Sims 4 Review

Introduction
In this review, we are going to once again visit the world of the Sims but this time we are going to look at the Sims 4, what are some of the good things in the Sims 4? In the Sims 4, there are a lot more choices available than in the Sims 3 but some of the best features have been scrapped in the Sims 4 like the open world. In Sims 3 you could see what your sim is doing at home and another Sim at the gym but in The Sims 4 you will be met with loading screens.

There have been many expansions in the Sims 4 just as in The Sims 3 but this is another huge flaw of the Sims altogether. The sims 4 will cost you around 800 dollars for the full game, (HOLY ……) I would advise getting most expansions in a sale but since the Snowy Escape expansion, EA has added something very mean. Any new packs will need all other packs to be functional, this means you need to shell down over 800 dollars just to get a single expansion that you want even if there are some expansion that you don’t like. The Sims 4 can be addicting but for people like me that go quickly through games, it feels more like a slog when you have achieved what you wanted in the Sims 4.
I won’t add a story section in the Sims 4 as you will create your own story.

What did I think before playing the Sims 4?
It has been a while since I have played the Sims 4 for the first time, the Sims 4 was released way back in 2014, man I feel old now.
When I was playing the Sims 3 and I knew that the Sims 4 was coming I was excited and hoped they would expand the open-world, I also wanted more free updates and cheaper expansions.
We all know how that went downhill fast, the Sims 4 promises you many adventures and fun times. The building system does work very well in the Sims 4 and it is only getting better.

The main question is, can you enjoy the Sims 4 without expansions? I can steadily tell you that the Sims 4 would be extremely boring without expansions as the expansions make the game fun.
I waited with buying the Sims 4 until the cats and dog’s expansions had been released, before that there was purely no fun in the Sims 4. The conclusion that I draw here is that the Sims is not fun for most people when it is just released but the expansions bring the fun.

I rate the Sims 4 before playing with an 8.5.
The Sims is the weirdest and most expensive construct seen in the gaming world, the Sims 4 alone does not look to much fun but when you add all those expensive expansions, you get a boatload of fun and an empty wallet.

Gameplay
It is hard to describe the gameplay for the Sims 4 as it completely depends on your personal view of The Sims 4 and how you envision the story of your sim. Everyone has a story in their mind when playing the sims and you try to create your sim and the sims world to your vision. The main idea is to keep your sims needs full, if your sim has hunger, your sim will die. The needs of your sim can change if you are a vampire or even a spellcaster. You can even become a mermaid and take a swim in your bath, the options are endless as long as you pay off course. It is good to know that in the Sims 4 you can have same-sex marriages, you can even make it so that a woman can impregnate another woman to make sure that your family line will continue. Even though the Sims 4 loses some good features from the Sims 3, the Sims 4 does have some new good features, in my opinion mixing these two games to make The Sims 5 would be amazing!

You can select traits for your sims but I don’t think there are enough traits, my main problem is that selecting one trait can block another trait out. You can choose if your sims age or not and how fast but you can also resurrect sims by gaining certain skills. The fun thing with the sims is that the story around your sims keeps spinning, things will never go according to plan! My sim started out as a normal woman who was married to another woman and life was good, that was until her partner cheated on her! My sim, Isabella, then became a vampire to take revenge! She built a basement and locked them both up and drained their blood and ended their lives by forcing them into a dangerous cow plant! Now Isabella has a castle with a large basement where unsuspecting sims get trapped to either live out their lives as a food source or get killed! Isabella even became famous and many fans adore her but some of them disappear into her basement never to be seen again, Isabella also steals their savings to live in wealth. I wonder where the police in the Sims 4 are, they should notice that the sims keep disappearing.

Another huge flaw is how the cats and dog’s expansion was handled, the Sims 3 did this much better. You are unable to control your cat or dog but they just live in the same house, this was very disappointing for me. Playing with the cats and dogs (don’t forget the horse!) was the most fun I ever had with the sims in the Sims 3. You can send your cats out to prowl if they have the right trait but, in my opinion, this is worthless compared to how the Sims 3 handled cats and dogs. There are many different challenges that you can look up to try out in The Sims 4. I am not exactly well versed on how babies work in The Sims 4 as I really dislike babies in the sims, don’t ask me why.

