The Sims series always wanted to become a big life simulator, just the only problem is that with this game we rather got further away from this goal. The developers decided to free us from the awesome open world, the possibility to track the life of the neighbors, and return to the starting point.
But then what do we get from the Sims4? Pretty much the same thing we experienced in the Sims1 already.
- A multitude of uneventful boring days, where the most important thing you have to do is fulfill the needs of your household.
- Empty, aimlessly wandering characters around the world from point A to B, as well as meaningless random conversations between complete stranger npc's.
But let's summarize the most important things in a little more detail:
The AI: A bunch of unconscious, goofy npcs with zero personality. There is not even a trace of autonomy in the game. They can only take care of their most basic needs by themselves, but in the other aspects of the game our characters are completely up to us. Those existing personality types are totally unnecessary, since without the players the npcs are incapable to to develop any kind of relationship, friendship or even a meaningful interaction between eachother. Even if their sense of isolation is in the negative, they will not leave their home without us.
Public places: When you visit a public place, you are commonly the first one there, and the other npcs just start pouring in after you arrived. But sending your household to these kind of places is usually pointless since the most npcs there just come and go, or stay about 2 minutes then they move on aimlessly to their next (pointless) destination... But beyond that the movement of the NPCs is completely aimless and random, the developers didn't even bother to have at least the family members or maybe the friends appear in a public place together..
House construction: The game practically has this one valuable function. Building your home is fun and easy here, and if you are talented enough, you can build practically any dream villa you desire.
Attraction system: It's mood based. Which means that it is not the compatibility between the characters that decides, but their current emotional state. Quite a weird feature, and I'm not saying I like it, but I still don't consider it worse then the chemistry, since in that system even a ghoul monster could be attractive with the matching attributes. One thing is sure. Even if you create the perfect sim in the game, the NPCs will not find it attractive, therefore I think that the players should determine it in the game which sims are the most attractive and which are the least one.
Overall, the game is a disappointment for me even with the dlcs. My suggestion.. skip this one, and let's hope that the Sims5 will be better.
