The fact you prefer one iteration doesn’t mean the others have less quality. It means they apparently paid more attention to one aspect you happen to value most. In Sims 2 that’s personalities I think. But for me open world and CASt are so important to really feel submerged, that the versions without that fail to really pull me in the way Sims 3 does. On top of that the somewhat more neutral sims in 3 are perfect for me, because I don’t really like it when the game dictates too much what’s going on in my head while playing. The sims in 3 give me room to play with that and at the same time they are expressive enough to not make them feel robotic and stiff (for me, I can fully understand why they do to others because of the pauses in between animations). Which probably is the reason why it’s sims in 4 that comes across robotic to me, because of their autonomous behaviours that feel programmed and strange to me (because it’s auras that cause them, not other sims or other logical reasons)(or just because they can, like hugging anyone on two legs).
