Horse Ranch Expansion Pack - An Honest Review

     In mid to late June, I was scrolling on social media, when a video came across my for you page that stopped me in my tracks. There is a potential leak of a Horse expansion pack for The Sims 4? I was immediately enthralled, growing up a horse person had  my inner child screaming. As it got closer to the release date, I got even more excited, I could not wait to see all of the horse customization available, all of the fun activities to do with the horses. So, when I finally downloaded the pack on July 22nd, I ended up playing for 5+ hours straight, customizing my horses and building my new home, playing around with the mechanics. After playing around with all of the mechanics, and running around on my horse for a while, I am sad to say that I was a bit disappointed.

     After the release on July 20th, before I bought the expansion 2 days later, I had seen quite a few videos on Instagram and TikTok, where the creators talked about the mechanics and the gameplay that they had seen so far. In these videos, they went over mechanics they liked, as well as some features the creators thought could be improved on. A bit of consensus was that there were quite a few things that could be worked on, and some things that could be added or removed entirely. So in this document I will go through what I personally believe could be improved upon in this expansion pack that would really make it worth the hype, the money, and the title of “expansion pack”.

     First up, we should go over the horses themselves, in Create a Sim, and in the live play mode. The only point I believe could be improved upon in Create a Sim would be to add a height slider for the horses. This would be a very good addition to the game, and adding an update to the game to add this could also include a height slider for any sim, something that has never been added to The Sims before, and would be an amazing addition to the game overall. Having a really tall Clydesdale horse for a Sim to ride and tower over everyone would be a very fun experience. In regards to the horse's behavior, I also noticed some things in live mode that could be updated as well. When you right click on a horse’s icon in live mode, it will lock the camera onto the horse, but it locks the camera onto the horse’s backside, and it would improve visually to have the camera lock onto the horse’s midsection, if not their head. There were also issues I have seen regarding the collision detection of the horses. Multiple times I have seen horses move through closed gates or fences, going through sims on their way to a location.

     Activities that the horse’s are able to perform seem a bit lackluster as well, only having one toy and two training objects just does not seem like enough to keep players interested in actually training and playing with the horses. Adding other toys could help keep horses occupied and help raise their stats more effectively. There aren’t many toys out there for horses in the real world, but additional toys to add could include a salt lick, some sort of hanging treat feeder, or a desensitizing toy that real trainers/riders use in real life, like a pool noodle. It would also introduce more interesting animations for the horses, like a horse playing with a hanging treat feeder could swing it around and have the toy bonk them on the head in a cute way, highlighting the goofy aspects of a horse’s personality, and a foal playing with the same toy could have a little hopping animation. More interactions between a sim and a horse could be added as well without having to add toy objects, such as an option to “frolic” with a horse, the sim and horse goofing around and chasing each other in a small 3x3 or 4x4 area, raising the bonding/friendship level between the two. 

     Horse training is, however, probably the most disappointing aspect to me, as I thought it would be a lot more interactable. Not only is the Equestrian Center not a clickable location on the world map to travel to, it is not an enterable facility. Letting the horse training at the center behave like the “get to work” expansion pack, where the horse and the sim can enter the center together and do pre-chosen tasks for the sim and horse to do to fulfill the training bar. This could also be an introduction and tutorial of some sort, for showing the player how to sequence jumps or tricks for the horse to do, which would be another addition to the game. The divide between English and Western style riding is already present in the game with the Barrel Racing and Jumping activities, as well as the clothing for sims and horses. The difference could be, again, expanded on by adding multiple types of jumps that a player could place on a track object, like how some objects in build mode can be linked together, noting a start point on the track object, and having a few types of track like dirt or something more professional. I personally would play for another 5 hours just rearranging jumps on a race track for my horse to run through, improving a time or score as the horse levels up. Maybe the Equestrian Center would have varying jumping tracks every couple of days for players to train on or get inspiration for their own tracks. Other improvements to horse training activities could include a lunge line, where the sim can stand in a specific spot and have the horse run around them on a lead line, practicing gaits and such. Special gaits could also be added for specific breeds that could have a chance to be passed down to a mixed breed horse, or taught to a different breed of horse through training.

     There are many aspects of the Horse Ranch expansion pack that make players happy, and are fun and playable, but the playability of this pack in the long run just does not seem to hold up, even after my 5 hours of playing it just felt like additional responsibilities for a sim to perform. The expansion pack as a whole seems to fall just slightly short of worth the money, and arguably short of worth the title of Expansion Pack. I will, nonetheless, continue to play with my digital horsies, and live my horse person dreams in the Sims.

     Thank you for reading, and I hope everybody has a great game!