I have to give this a 4/10 at the most. Still unsure whether 3 or 4 in reality.
Boy where to start. I'm feeling very tired so I don't really have the energy to go into completely full detail. But basically as someone who's played the Sims since the first game, this is by far the worst game in the main series. I was thinking back last night to the spin off games and how good some of them were, and heck, even the Sims Urbz for the Gameboy Advance was far, far better than this game. But yeah here are the main reasons:
The game does not work at a fundamental level. Very badly programmed. Bugs everywhere, most things don't work as supposed to (eg retail, restaurants, sims taking all day to eat out, traits having virtually no effect on personality due to emotions and moodlets, sims not reacting to things in the right way etc). Many things have not been balanced properly and are either one extreme or another, for example vampires constantly breaking into houses to the point where the devs had to make it stop happening nearly altogether. pets are over the top in terms of fears of objects, running away constantly. Things like that should happen once in a blue moon, not all the time as it has happened to some players. They can't seem to get the balance right. When they do try to resolve something that's too extreme, they take it too far the other way so that it almost never ever happens. Not sure whether this is incompetence, a bad game engine or limited resources but it's not acceptable. The game as a whole feels broken to the core and has made it virtually unplayable to me.
Lacklustre content. When I initially bought the Sims 4, I was disappointed but gave it a chance because I naively assumed that we'd get awesome expansion packs like with the other games and it would eventually feel like a full, fleshed out game. This still hasn't happened. And what's worse they're releasing one EP a year in a game that's already starved for content. The quality of the EPs is not acceptable to me. Not one has felt like a full expansion, with corners cut at every turn and new features bugging out. Pets have been downgraded so much it genuinely makes me angry. No buildable appts in City Living. We've been spammed with stuff pack after stuff pack that feel like minimum effort has been put in. Objects feel very disjointed and mismatched, there's not enough objects to fill out each theme etc. Cool kitchen stuff we got barely anything, with an ice cream maker as the pack's USP gimmick. The Sims 2 version of this pack had kitchens AND bathrooms, with whole, complete sets of furniture for both rooms in several styles. We seem to just have modern style in the Sims 4 and that's about it. Some of the gamepacks have been good but it's just not enough. We also haven't seen many genuinely new ideas either. Older games had several new packs and some were really imaginative (makin magic for example). Out of all the Sims 2 EPs, 5 out of 8 were totally new ideas. So far it's just been Get Together with a new feature (clubs), but even then that's mixed in with the nightlife theme so it's not like the whole pack is a new thing. I also worry with just one EP coming every year, they're not going to have enough time to come up with something new once they've done the themes that everyone wants (some of which should've been in the base game. The Sims 2 added some stuff from Sims 1 EPs in the base game after all, such as community lots).
Restrictions. I'm sick of having options to do whatever we want taken away. One of the worst restrictions for me is the fact that neighbourhoods are fixed and we can't add or remove lots. It's so so frustrating! I don't feel like I have the freedom to just create whatever community lot idea that comes into my head, or house, because I have to worry about space and can't just keep building to my hearts content. We have a checklist for community lots, we can't just create whatever pops into our heads. No buildable appts. No lakes. No terrain tools.
Cutting corners and lack of features. This is one that really irritates me. They've missed out so many little details that used to make the other games feel full. No burglars, fire fighters, repoman, paper boy/girl, police officers, social worker etc. And there were other NPCs added later in EPs in previous games, such as the matchmaker that added a lot of fun and things to do. No cars either and that includes carpools, school bus, maid's car, helicopter, taxis etc. Older games had some pretty wacky transport that turned up (the hot air ballon for example in Sims 1 makin magic), but that just added to the experience. Corners have been cut with so many things and especially pets. You can't click on them to view their info, there's training equipment but no reward at the end of it (ie no competitions to put their skills to the test), the pets don't have a training skill but the sim does which makes absolutely no sense, as a dog with a sim with a maxed out skill will be great at the course, but with a sim with no skill it will act like its never used it before. The vet "career" is a combined reskin of the Doctor career in GTW and the restaurant retail system. I guarantee you they only added vets because it was easy to copy and paste. If they had to create it from scratch we almost certainly wouldn't have had it. They cut out small pets, the reason given to flesh out the cats and dogs. But they are not any more fleshed out than previous versions, so that to me signals cut corners with an drummed up excuse taped on.
The sims themselves feel very shallow indeed. Genuine personalities just aren't there, as the traits system gets overridden by the emotions. There's no memory system, no hobbies, no interests, no attraction system (ie turn ons and offs), no reputation, no talents, no body temperature, no influence meter, no aspiration perks, no unique individual lifetime aspirations (they're all identical based on which aspiration you choose), the whim system isn't fleshed out (no fears for example) and doesn't work according to the Sims's traits, just generic whims. There's no decent aspiration objects as rewards either. The sims just feel so awfully shallow as a result. I know most of the above were added in EPs but that's the problem with the Sims 4, nothing like this has been added in EPs. The Sims themselves have barely been changed or added to over time, with the exception of parenthood, vampires and maybe get together. What also annoys me is that they just don't react to things. If someone dies, they forget about it soon after, whereas in older games they would remember and get a though bubble and keep crying periodically. Sims don't react if their partner cheats in front of them. It just feels, so, poorly done.
Overall I just think that if it was going to improve as an overall experience I think it would've done so by now. It's already been 3.5 years now since the release, so I can't see it happening for that reason. I know some people will say I'm being biased because previous games had way more packs and we're only on EP number 4, but to be honest, by EP number 4 in the Sims 2, the game already felt like a well balanced, enjoyable, fleshed out experience. Same with the Sims 1 (I never bought any EPs for the Sims 3 so I can't really comment on that). I remember when I got the Sims 2 after it just came out, and I had so much fun just playing the base game.
But yeah, it really doesn't surprise me that the Sims 4 is such a downgrade compared to the previous games, after all I'm seeing a general pattern forming with most EA games as of late. Most of their franchises have seen terrible new games as of late (eg Mass Effect, Star Wars BF2, Sim City) which has resulted in an alienation of the fan base and cancellation of future games and/or closure of the studio. Therefore it really doesn't surprise me that the same has happened to the Sims. EA has clearly got to a point where making maximum profit is all that matters, and they'll rush out a game before its finished regardless, while investing as little as possible in the creation of the game.
