Been keeping my eye on The Sims 4 since it released, partly because I do play it for a week straight every couple of months and also partly because EA seems to want to run with this one forever.

When this game was released it was as bare bones as games can get. It came off the back of The Sims 3, which had big and bold ideas that weren't executed properly. To say that I wasn't disappointed with what was shipped out, would definitely be a lie. They never fixed or modified those ideas in The Sim 3 and also cut a lot of things back, giving us not even a skeleton but more like a single left toe bone in comparison. It was absolutely NOTHING like it is today and that sucked ass.

The cutting of all those large features and furniture options did however open up the door for better simulation gameplay, which is why I play the Sims. I've never been interested in the interior designing; only the life simulation aspect. The addition of different emotions benefiting certain aspects of gameplay is a nice feature, and Sims being able to multi-task should be a basic function moving forward. However, I do wholeheartedly agree that removing items to later sell them for more money is an atrocious practice from EA. Remember though, The Sims series has been doing this since its inception and EA has always been like this.

The previous games also has $2 bajillion dollar DLC and almost never goes on sale because they're older. There are definitely some packs I think people should get if they want the most bang for their buck (City Living, Seasons, Growing Together), but there is no reason to purchase the entire library unless you just simply want everything you could possibly have. This game has been out for years and naturally has an ass ton of DLC because of it, and it'll be the same for The Sims 5, which I don't see coming anytime soon.

This game is a much more pleasant game now with all the added free updates and the inclusion of some mods/CC. Most of the packs I've bought were in bundle discounts, but I haven't had a Sims binge since the Star Wars pack. I really just use the basic UI and Master Controller mods that make the game run better when it sometimes falters, easy emotion management, and adds better story progression for my neighbors.

This game is more accessible on lesser hardware and no amount of sending hate to the developers for anything is going to make you less salty about this game. The price of the packs and how much gets put into them are decisions made by EA, not the developers. Within the last two years, they have added so much content that has been requested by fans who think making a game is the easiest job ever. They were getting so much unwarranted hate thrown at them around the Island Living era, it really put me off of the series for while.

I don't think it's better than The Sims 2, the GOAT, but I'm glad it looks better and runs better than The Sims 3 at it's basic gameplay mechanics. There's different ways to get chaotic, which I love, and I prefer the cartoonish style of the Sims as opposed to the more realistic looking ones.

I would love nothing more than to see a potential Sims 5 that mixes the greatest features of each game into one, but we'll have to see. That would be quite a beefy game, but it would be a great one.

I "like" this game, and binge it as much as the sims 3, but I do not recommend anyone play it compared to the sims 3. The sims 3 feels better gameplay and soul wise in every way. The lack of Open world and still no create a style fucking 10 years after this game comes out makes this a downgrade in every way. Every cool addition the game adds like multitasking, emotions, the building system and even the mountains of DLC means fucking nothing when the game is STILL FUCKING BROKEN. If it wasn't for the incredible mod community I would've dropped this game long ago. Such a waste of potential and an unreal level of greed.

me a few days ago: haha i will install a load of funny mods and see what chaos happens :)

me now: i will protect my wife ryo and daughter giulia with my fucking life and be the best husband and father i can

edit: this game has given me a fucking existential crisis

edit 2: playing too much sims may have fucking killed my pc lmao

It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that my (slight) discomfort when playing the Sims comes from the fact that I constantly boot it up expecting a different experience than the developers are willing to provide. The Sims contains a truly insane range of activities, hobbies, etc. that you probably wish you had the time/money to master IRL - as things are in the Sims 4 right now, you could go to your day job (President of whatever country this is), come home, learn how to bring a ghost back to life, go skiing, build a relationship with your pet llama, and write a hit song before you have to go to work again the next day. Honestly, it's kinda rad! I like that there's a huge variety of things for your Sims to dabble in and improve at. It's nice hopping between activities and watching your Sim grow, watching them rack up a truly silly number of life achievements. Despite this, playing the Sims feels like I'm constantly speedrunning activities and careers without really getting to enjoy any of them, and it took playing Project Zomboid and a couple major Sims mods to understand why.

The Sims games are very good at simulating social interactions, to the point where just clicking someone and selecting "Friendly" gives you a downright overwhelming number of conversation choices, from telling knock-knock jokes, to trying to console them, to just unloading on the poor fucker about every hobby you have (I think the "sentiment" system is one of the best things the Sims has ever added and I really want to praise them for that, but that's a topic for another day). Improving skills, on the other hand, seems to be less about playing out the fantasy of building expertise and more about providing opportunities to socialize, acquire money, or smooth out other inconveniences (e.g. becoming so good at repairing something that you can make items unbreakable). Bringing your Do Things Level from 1 to 5 mostly looks like clicking the "Do Things" or "Research Doing Things" buttons over and over until you unlock the ability to "Do Things Quickly".

