I never played older versions, but just hearing from other people and watching LPs of TS3 on Youtube, you can really see that there are a lot of features that existed in earlier versions that they removed with very little reason to. Just to take your example, I don't think horses necessarily needed to be in C&D, but common small animals like hamsters, ferrets, rabbits, birds, lizards etc would have added so many more options. I see no reason why we had to sacrifice small pets for a glitchy vet inclusion.
That appears to be the issue with most of the EPs. They seem to not want to remake every pack exactly as it was in the previous iteration, so they take things out so they won't seem like carbon copies. But rarely is what they add as interesting as what was in the older version. I get that they didn't want another Island Paradise, but Island Living just comes across as dull with no option to have hotels or resorts.
