High School Years - yes or no?

I never planned to use most of the High school pack. I bought it after watching a werewolf teen video on youtube, and also for the build items. I ended out following a teen to school, out of curiosity, and I am glad that I did. I still have not had interest to fully explore the game play and the world, but it has become a critical supplement to my other worlds. It was the last expansion/game pack that I purchased, but it would be one of the first I'd purchase if I had to start over again. I highly recommend it, for people that can afford it.

Honestly, my favorite aspect of the pack is having access to my teens throughout the day. Active high school only has 2 hours of classes out of a 7-hour school day. So for a player who tends to focus on their teen sims a lot, it's great to be able to go with them to high school (which we can custom-build like crazy) and, during those 5 hours they're not in class, work on relationships or skills or generally just develop them as characters. Graduating early is a nice option for similar reasons. Being able to go to university as a teen provides a nice balance for the amount of lifespan that university can take up.

The pack provides many more opportunities for teen sims to meet other teens too, whether at school or a boba tea shop or prom.

Rabbithole school is still available when desired.

The premades are cool.

My real-life human teen loves the build/buy. And the boba.

A lot of the other stuff that came with the pack - Social Bunny, Trendi, the pier (what's a beach-style pier doing in an old mining town anyway?!), the whole influencer thing, pillow fights confined to one bed object - got old really fast.

Edit: For your question about bugs, you should see the current list of HSY bugs here.
https://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/READ-FIRST-Compiled-list-of-reported-Issues/m-p/11673025#M223852
The truly objectionable ones (like adult-child romance bars developing) have been fixed.
People randomly wandering into my house to demand to be best friends or go to prom is something I find a little annoying, and is not fixed yet.
If the high school graduation event were important to me, I'd be annoyed, because it often just doesn't happen, and even the designed timing is odd-- it's like the first or second Sunday after the student ages up to young adult, which could easily be after the sim is already married with kids.

I love the concept of the high school and was excited for it.

It’s just not as engaging. I use the build stuff frequently but since Cassandra Goth got expelled during a scanario I just haven’t played it again. If there’s a teen in the household I just select ‘send alone’.

I mean...

On sale, I guess it's worth it, the pack does not have any larger bugs as far as I know. If you like to make outfits with trendi, use the gen z inspired clothing and also want more rabbit holes for your teens (jobs and after school activities) and maybe you would like to build some rooms for your teen sims and maybe build high schools then it's worth it.

But the actual high school gameplay is very simplified and repetitive and it doesn't help that prom is happening every week. The social bunny app is just posting the same messages over and over as well.

I like playing around at the Thrift tea store. The teens create fun fashions and sell them. Like a mini entrepreneur game.

The pack is at better then the snooze fest of university. I think the team listened to us.

I haven’t experienced any bugs. Like most packs, I’ve played a few times and then got bored and went back to my regular play style.

I think it’s worth it on the current sale.

For the Beautiful Tartosa world, CAS, Build Modes & Objects; Yes. :p For the Wedding Gameplay; No. :'(

High School Years adds some very interesting social aspects to game play, but it also has some fairly serious bugs which have yet to be addressed. To avoid some serious frustration, I would hold off on High School Years until some of those problems have made it into the laundry bin.

The best thing I can say about it is it fleshes out teens.
Before my teens would go to school, come home and do homework and maybe work on skill points. Their only free time was the weekends.
Now I can choose to spend more time with them during the week and often they go hang out at the Boba Tea shop after school and other teens show up there too.

There are a bunch of unfortunate game play decisions for high school though and I had to use mods to make it better.
My favorite is a mod that allows me to decided what other teens show up at high school instead of generic townies.

Thanks to everyone who gave your opinion. I did end up getting it, so hopefully I will enjoy it.

"CK213;c-18221865" wrote:
My favorite is a mod that allows me to decided what other teens show up at high school instead of generic townies.

The way the game chooses which other students show up at Copperdale High with your played sim is actually an interesting design decision, BUT it could have been explained a lot better to make it less confusing to players. It took me a fair bit of time to figure out how this works, and I'm someone who will not use mods or custom content of any kind. (It lets me quickly get past the inevitable "try uninstalling your mods" response when I discuss game problems.)

When choosing which sims to bring onto the lot with your played sim, in large part the game looks for other sims which your active one holds strong sentiments and relationships with. What clued me in on this was the experience of a played sim named Cassie, and the fact that her ex-boyfriend and current boyfriend nearly always show up to school with her. Griffin (the ex, who turned out to be Mean and Evil, and was quickly dumped) seems to hold some strong and virtually permanent sentiments towards her as a result of being dumped. Stephen, her boyfriend, very consistently holds different very positive sentiments toward her. That got me curious, and I started looking at which other students were showing up more or less constantly, and it turned out all of them hold one or more sentiments toward her. Those she doesn't interact with much seem to get frequently rotated in and out of attendance.

Basically, the game is trying to populate the campus with both your best friends and worst enemies, and then just adds in some random teenagers from different households to fill out the rest, as background characters.

There are a couple other factors involved as well, but this seems to be the strongest influence.