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The good and the bad
invertere3
Posts: 6 New Member
As one of the many avid simmers out there, I felt like sharing my opinion on the game. So here's what I've enjoyed and what has frustrated me so far:
Good
- It's very easy to switch between households without losing everything you work for. Satisfaction points don't just go away like reward points did. I've waited so long for this! Now I can have grown up siblings live in different households and I still get to control more than one.
- The new aspirations (lifetime wishes, essentially) are fantastic. They are my favorite part so far. Each aspiration has multiple milestones you can accomplish. They're all goals like go on two successful dates, marry your bff, etc. You can also easily switch between aspirations if you get bored with one.
- Emotions are an interesting addition. I don't think they're a major improvement to the game but it does add another layer of complexity and its integration is nice. You get access to new interactions with each emotion.
- Dates have little goals to accomplish now, like flirt with your date, kiss your date passionately, etc. It gives you a reason to actually take sims on dates now.
- I can put the dishes into the sink myself by dragging them. No more need to have my sims clean up, I've become the maid.
Bad
- Creating a new game is... odd. If you want to start a new game and play the Goths or another starter family, you HAVE to create a new character and move them in first. Errr, why? It seems very odd and unnecessary to me. If someone knows of another way, let me know!
- Teens look exactly like adults and you pretty much have no way of telling them apart. I learned of this before I got the game and it didn't bug me at all--that is, until I actually started playing. I had my sim find a cute guy, become friends, but then I realized there was no romance action. After hours of being confused, I finally moved him in only to find out he's a teen. Nothing tells you their age in the relationship menu anymore, so good luck trying to weed out the kids from the adults. Such a waste of time!
- Loading screens. I also didn't think I would have a problem with this at all but it feels way too much like Sims 2. You'll send your sim to a bar in a neighborhood and get a loading screen. The neighborhood loads and you're able to walk around it, but say you want to go to the gym that's in the same neighborhood. You'll get another loading screen. I thought it was just be a loading screen for each neighborhood, not each lot!
- I formally noted that you couldn't control what your sim does when he/she goes to work. I actually found out you can by clicking the tiny, tiny little person icon that appears over their face icon. Would be helpful if the tutorial pointed that out...
- The world feels small, both when you look at the map and when you're actually playing. I always end up seeing the same Sims no matter where I go. If you throw a single Sim into the game, good luck finding more than two that are also single. (And not teens or elders. There are so many elders!) I'm also less inclined to visit multiple lots because of the loading screens.
- There are a small amount of traits. I feel as though the options are really limiting. Most of them are the same as Sims 3 traits too. There's nothing fresh or interesting there.
- Your sim gets locked down when they go to work. You can't look at their needs, aspiration, inventory, or anything. It's unnecessary.
- A lot of useless little details have been added. If the game was polished overall, I would appreciate this attention to detail, but when you get rid of toddlers, make teens look like adults, and skip out on all of those details, it makes me confused. Were walk styles REALLY more important than maybe spending a little more time on something else?
To be determined
- I haven't played enough to see how this is going to effect me, but I'm very worried about other town sims not reproducing and such. It would be odd if only my sims had kids running around in a town full of elders. I don't want to have to play every single family just to have a town with other kids in it!
For those of you on the fence about purchasing it: I'm with the "don't bother" crowd at the moment. My overall opinion is that I'm disappointed. I didn't have high hopes to begin with, but I also didn't go into the game thinking it would be terrible. I thought that they removed a lot, but hey, that must mean they added a lot of cool new features too, right? Eh, not really. It feels like The Sims 2 with a focus on emotions instead of generations and a different graphic style. Emotions aren't interesting enough to make this game really stand out and it feels like that's what their main selling point was. The new build features are great, but this isn't The Architects. Why focus so much on building when the core game play is lacking so much itself? It's half baked. I find myself struggling to find new features that are useful.
I'm not willing to give up on it just yet though. I'll keep playing until 23 hours have passed so I can decide whether or not returning is the best option for me. I really hope I find something that will convince me to stick with it.
Good
- It's very easy to switch between households without losing everything you work for. Satisfaction points don't just go away like reward points did. I've waited so long for this! Now I can have grown up siblings live in different households and I still get to control more than one.
