I just returned from 2 weeks + away from my game and with restricted internet, so I just tried to catch up. Watched the 2 hrs play through vid and it was all very interesting and 2 hrs passed by like 15 minutes (except the poor sound on those gurus calling in). It seems like a fun pack, and with quite some in depth play, too. I live in the north, don't do any winter sports myself, but loves the seasons and the snow. So, seeing my sims doing some of those snowy activities feels tempting. I'm glad there is something for all ages.
I'm not convinced though, as at the moment I can't see how I'd fit this in with my rotational game. None of my sims could go on a vacation lasting more than max 2 days, and there's no way I could send all my families to this snowy location. There's too much other stuff going on in my game. This is not a complaint, and I could always play a year "outside the rotation", but it would mean taking forever moving all my households forward. I recently grabbed Vampires pack and none of my families have aged in a long time because of me stopping the rotation to explore a new pack.
I wish this pack had more for sims not traveling to Japan. I can obviously use some of the cultural items on their home lots, but that would not be enough for m to add the pack. I also worry a bit for the sentiments thing, which I obviously can't avoid. It looks very well thought out as a new memory system, and it will probably make my sims feel a bit smarter and more reflected, but if the system is added to every living sim in my game (is it running even for NPCs?) I'm afraid I'll experience some lag. Hopefully there is a restriction to how many sentiments a sim can have, not like in TS2(?) where the rather small everyday memories (hugged Lisa for the first time) added up to a never ending line of memories of very little value. If there can only be 4-5 sentiments at a given time, it might help though. We'll see :)
Still very excited to see more from this release, and I'll definitely keep an eye on reactions on release. The world looks nice, and I might get it eventually just for that :) Aaand - for taking my sims up to that high mountain top which looks awesome! Hopefully there can be rough weather up there, too - if having Seasons.
