I had some quick re-experience sessions with the old Sims 1, both as the base game and with the complete collection.
This review is just for the base game.
The bells and whistle-free original Sims is charming in how down-to-earth it is compared to even the very first expansion, which added a wish-granting genie. It really is the most basic live-a-life simulation you can get. Of course the lack of options does ultimately hurt in the long run. This is before they added any extra areas like downtown, so your house is all you've got. Upgrading and expanding it is a neat idea, but once you've got all the most expensive items, you're not left with anything else to do but experiment different layouts.
But also, getting money in this game is a chore. As far as I could tell, the only way outside random prizes from answering the phone, which has a very limited window, is your daily job. Getting promotions at your job is naturally the way to get more money faster, but these promotions are locked behind a very annoying mechanic. Not the skills/traits like charisma, body and mechanical - those are fine. It's the freaking friendship mechanic. Jobs will start locking promotions behind having X amount of close friends, the problem is getting friends is hard enough since it involves having to invite the sim over (there's no option to even just "talk on the phone" yet) and then go through some interaction choices, praying you don't accidently pick one that decreases the friendship. If friends stayed friends it wouldn't even be that bad, but the fact the friendship bar decreases, at a pretty rapid pace, when not interacting with them just makes it a horrible juggling act the more friends you need for a promotion. You need 5 people to be close friends? You have to spend all your time making sure each one stays above the threshold, and if they get close to it, you can risk accidently pushing them over with a bad interaction. This is all while trying to balance your own sims needs, and their job. The NPCs also run on their own schedule, so they will be at work at certain times, and of course get mad if you call them at midnight, so you better hope your own job has a healthy social time for its shift.
Even ignoring the fact that the relationship mechanic makes the game too much of a frantic exercise in trying to keep stats over a specific line, there's just a big repetitive element to it. Your sims needs drop at a very fast rate, and you generally find the system that works, like going to bed to get well rested, then watching TV to get the fun meter up, then food, then toilet and shower, then work, then come back home and try and keep your relationships steady or get some traits up, then eat again, then sleep and repeat the same thing every single day. I get it's kind of the point, but after you do 7 days of this, what else can you really do? Even if the game had options to deviate off this path, their needs are way too picky to let you do it.
This review is just for the base game.
The bells and whistle-free original Sims is charming in how down-to-earth it is compared to even the very first expansion, which added a wish-granting genie. It really is the most basic live-a-life simulation you can get. Of course the lack of options does ultimately hurt in the long run. This is before they added any extra areas like downtown, so your house is all you've got. Upgrading and expanding it is a neat idea, but once you've got all the most expensive items, you're not left with anything else to do but experiment different layouts.
But also, getting money in this game is a chore. As far as I could tell, the only way outside random prizes from answering the phone, which has a very limited window, is your daily job. Getting promotions at your job is naturally the way to get more money faster, but these promotions are locked behind a very annoying mechanic. Not the skills/traits like charisma, body and mechanical - those are fine. It's the freaking friendship mechanic. Jobs will start locking promotions behind having X amount of close friends, the problem is getting friends is hard enough since it involves having to invite the sim over (there's no option to even just "talk on the phone" yet) and then go through some interaction choices, praying you don't accidently pick one that decreases the friendship. If friends stayed friends it wouldn't even be that bad, but the fact the friendship bar decreases, at a pretty rapid pace, when not interacting with them just makes it a horrible juggling act the more friends you need for a promotion. You need 5 people to be close friends? You have to spend all your time making sure each one stays above the threshold, and if they get close to it, you can risk accidently pushing them over with a bad interaction. This is all while trying to balance your own sims needs, and their job. The NPCs also run on their own schedule, so they will be at work at certain times, and of course get mad if you call them at midnight, so you better hope your own job has a healthy social time for its shift.
Even ignoring the fact that the relationship mechanic makes the game too much of a frantic exercise in trying to keep stats over a specific line, there's just a big repetitive element to it. Your sims needs drop at a very fast rate, and you generally find the system that works, like going to bed to get well rested, then watching TV to get the fun meter up, then food, then toilet and shower, then work, then come back home and try and keep your relationships steady or get some traits up, then eat again, then sleep and repeat the same thing every single day. I get it's kind of the point, but after you do 7 days of this, what else can you really do? Even if the game had options to deviate off this path, their needs are way too picky to let you do it.