HFW Mod Manager vs Mod Organizer 2

HFW Mod Manager is a free graphical tool for managing and packing mods for supported Decima-engine games. The listed games are Horizon Forbidden West, Death Stranding 2, and Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, which is marked as a work in progress. Users can add mod folders or ZIP files by drag and drop, choose variations, preview them with metadata, and pack enabled mods. Named presets save mod lists, and packing follows list order so later entries can override earlier ones. The manager can detect a known game directory and check game-version compatibility. Supported archive formats include .zip, .rar, .7z, .gaia, .forbidden, and .hfwz. Other features include hair patching, batch hair patching, and experimental face-shading fixes for custom face meshes. The Cauldron tab offers asset export, streaming-file building, and animation conversion; some functions require HFW Tools or DS2 Tools. The app is built natively for Windows. Windows users extract the ZIP into its own folder and launch HFW_MM.exe; it is not installed locally. Linux use requires adding it to Steam and running it with Proton 10.0-4 or newer.

Mod Organizer 2 is a free, open-source Windows tool for managing game mod collections through a virtualized setup. It supports installing and uninstalling mods, organizing profiles, detecting conflicts, and automatic updates. The project describes it as a tool for people who experiment with mods and says it can handle collections of arbitrary size. Supported games include 64-bit titles such as Skyrim Special Edition and Fallout 4, along with the 32-bit games supported by Mod Organizer 1. Its basic games plugin can detect installations from Steam, GOG, Origin, Epic Games or Legendary, and EA Desktop. A mod data checker can identify and correct archive layouts for automatic installation. Downloads are available through GitHub Releases and Nexus Mods; the installer can also create a portable installation. Version 2.5.0 requires Windows 10 1809 or newer, or Windows 11. The virtual filesystem does not work with Windows Store or Gamepass packaging, so those versions of otherwise supported games are not usable. The community-maintained project is licensed under GPL-3.0.