These are the needs that you need to keep high, otherwise, your sim will be unhappy! The needs might change depending on if your sim transforms into another being like a vampire.

Hunger
If your sim is hungry, the happiness will go down very fast because your sims will get hangry. All you need to do is cook something in the kitchen and eat your dinner. You can also eat a quick meal or have a snack.
If you stop your sim from eating and the bar goes completely empty and you keep waiting for a few hours your sim will die. This is a slow and painful death for your sim!

Bladder
When the bladder bar is almost empty it may be time to direct your sim to the bathroom to find the toilet! If you don’t do this your sim will soil themselves and your hygiene will go to zero. Your sim will feel very ashamed and be very unhappy.

Energy
your sim needs to sleep often to keep the energy bar filled, a sim that is sleepy, and starts cooking might burn him/her self and might meet the grim reaper. You can see how well your bed will function in the buy modus.
When your energy bar is completely drained your sim will crash and fall asleep on the spot. To prevent this without sleeping you could drink some coffee.

Social
Being social is also important but having your social completely drained is not a huge problem but it will mean your sim will be very sad and lonely. The best way to remedy this and keep your social up is by interacting with other sims or by playing with your pets. You can always call another sim on your cellphone or go to a bar. There are, of course, even more options available!

Hygiene
Hygiene is important for any living creature! Washing your hands will help a little bit with your hygiene but the best way to increase your hygiene level is to take a bath or a shower. You can have a completely drained bar of hygiene and your sim will be fine but not happy.

Fun
Your Sim also needs to have fun in his/her life without fun your sim will become very bored and sad. There are many options to let your sim have fun but the easiest options are watching television or playing games on the computer.
In the Sims 4, there are more options than ever to let a sim gain fun, they can even mold clay. I wonder how to get rid of those 50 clumps of clay that are littered all over the basement cells. I wonder why my prisoners keep molding clay when I gave them all their own arcade machine.

Careers
Your sim will need a job to earn simoleons to be able to keep paying bills, yes indeed, you will need to pay bills! This also means that if you don’t use the lights and other electrical components all the time the bills will be lower. When you have more household appliances and items that use water or electricity. The bills you need to pay, go up! The bill can even reach over 100k of simoleons if you build a giant swimming pool, for some reason I deleted the swimming pool.

When your Sim goes to work, he or she will leave and time will go very fast Unless you have other Sims to control in the house. If you own the ambitions pack you can go along with your Sim to their workplace. There are fewer workplaces to go to than I expected and I miss the ghost hunting from the Sims 3.
You can choose many paths in your career and most of them even branch out when you reach a high enough level. For most jobs, you will need specific skills to unlock the next level.
There are also ways to earn income without going to work but this will also require learning new skills. You can create paintings and sell them in the buy modus but there are many more ways to earn simoleons.
In my opinion, there are just too many skills in the Sims 4! If you have the regular aging rate it is impossible to master all the skills available.

Skills
Skills are the foundation of the sims series along with the create-a-sim. Do you want to be good at your job? You will need higher skill levels. You can train yourself to be charismatic or have really green thumbs for gardening. Does anybody know what the opposite of green thumbs is?
One of the basic skills everyone will need in his or her life is cooking, your sim will also need this skill. Isabella is a vampire and thus does not eat food but she drinks sim blood instead, luckily, I can have up to six sims locked up in the basement, wonderful for when you need a quick snack!
To level up your skills you will need to find the appropriate equipment that fits the skill you want to train. For example: if you want to learn cooking, cooking some food might be a good idea, you might need a stove. Leveling your cooking skill will also learn you new meals to cook.
For other items like training fitness or charisma, you will need special equipment that you can find in the buy modus. If you want to go to space, just buy a rocket!

Create-a-sim
This is the most important gameplay element in Sims 4, without this tool the Sims would not be what it is today.
Get ready to spend hours in this mode while you create every part of your sim to the detail. Here are some examples of what you can do in the Create-a-Sim.
The most important thing is to create the personality traits of your sim. What do you want your sim to be, a neat freak or a slob? There are many options to choose from during the creating your sim process.
You will also need to name your sim and choose the starting age of your sim. My choice is usually to choose the young adult option and stop the aging process. You can change the aging process in the options menu.

