There are many possible criteria in my opinion. From my viewpoint...
If you plan to buy both of them over time and play long lifespan for teens and older, you may buy high school first and then University. So you can let your same sim have experience with both packs.
But if you want to play the family with the benefit of a good salary. Better get University first. University helps your sim jump start to levels 6-8 of each career related to the degree (faculty) you choose after your sims graduate. Then you will buy High School Years for the children of them.
Comparing each pack from my personal experience.
- Pros
- Broader variety of gameplay. There are 2 universities with totally different vibes and types of activities (art or science), while High School has only one. *You can't make extra university or high school.
- Many things to do and replayable in different styles of gameplay.
- Dorm roommates have personalities! Each of them acts differently by both basic traits and roommate archetypes. They may have annoying quirks such as having parties at midnight, being grumpy and sad all the time, doing mischief, etc. But if it's chaotic you want, go for it!
- Britechester is a majestic and beautiful world. It's like Oxford or Euporean influence.
- Cons
- Even though the world environment is beautiful, the building is not. Also bad in functional. But you can download a better one of your choice from the gallery.
- As there are many functions in gameplay, there are many bugs too. Recently, there has been a bug with Uni club events. It may be trouble if you play university right now (like me)
High School Years
- Pros
- If you want to play teens more seriously, this pack has most of the things it should have. Teen (in recent trends) outfits and objects are available for you. In terms of clothes and objects quality, High School Years is better too. You can see it in the trailer.
- You can now see many more teens in the lot compared to the previous packs most of the spawned sims in the lot are adults (not even young adults)
- There is an amusement park in the world! Even though it's mostly for visual without function. You can use it for teenage storytelling or more fancy vacations.
- Cons
- The gameplay becomes repetitive after a few weeks. It's quite boring during teen sims to sit in the class because no special interaction. And there are some bugs and game-flow problems (but these cons are in every pack so you may not mind lol)
- Beware that special events like proms and graduation ceremonies are still quite buggy until now. Not such great as the trailer shows. Better to check the community reports when you face something that feels wrong.
Extra advice, these EPs are quite big and affect your sims. And sometimes the game mechanics make sims go wrong. But both of them aren't the "save file ruining" like some pack. If you are not the micro-management player. I believe that you will have fun in any pack of them.
You may think it easy like "What do you want to play first?"😄