To be clear, I don't think this is a problem, I just think it's a mismatch between developer focus and what I want in a life sim. But it's clear that the Sims is capable of more, because some of the most fun I've had with the game comes from the skills that change how you interact with the game, or ones that link with other skills. Cooking is already one of the more interesting skills because it's split into 3 different types of cooking - cooking, baking, and gourmet cooking, where you have to choose portion sizes and account for the dietary preferences of the sims eating the food. Acquiring the DLC that lets you grow a garden means you can try to live entirely off your own home-grown food, and when you have virtually no money and no recipes to cook at the start, the challenge it provides was enough to single-handedly renew my interest in the game.

This is what I want more of! I think the Sims would truly ensnare players to a dangerous degree if there were more of these skills that allow you to really dedicate your attention to improving them and working with their systems. There are mods that allow you to use the systems present in the game to grow and sell drugs, interfacing with the cooking system (making edibles), the social system (can discuss/share drugs), and the aging/family system (parents can search their teens' furniture for hidden drugs). I mentioned Project Zomboid earlier, and I think the Sims could learn a lot from Zomboid's approach - the way that many skills are still primarily performed through menus, but there are additional layers of investment required to interact with them. Cooking requires that you have the correct utensils (and is done by selecting a recipe template and filling it with compatible ingredients); repairing a car requires that you have the replacement parts, the tools to remove/install said parts, and also the tools to remove/reinstall any parts that are in the way of whatever you're working on. This is a bit technical, and I think it works for Zomboid, but it would definitely require some tuning to work in the context of the Sims, which is a far more casual game with a more casual audience.

I'm asking for a lot here, because I think the Sims is at its best when it offers players the option to really get lost in a fantasy, instead of skimming the surface of twenty different fantasies. Other games will always do this better if you want to go play a dedicated Lumberjack Simulator or MouthSimulater [sic], but by adding like 20% more depth to the skills and/or changing the ways they interact with each other, the Sims may just start consuming the souls of unsuspecting players.

One step forward, $4.99 steps back. The Sims 4 is the update that The Sims 3 needed, with the Sims and artstyle getting a well-needed graphical modernization. Unfortunately, after all of the gameplay features introduced and mastered throughout the series, The Sims 4 has eagerly taken them away to sell them back to you one more time. The game is incredibly barebones without DLC, but if you decide to go down that route, there is usually at least one DLC that will interest you as a Sims player. If you've gotten sick of the aged graphics of The Sims 3 and want a more modern take on the series, the base game is currently free-to-play, but your experience will be limited until you open up the wallet.

I had a time. If I ever was to play this game again I would pirate it because FUCK EA. Base game is empty and they are really pulling out expansions that were originally either lumped with the base game in sims 3, or multiple things in one pack (e.g vamps, wizards, plant people and werewolves in supernatural).
I just really need a quest driven game or something. I love watching people play, but I cannot once I get past CAS. I just can't make it fun for myself. Even doing fanmade challenges feels like a grind.

Enjoyment - 5/10
Difficulty - 3/10

If you need a fix of Sims in your life, this will do the trick, but at that point you might as well go to church to wash away your sins. The PlayStation 4 version ran like a old motor struggling to get into third gear. Maybe this is the sign from God to get a Honda Civic. Waiting for the Joyous Church pack.
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I like this game! I would play it to help further design the story of my OC's and the way they live. I unfortunately spent a lot of money to get some of the DLCS (AT LEAST OVER TIME) and it does give the game a lot more content, if not bloats it. Mods are a thing and they help bloat up your doll house experience some more. I generally love how expressive the sims are and how customizable this game is and seems to be the only game of its kind (apart from the upcoming paralives). Looking back at the older Sims games does feel disappointing though, with how much more this game honestly could have been.

The Sims 4 is a bit of a mixed bag. I'm really tempted to give this two stars and say that it's a massive downgrade from the last game (which it is), but the improvements are so significant that it's hard to ignore. Sims feel less like dolls you can control and more like volatile people. Their emotions add so much to the gameplay. Building and character creation feel far less clunky, less like playing a ton of sliders, and more like sculpting with clay. And what I love the most: mod support is greatly improved over what was in The Sims 3. Compare some of the mods from that game to some of the ones you see in this game, and it's night and day. Oh, and the game isn't as slow, either.

But here's where I have to be honest with you: they took all of the gimmicks from 3, the stuff that they could have added more to and improved on, and just threw them away. Customization is more limited. There isn't an open world anymore; instead, worlds are composed of a laughably small number of spaces you can load into at any time. But what irks me the most is that this is the least content complete base game in the series. For reference: all of The Sims 3's DLC costs nearly 400 dollars. If you want to skip the cosmetic packs and go only for the content ones, it'll still cost you a whopping $219.89 full price. The Sims 4 is a little fairer in its pricing: cosmetic packs no longer cost as much as the content packs. The problem? Even when it's all on sale, there's still nearly $600 worth of DLC. Again, on sale. Off-sale, that price becomes almost a thousand. The DLC model is so egregious that this game has DLC for its DLC: you can't get a specific cosmetic pack unless you have a particular content pack. There's no way around it: The Sims 4 is more of a platform for EA and their version of Maxis to puke out as much downloadable content as they can. I got this game for free on Origin back when they were doing that giveaway, and I've been convinced ever since that the game should stay that way. If this is how EA is going to treat it, they really should.