And this poll is missing Four Corners, Bitville, Garden Heights and Mesa Flats ;p (I know, most Sims 2 players barely know these exist, and they arent natively part of Sims 2 itself). I'll say a bit about each neighbourhood.
Pleasantview is rife with dramas and everyone is interconnected, but I feel its best for returning players from Sims 1. Its also the neighbourhood that Bluewater Village, Downtown and Sim State University connect to canonically, so its the most important one, but im not always in the mood for the more realistic approach PV has.
Strangetown is the hotbed for the strange and bizarre sims, the only thing letting it down in PC is its small size; without making a custom neighbourhood and adding new lots, your not going to be adding all the extra canon people from the PSP version, or giving homes to graduates of LFT, the matching college for Strangetown
Veronaville ive never had much love for. The fact that every premade there is literally part of three families, and the architectural styles, and the fact you cannot play without some brawl or roaches infesting all your lots because of trashcan kickers, it always puts me off longterm play. At least its matching uni adds some diverse playables to the town, who must wonder 'why did I settle down HERE of all places?'
Sim State University is a fun place, its premades are all so normal and relatable. Ive taken a lot of them through college and into the main neighbourhoods, and its nice seeing them out and about in community lots after
La Fiesta Tech has gotten a lot of play from me due to connecting to Strangetown, and like Strangetown, it has some of the more interesting student characters, like the only other playable pure alien in the game, and the lazy guy that mostly just exists in his frat house, and the stuckup german woman who finds everything provincial. I just wish Strangetown was better equipped to house them after (not a problem for meanymore as I merge all the neighbourhoods now)
Academie Le Tour is...'ehhh' for the most part, its more serious than the other two, and connects to Veronaville. I have played all of the sims living here to completion, just to populate Veronaville with diverse residents, and the only family that really interested me here was the Sharpe family, due to its drama potential. In one of my games, the poor nerdy brother got beaten up by Jonah, moved out, then spent the rest of his semesters building robotics in the dorms, eventually giving every dorm the security bots that shock aggressors like the evil mascots. He made a little legacy there.
Downtown has no sims living in it sadly, but does have a good spot for a lot of uni graduates and family bin people to move into; its always where I move the Traveller and Roseland family to.
Bluewater Village is a place I'll never quite get to explore fully, as I generally find the OFB stuff too in your face and demanding, thus I still have not really done much with it. I do however like a bunch of the premades; one of my first ever Sims 2 games was with the Larson Twins, and Chester Gieke as a roommate that moved in a bit later. I also like the lady that sells flowers. Several of the people here feature in Sims 4 as cameos in item descriptions that tells what some of the residents got up to after Sims 2, so thats neat.
Riverblossom Hills is notable for being the only town with a premade playable occult, and its a bit of a wacky town. Like having that one family with the drama of having the wife abandon her family to...become a literal pirate? xD The only thing I dont really like about this neighbourhood is how pretty much EVERYONE has one of the new careers, it isnt too balanced out that way. Bonus points for the Ottomas family, playing this family is always pure chaos, as no home in the town has the room to house them properly.
Desiderata Valley is total filler, ive seen people try to recreate almost all the neighbourhoods from TS2 in TS3, and Desiderata Valley is always left out. For the most part its just....another town, that doesnt change things up enough. Would have been better as a sub-hood to me, as a little forgotten corner of Pleasantview where everyone living there is attuned to their hobbies.
Belladonna Cove is great, the town just feels so much more alive than the others, due to great world building. There are visible high class areas and slummy regions, even a section of the park thats clearly where all the downtrodden gather. The only thing I dont like is the careless building of its graveyard, I dont think its possible to ever see its intended grave placement. I have also never really seen the regular homes of this neighbourhood, for me its all about the apartments.
__________________________
Four Corners, the main neighbourhood of Life Stories, is rather small, but due to this, you quickly get everyone in town knowing each other, and thanks to the story mode, you also really feel like you 'know' most of the residents. I want to get them all into proper Sims 2 with the townies intact one day. I like this little town enough that ive built the whole lot inside Sims 3. The homes are all really colourful too, they really pop out in comparison to Pleasantview homes.
Four Corners has a Freeplay alt which counts as its own neighbourhood; in this alternate reality version, Mickey, Agora, Dylan and Sharon are all gone, thier homes mysteriously intact and still furnished and 'lived in', and Riley, the main character, starts off in the family bin with a different lifetime wish and in deep red aspiration. I always percieve this version of the neighbourhood as a darker timeline when Dylan and Agora's plan works, and people die as a result. It at least explains why Riley wants to be a cop now, and starts off depressed. I always resurrect Bailey in the Fortuna family in this version, as theres no reason he should be dead in BOTH neighbourhoods. Add a little positivity to the darker version of Four Corners, right?
Bitville is great, its small like four corners but has so much going on for a neighbourhood its size; even the neighbourhood view looks so packed. Its supposed to be a haven for nerds and tech enthusiasts, if it were remade today it'd be very modern I think. The only thing I dont like is that the premades didnt get the same amount of care that Four Corners got; several sims have no bios or even family bios, and everyone but the main character and his eventual girlfriend starts off unemployed and with no skills. SimPE has to fix this in cases, like the old rich doctor, he needs to be edited to actually have his high paying doctor job.
Garden Heights is Dog City. Sims 2 Pets totally failed at the pets thing, by barely giving you any premade pets to showcase them, and generally not adding much to the game, you had to go out of your way to add the titular pets to your worlds. Garden Heights is all about the dogs, with dog shows, dog training parks, and most playables owning one. You meet all the residents except one during the story too, so your familiar with almost EVERYONE in town by the end. The design of the houses are also pretty neat, Garden Heights has its own 'character'
Mesa Flats is meant to be 'Cat City' to match Garden Heights, but really, theres not that many cats around. Given how independent cats are, its no surprise that the story here is more 'normal'. Mesa Flats is the second desert neighbourhood, but isnt anything at all like Strangetown. Its more like Lucky Palms really, and has a very artistic looking style to its homes. If this town was included in Sims 2 naturally without having to import it into the game, I think it would be many a player's favourite.
Arbor Falls is the final Sims 2 neighbourhood, and is a better attempt at Freeplay than Life Stories did; its a fullfledged neighbourhood, just like in Sims 2, with no story or goals, with a diverse cast of playables and their pets, and its own unique townies. Not many of the playables are 'notable', they are all largely just normal everyday folk, all but one of whom have pets. Its a unique looking town too, I feel it would be a sister town to Hidden Springs.
Clearly the best neighbourhood is the Tutorial though; a small selection of custom NPCs, and three seperate Tutorial Joes, two Tutorial Janes, and all the building space you could ask for, on a small island nation :D
___________
My vote still goes to Strangetown however. Too many good memories of the place, like my family of bigfoots that I made, each with a different aspiration, or the werewolf family, or the inventor that made 20+ Servos for the town before mysteriously dying, leaving a legacy all over town with a small servo workforce, some of whom were experimental occult models.
