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Paranormal Stuff Worth It??
GenericTownie
Posts: 105 Member
Everybody seems to like it, but I haven't seen anyone explain WHY they like it. What are the positives? Negatives?
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GenericTownie
Posts: 105 Member
Comments
1) The Aesthetic. Even without the gameplay elements, I'd have been excited for this pack. The Retro-hippie Boho - but with saturated color - is an aesthetic I adore and the CAS looks like it could have come from my closet, along with the pseudo-Moroccan feel of some of the furniture, and the sofa is about the best one we've gotten outside of base game (The one that you unlock with the Tech Guru career is still my favorite, but it needs more colors)
2) The Haunted House lot type. I'm not saying I want my sims to live in one forever, but it is a fun challenge to get through the first seven days. And honestly, those little specters are a far more entertaining way to get rid of random visitors you don't want to talk to than just ignoring them.
3) The Paranormal Investigator Gigs. They're like active careers, which you can go with your sim or not as you choose. And they're a bit of a challenge and while yes, it's just "remove this, clean up that" in terms of doing things, it feels like there's more to it. Like trying to keep the home owner's calm, dealing with the investigator's own fear (even with the Brave trait, which just means your sim recovers faster) and the random rewards you can sometimes get. And dealing with specters sometimes gives another way to extend your sim's lifespan too.
What I don't like
Erm... If Temperance and Guidry are supposed to be from the 20's, their (or at least her) wardrobe is wrong. Seriously, that's the extent of it and it's just a tiny little nitpick.
https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/987273/paranormal-has-added-so-much-spice-to-gameplay
The surface stuff is great.. the looks of the CAS and build/buy. You can look them up yourself. Personally I love it all. I like the (the word was edited out.. so fortune teller?), boho vibe and have wanted it in the game. There is a pack called movie night that kind of has this vibe but is way too bright for me. In the paranormal pack the way they did it is spot on for my tastes.
The gameplay is really good. Living in a haunted house is like a mini game in the game as @jimbbq said. You can play it normally which can be quite hard or brace yourself for heroic mode, which you have to turn on. But you don't even have to live in a haunted house to learn the medium skill if you don't want the day to day issues that can happen. Your young adult sim and up can go out on the job and do battle with the specters that way... when you feel like scheduling the gigs for them.
Kids and teens can also learn the medium skill and that can come in handy for keeping things under control at home (or even out and about if you've put the lot trait in houses they travel too). It's cute to me to see the kids doing it.
Bonehilda, Guidry and Temperance are fun additions for NPC's and bring additional gameplay and/or story possibilities.
The noises... creepy crying, bangs, laughter, electric buzzing sounds ect .. love it. The visuals of the lights flickering and sudden wham when they go out .. very nice.
All the little stuff they get as rewards from specters or doing a gig is great to collect, is useful or both (like specter sips that can give your sims random skills) .. and it makes me grin to get something new I didn't know was in the pack.
They gave us control with the option to use the lot trait to have a haunted house or not. There is no forced gameplay here... you chose it. If you want a break from it you don't have to remove the pack. I want this option for anything like this and am happy as heck they did it. I've been playing my sim in a haunted house for a month now and I'm ready to play a different way for awhile... I know I can and it's great to know that that play isn't globally invasive.
The biggest negative for me is that there isn't a haunted community lot trait... you can only put it on residential lots. Also I'd love to have had this be a bigger pack, therefore with a bigger budget to get more jobs, effects, animations and furniture. The specters themselves are very Sims 4... I'd have loved them to be creepier/scarier or even otherworldly looking instead of cute looking, but I'm not surprised by the choice and would rather have it this way than not done at all.
I didn't want quote the whole thing, but your words have convinced me 😁
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Guidry, Temperance and the floating specters, are they restricted to the *Haunted* lot? Or is it the seance table that attracts the last ones?
The Medium skill, what can it accomplish on a non-haunted lot? I know about Bonehilda and apparently, temporarily becoming a ghost.
I'm not so much into the haunting gameplay, but the career and the medium skill are so tempting, depending on what I can do on both haunted and non-haunting lots.
We want: Faeries, with a good ability tree, hopefully before summer 2024.
What do we want to get rid of: The holiday bug, the constant showering and the weed glitch.
Guidry only appears on Haunted lots, unless you summon him with the seance table. That may require both Medium 5 and a Paranormal Investigator's licence, or maybe just the licence. I'm not sure. My current paranormal investigator got hers by staying in a haunted house through University.
Temperance appears every 5 days (or so) on Haunted lots, and can appear on Medium and high difficulty Investigations.
I've only seen the specters on Haunted lots and at Paranormal Investigator gigs. I'm sure the only way to meet the yellow one is on a Haunted House Lot. There may be a ceremony to summon them, though (I haven't investigated with ceremonies off Haunted Lots as much as I should.)
The Medium skill allows you to perform seances, and eventually get your paranormal investigator's license without needing to spend reward store points. You can summon Bonehilda, summon ghosts (I think it's a random one) turn into a ghost, and "commune with the dead" which gets a small text of what the dead has to say and a moodlet depending on the tone of the text.
We want: Faeries, with a good ability tree, hopefully before summer 2024.
What do we want to get rid of: The holiday bug, the constant showering and the weed glitch.
although spoilers aren't lovely you should consider (if you didn't) look for some gameplay video, but if you're already convinced then hope you'll enjoy it! anyways the pack offers toggles in objects/lot type to avoid the gameplay if it annoys you or adapt the difficulty
I couldn't agree more. Paranormal SP has much better gameplay than IL. I also think CAS and Build & Buy items are really cool and unique, it's one of the few packs that's worth its full price.
And despite not playing it yet, I already feel it's well worth the $10 I paid for. I've used both the BB and CAS items so much already it's not even funny. And I already fell in love with Guidry right away. I can tell he's going to be one of my favorite premades ever.
I absolutely adore the theme of this pack this too, and the fact that Séances aren't restricted to the use of the table and we can actually create Séance circles elsewhere is big plus for me.
Once I actually play with the gameplay, I have a feeling I'll probably fall in love with that too since it seems to have a lot of re-playability and not just a "one and done" deal (something that makes me a bit unsure about Strangerville.)
I'm also not a fan of the vacation-world-esque non-vacation world gameplay, but Strangerville is soooooo beautiful 🤩 I know a lot of people don't have the same opinion as me, but I'm really into the Boho Cowboy & Space Desert look 😂 Everything is so up my alley in that pack that it makes me crazy.
**not my image cuz i can't find mine lol
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