You can change all the clothes in the create-a-sim, having more expansions means you will have more clothes and items to choose from. Many people will love creating the perfect sim but you can also choose to create a random sim!
Your sim will also have an aspiration in his or her life along with normal wishes when playing the game, these wishes are called whims. You will need to select the option in the options menu to actually see the whims. Completing these whims will grant you happiness points that you can use to buy new perks. These can be used for special skills. For example a steel bladder so your sim almost never has to go to the bathroom. When do you unlock this in real life?
Isabella has so much power she only needs blood and fun. She can get a bit tired though by using too much dark energy!

I rate the gameplay of the Sims 4 with a 9.6
The options are endless and you can create your own story in the Sims 4 which usually evolves as you play the Sims 4. The main problem is that you need to shell out around 800 dollars to play the complete game. To make sure you pay this money EA is implementing some changes like needing all packs available. I hope you are rich, otherwise, you will never own all of The Sims 5 when it comes out!

Sound and Graphics
The graphics are neat in the Sims 4 but sometimes the sims are not very smart, they keep complaining that they can’t reach a chair or something else. You might need to clear the whole room before they can finally sit down on the chair that was in front of them the whole time.
The queue line that shows what your sims actions are looks good but the main problem is that your sim usually has free will. There are many building options to make the home that you want, I am not a creative person, don’t expect a grand picture of my beautiful castle.

The soundtracks all sound good but they sound almost the same but it gives me the sims feeling, the sound effects are amazing. The sims have a complete own language, simlish, there are even songs in simlish.

I rate the sound and graphics of the Sims 4 with a 9.6
There are not many other games that have the look and feel of the Sims 4 and I also need to keep in mind that this game is already six years old as of writing!

What did I think after playing the Sims 4?
I always have a lot of fun when playing the Sims 4 and it is a game that I keep coming back to with new stories to play out.
I know people that can build extremely well-made houses or even recreate houses from real life, my houses usually just look bland but they have all the facilities!
There are many stories that I will still play out in The Sims 4 while waiting for the Sims 5, I hope they add the best of the Sims 3 and Sims 4!
As I played out another story in the Sims 4 I had a lot of fun, Isabella turned out very different than I had expected, before I knew it I was luring sims into the basement and locking them inside,
Yes, I literally lured sims into the basement and locked them up, I even made a video of this process!

I rate the Sims after playing with a  9.5.
The main problem is that you need to pay too much cash for the whole Sims 4 experience but it does allow you to play out a story!

My personal rating
It is hard to say if I like the Sims 3 or the Sim 4 better but I think that it depends on what I want to do in the Sims, The Sims 4 has more options but the Sims 3 does some things better!

My personal rating for the Sims 4 is a 9.7

Pros
– The sims 4 has a lot of options to play the story that you have envisioned for your sim.
– Many wonderful expansions that add a lot of depth to the Sims 4.
– The sound and graphics are very good in the Sims 4.
– The Sims 4 has multiple transformations for your sims like vampires or spellcasters. (yes, there is a Hogwarts like school in the Sims 4.)
– The Sims 4 has advanced building options to create beautiful homes if you are creative.
– You can lock sims in your basement, my sim might be pure evil.
– The sims are smarter this time around but not yet smart enough.
– There are a lot of fan-made mods for The Sims 4.

Cons
– The full game costs around 800 US dollars without promotions.
– EA is going to force you to buy all expansions, even the ones that you don’t like.
– Some expansions do not live up to their expectations like the cats and dogs expansion.

The Sims will always be around, until the end of time and if they keep improving the formula it will keep getting better. Here is to hoping the Sims 5 will be the best sims game ever, is anyone interested in the game Urbz in the city, they really need to remake that game!
The final rating of the Sims 4 is…Drumroll…

9.3

Let me know what you think about the Sims 4 in the comments.
I hope that you liked reading this review, I hope to see you in the next review!