- The new aspirations (lifetime wishes, essentially) are fantastic. They are my favorite part so far. Each aspiration has multiple milestones you can accomplish. They're all goals like go on two successful dates, marry your bff, etc. You can also easily switch between aspirations if you get bored with one.
- Emotions are an interesting addition. I don't think they're a major improvement to the game but it does add another layer of complexity and its integration is nice. You get access to new interactions with each emotion.
- Dates have little goals to accomplish now, like flirt with your date, kiss your date passionately, etc. It gives you a reason to actually take sims on dates now.
- I can put the dishes into the sink myself by dragging them. No more need to have my sims clean up, I've become the maid.
Bad
- Creating a new game is... odd. If you want to start a new game and play the Goths or another starter family, you HAVE to create a new character and move them in first. Errr, why? It seems very odd and unnecessary to me. If someone knows of another way, let me know!
- Teens look exactly like adults and you pretty much have no way of telling them apart. I learned of this before I got the game and it didn't bug me at all--that is, until I actually started playing. I had my sim find a cute guy, become friends, but then I realized there was no romance action. After hours of being confused, I finally moved him in only to find out he's a teen. Nothing tells you their age in the relationship menu anymore, so good luck trying to weed out the kids from the adults. Such a waste of time!
- Loading screens. I also didn't think I would have a problem with this at all but it feels way too much like Sims 2. You'll send your sim to a bar in a neighborhood and get a loading screen. The neighborhood loads and you're able to walk around it, but say you want to go to the gym that's in the same neighborhood. You'll get another loading screen. I thought it was just be a loading screen for each neighborhood, not each lot!
- I formally noted that you couldn't control what your sim does when he/she goes to work. I actually found out you can by clicking the tiny, tiny little person icon that appears over their face icon. Would be helpful if the tutorial pointed that out...
- The world feels small, both when you look at the map and when you're actually playing. I always end up seeing the same Sims no matter where I go. If you throw a single Sim into the game, good luck finding more than two that are also single. (And not teens or elders. There are so many elders!) I'm also less inclined to visit multiple lots because of the loading screens.
- There are a small amount of traits. I feel as though the options are really limiting. Most of them are the same as Sims 3 traits too. There's nothing fresh or interesting there.
- Your sim gets locked down when they go to work. You can't look at their needs, aspiration, inventory, or anything. It's unnecessary.
- A lot of useless little details have been added. If the game was polished overall, I would appreciate this attention to detail, but when you get rid of toddlers, make teens look like adults, and skip out on all of those details, it makes me confused. Were walk styles REALLY more important than maybe spending a little more time on something else?
To be determined
- I haven't played enough to see how this is going to effect me, but I'm very worried about other town sims not reproducing and such. It would be odd if only my sims had kids running around in a town full of elders. I don't want to have to play every single family just to have a town with other kids in it!
For those of you on the fence about purchasing it: I'm with the "don't bother" crowd at the moment. My overall opinion is that I'm disappointed. I didn't have high hopes to begin with, but I also didn't go into the game thinking it would be terrible. I thought that they removed a lot, but hey, that must mean they added a lot of cool new features too, right? Eh, not really. It feels like The Sims 2 with a focus on emotions instead of generations and a different graphic style. Emotions aren't interesting enough to make this game really stand out and it feels like that's what their main selling point was. The new build features are great, but this isn't The Architects. Why focus so much on building when the core game play is lacking so much itself? It's half baked. I find myself struggling to find new features that are useful.
I'm not willing to give up on it just yet though. I'll keep playing until 23 hours have passed so I can decide whether or not returning is the best option for me. I really hope I find something that will convince me to stick with it.
Post edited by invertere3 on
18
Comments
Exactly this!!
These are the problems that I had with the Sims 4 when I had played earlier. I disliked how I had to go through CAS just to start play. I normally, especially at the beginning, will select a premade family in one of the already built houses, but once I started the game, I was forced into CAS without an option, I think, to skip it and just select a family. Now, I didn't know that we had to do this /everytime/ we have a new save/game. Thanks for letting me know, because that is terrible.
The loading screen was okay, but there are so many of them. And then they play an annoying sound once the load is done.
And also, from what I learned in another thread: Seriously? You don't choose how your Sims works at their job? Why the heck not? I did't think that would be too difficult to implement and it gave you something to do to build up relationships for your Sim at work or at least, to keep their stress down.
