She actually gets some fairly hefty stat increases in her mod, with Mod 2 hitting as much FP as M2HB. The issues that 2 stars normally face (low skill values compared to higher ones, etc.) are pretty solved thanks to being upgraded to a 4 star, and it also gives her extra base ammo which helps out a lot. Overall a cheap mod to get, and honestly you get a fair bit of value off even just Mod 1.

She's pretty much an all-rounder MG, and with the Mod 2 skill, technically you're not limited to just SGs, but uh... the shield values are so low otherwise that it only really helps armored things, though I guess some people might find a use for that anyway. MATH BIT: Her Special Equip actually isn't awful, but tbh you're better off with an EOTech in most cases.

Her original form can be found here.

There was a two-year span where BAR Mod was unquestionably one of the best MGs in the game between her great skill and super good early reload cancel frames, that even resulted in debates over whether or not to use an ammo box for maximum early burst. EN skipped that period entirely and introduces her alongside one of her replacements.

Now, she's still decent at first mag fire, but she's really expensive for this, essentially making you pay for a full 4-star Mod for slightly better performance than M2HB. In the long term, she's outperformed by Lewis, who is introduced in Isomer.

So yeah... she's been replaced at half her job and she's really expensive to build up for the other. If you like her a lot though, she's not the worst Mod to spend on.

There is nothing I can say about Bren Mod that would compare to the sadness of her existence. The most I can say is "Well, I guess she's got better DPS than Ameli and MG4", which is not a very high bar. Her stats go up a lot after the mod, but not enough to be worth investing your limited supply of memory fragments into. She doesn't give an armor buff, so she doesn't fit in with machine guns that give those, and she doesn't have the sheer firepower of the other first-belt machine guns, so she doesn't fit in with those either.

The even sadder part is her history. At one point, during the Reload Cancel Era, she was shitty because her reload timer did NOT cancel and she reloaded on the move, making her completely inferior to every other choice including MG4. When reload cancel was removed, there was a brief resurgence of interest because people thought "Aha, now a machine gun that can reload on the move is an interesting thing!"

...It turned out it was a bug and it was fixed, except they waited until it was an interesting feature to fix it...thanks, Mica.