or reload. Some weapons have dogwater BP/Damage ratio while many have good ones. So you need to assess the BP/damage ratio which you get a feel from playing. Its a lot like AC6 in that experimentation is key.

The game also provides buyable consumable items to recover BP so if you stock up on those you can mitigate bad BP/damage ratios. So the game can be more resource management-ey if you want to use certain weapons which some consider "unbalanced". Its why some people dont like Mage builds in Elden Ring with having to swap between HP and mana flasks or scroll through spells.

Melee weapons only cost stamina to use, just like in AC6 so its highly recommended to have one either as your last resort when you have no mana or as your main damage dealer with weapons for extra damage.

Having played the game 3 times and nearing the end of my first Blighted Seed difficulty run, I can say that most weapons are fine if you are resourceful.

[Velmoria]

Handheld weapons are more BP(ammo) efficient especially Assault Rifle and Beamgun (AR but energy), so they can deal most total damage per BP cosumed.

This game takes inspiration from Dark Souls so enemies and bosses has "cooldown" mechanic. So, from DPS and Burst damage standpoint, it is better to have Rear Weapon to destroy enemy immediately rather than having another round of taking cover or evading shots.

Damage mechanic in this game is mostly a simple subtraction between damage and resist. Piercing stats are for adding small extra damage based on enemy resist, but their magic formula appears when enemy resist is higher than weapon damage.

This is also why weapons in this game felt unbalanced because it depends on how the dev adjust 'damage vs resist'. Playing on hard mode mostly solve weapon unbalance issue, so weapon like Assault Rifle not become one-for-all solution anymore.
Once you realize BP(ammo) are "disposable" the weapon balance do not felt that bad anymore.

Finally, melee is the king of damage in this game.
Because melee weapons get the most damage boost each upgrade and tuning feature that can give more damage boost.
So, playing hard mode without upgrade and tuning has it's own fun challenge.