Another gripe of mine is, and maybe I'm blind: The premade Sims in the neighborhood do not have bios. I, for one, used to love jumping into each and every Sim family and check out the family member's bios, traits, relationships etc. So I was pretty disappointed by this. So unless the bios actually exist somewhere and I just missed it, I feel EA/Maxi/Whoever just got pretty lazy with this game.
Edited to add: I absolutely loathe the camera controls. And I've seen this mentioned in another thread as well. For some reason, it's difficult for me to rotate the camera and when I try to move the camera down, it doesn't work very well.
There is some very very minor change in appearance that is noticeable when you are in CAS and change an adult into a teen. I think they are not as broad in the shoulder? I'd have to check again. But yes, normally, I suppose, teenagers should dress like teens or dress young. But with the guys it might be confusing with the young adult bros and the teenage bros. :P I did see one premade family consisting of 3 brows and a goofball girl.
was also wondering, do the neighborhoods have premade families already in them?
Or is every house empty except for your own sims?
The neighborhoods have premade families in them. I was in the town with the Landgraabs, Calientes and some others. There are also some empty houses too.
> invertere3 wrote: »
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> And also, from what I learned in another thread: Seriously? You don't choose how your Sims works at their job? Why the heck not? I did't think that would be too difficult to implement and it gave you something to do to build up relationships for your Sim at work or at least, to keep their stress down.
I made a mistake with that one. The controls are still there. You have to click the tiny person icon (it looks like a friendship icon?) on your sim's face icon when they go to work. Then you can select work hard, take it easy, etc. It's really not intuitive. I agree about the bios too. I loved playing premade families before.
I don't mind the teens are the same height, except for that you can't tell the premade ones apart. Sure, I can dress my own sims up to look more childish, but if the game wont even tell me the sim is a kid when I friend him/her, then that's a problem. It's way too subtle to tell on its own.
> @JennaBean93 said:
> was also wondering, do the neighborhoods have premade families already in them?Or is every house empty except for your own sims?
There are premade sims but before you can play them, you have to create your own sim and move them in. Only after that do you get control of a neighborhood. It's kind of odd. I'm hoping they fix that with an update at the very least.
Also, the baby glitch bug is hilarious in a not-so-hilarious-because-this-shouldn't-be-happening way. How does no developer notice giant alien children?!
There were Sims walking through other Sims & some standing in that 'I'm stuck' position.
To me, this is a game for people that never played a Sims game before.
I was completely worried about this. Unfortunately, you just confirmed my suspicions.
But, thank you so much for your personal analysis! I enjoyed reading all the bits and parts, even the things you didn't like. You did compare this game to TS2 a lot, which seemed to be a negative for you, but since that's all I play, that won't be an issue for me!
ooh... yee that's kind of weird, I don't remember that in any of the past games B(
> invertere3 wrote: »
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> - Teens look exactly like adults and you pretty much have no way of telling them apart. I learned of this before I got the game and it didn't bug me at all--that is, until I actually started playing. I had my sim find a cute guy, become friends, but then I realized there was no romance action. After hours of being confused, I finally moved him in only to find out he's a teen. Nothing tells you their age in the relationship menu anymore, so good luck trying to weed out the kids from the adults. Such a waste of time!
>
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> I was completely worried about this. Unfortunately, you just confirmed my suspicions. That's such a bummer.
>
> But, thank you so much for your personal analysis! I enjoyed reading all the bits and parts, even the things you didn't like. You did compare this game to TS2 a lot, which seemed to be a negative for you, but since that's all I play, that won't be an issue for me!
I loved TS2, but why do I want a game that's not as advanced as its previous edition? Since TS3 did well, I don't see a reason as to why EA would revert down to the level of gameplay in TS2. They should be improving the game, not sending it back. If TS3 had tanked then ok, revisit TS2 and build upon that game instead. So that's where my issues lie with it.
If you would rather play TS2 then you'll probably love this edition of the game, minus the issues with the life stages. I would say buy it in that case. (If you haven't bought it already. I couldn't tell. :P)
I didn't play Sims 3, though. I got the base Sims 3, and didn't like very much about it, so the fact that some people say TS4 is TS2.5 is fine with me. I don't think Sims 3 was an improvement over Sims 2, but that's just my opinion. Others enjoy 3 more than 2, and that's perfectly okay.