Honestly....(Strangerville Review)
(I'll try to keep this as spoiler free as possible)
So, honestly....I finished it in maybe 3 hours maybe less? And it was my first ever gameplay of it, I didn't see spoilers at all and I did not knew anything regarding it's obvious story. It's not very good.
-The Story
The story is very obvious and cliché, I've seen it a hundred times in movies and comics so I knew what I was getting into from the start. There's not a lot of gameplay surrounding the story itself a side from collecting some things, talking to NPC's (here you may get some repetitive messages), and building up relationships. The story plays very similarly to an active career but it feels much more linear. The quests aren't hard and there's plenty of tips so I couldn't possibly get stuck anywhere. The "strange" weather never affected my sim in any way it's just fx, and the lab is shorter than what I thought but decor objects on it do give it a pretty nice secret lab feel. The last stance of the story is the only part I felt there was some more gameplay evolved with the health bars and commands but nothing was explained to me, when I actually needed explaining. Eventually I understood that I could actually control my companion sims with commands and what each did. The health bar is very similar to the detective career questioning table.
There's not a lot of unique/new animations in the story at all and for some reason
Overall, the story to me isn't worth it and there's not much replayability to it as well. The RPG style does not work with TS4's limitations, nor the franchise I would say unless it's a more specific spin off with a bigger story, dedicated system and direction. There are some options for people who don't want the weirdness but I feel like you have to play the whole story if you really want none at all, otherwise you will see occasional possessed sims but nothing too intrusive.
-The World
The world is great but they clearly were super lazy making it's lots, more than usual. The library is clearly missing a potted plant in the front (it has three potted planets on all sides but one):
https://i.imgur.com/UEu8bRE.png
One of the houses is a Willow Creek house copied over, but they changed the trims and columns for the ones that come with the pack, the houses are pretty spare inside, even the community lots, and the outsides aren't as detailed or as pleasant to look at as some of the builds in other packs. The lots have some very obvious flaws that a mediocre builder would not commit. It's as if they were made by someone who has been playing TS4 for 1 week, instead of looking like official maxis lots. It's just really jarring, and I almost feel obligated to demolish and build anew, I know for some people this might not be a problem but it just comes off as really lazy. I used to prefer the official Maxis lots but in this case? No.
-CAS/Build Buy
The CAS and Buy mode are nice. I'm just really disappointed laptops don't close at all and most of the buy mode is decor.
-Gameplay
Not a lot of new gameplay to go around, or any that you'd use outside of this pack. There are no new skills, the fighting dummy just builds fitness. It has very nice animations but I wish there was an actual fighting/kung fu skill. And very few gameplay objects, there's perhaps two, the fighting dummy and the surveillance table.
I'm also really disappointed with the paranoid trait which doesn't do anything! The tense moodlet that it gives is just +1 and it's easily overwritten by the decor moodlets, what a sham.... There's a new interaction about changing passwords with this trait but it doesn't do anything....?! It's really confusing, and it's not even an autonomous interaction and as far as I've seen this trait doesn't add any new idle animations either very disappointing. I don't know why they keep on adding useless traits to this game that don't actually give unique personalities. It's a complete sham, sims with this trait don't even get tense when not in a basement. They get happy in one though but it's just another +1 happy moodlet, I don't even get the point really.
-Military Career
I only got to level 3 so I haven't found much about it, but it looks fun so far. There's some cool outfits, unique interactions and cool objects that come with it, there's even a medal display case which I like. It's very fitness based in the start and the tasks can get repetitive but that's like every other WFH career.
Also, the welcome wagon in this town is straight up scripted and I found it very odd that throughout the whole story I have only seen the two secret agents once, what was even the point?
Overall, I say this is probably the worst GP, when compared to the others, although it has one of the nicests worlds.
So, honestly....I finished it in maybe 3 hours maybe less? And it was my first ever gameplay of it, I didn't see spoilers at all and I did not knew anything regarding it's obvious story. It's not very good.
-The Story
The story is very obvious and cliché, I've seen it a hundred times in movies and comics so I knew what I was getting into from the start. There's not a lot of gameplay surrounding the story itself a side from collecting some things, talking to NPC's (here you may get some repetitive messages), and building up relationships. The story plays very similarly to an active career but it feels much more linear. The quests aren't hard and there's plenty of tips so I couldn't possibly get stuck anywhere. The "strange" weather never affected my sim in any way it's just fx, and the lab is shorter than what I thought but decor objects on it do give it a pretty nice secret lab feel. The last stance of the story is the only part I felt there was some more gameplay evolved with the health bars and commands but nothing was explained to me, when I actually needed explaining. Eventually I understood that I could actually control my companion sims with commands and what each did. The health bar is very similar to the detective career questioning table.
There's not a lot of unique/new animations in the story at all and for some reason
Spoiler
but it's cool that Maxis didn't bother to animate proper vaccine shots and has sims throwing glasses of water at sim's faces as vaccines it's very jarring
Spoiler
plant vines will actually invade your house at some point, like coming out of the shower or toiler
Overall, the story to me isn't worth it and there's not much replayability to it as well. The RPG style does not work with TS4's limitations, nor the franchise I would say unless it's a more specific spin off with a bigger story, dedicated system and direction. There are some options for people who don't want the weirdness but I feel like you have to play the whole story if you really want none at all, otherwise you will see occasional possessed sims but nothing too intrusive.
-The World
The world is great but they clearly were super lazy making it's lots, more than usual. The library is clearly missing a potted plant in the front (it has three potted planets on all sides but one):
https://i.imgur.com/UEu8bRE.png
One of the houses is a Willow Creek house copied over, but they changed the trims and columns for the ones that come with the pack, the houses are pretty spare inside, even the community lots, and the outsides aren't as detailed or as pleasant to look at as some of the builds in other packs. The lots have some very obvious flaws that a mediocre builder would not commit. It's as if they were made by someone who has been playing TS4 for 1 week, instead of looking like official maxis lots. It's just really jarring, and I almost feel obligated to demolish and build anew, I know for some people this might not be a problem but it just comes off as really lazy. I used to prefer the official Maxis lots but in this case? No.
-CAS/Build Buy
The CAS and Buy mode are nice. I'm just really disappointed laptops don't close at all and most of the buy mode is decor.
-Gameplay
Not a lot of new gameplay to go around, or any that you'd use outside of this pack. There are no new skills, the fighting dummy just builds fitness. It has very nice animations but I wish there was an actual fighting/kung fu skill. And very few gameplay objects, there's perhaps two, the fighting dummy and the surveillance table.
I'm also really disappointed with the paranoid trait which doesn't do anything! The tense moodlet that it gives is just +1 and it's easily overwritten by the decor moodlets, what a sham.... There's a new interaction about changing passwords with this trait but it doesn't do anything....?! It's really confusing, and it's not even an autonomous interaction and as far as I've seen this trait doesn't add any new idle animations either very disappointing. I don't know why they keep on adding useless traits to this game that don't actually give unique personalities. It's a complete sham, sims with this trait don't even get tense when not in a basement. They get happy in one though but it's just another +1 happy moodlet, I don't even get the point really.
-Military Career
I only got to level 3 so I haven't found much about it, but it looks fun so far. There's some cool outfits, unique interactions and cool objects that come with it, there's even a medal display case which I like. It's very fitness based in the start and the tasks can get repetitive but that's like every other WFH career.
Also, the welcome wagon in this town is straight up scripted and I found it very odd that throughout the whole story I have only seen the two secret agents once, what was even the point?
Overall, I say this is probably the worst GP, when compared to the others, although it has one of the nicests worlds.
