Strangerville
+ Nice new world, great if you want a small-town feel that's still unique
+ Pretty nice, quaint BB/CAS
+ The Military career
+ You can control how much weirdness there is to the town once you beat the story.
+ George Cahill and his plane house.
- The "story" is nonexistent and basically amounts to a bunch of annoying fetch quests, rather than any meaningful gameplay
- No variation in the story, no replay value.
- Not that you'd want to play it again, because the whole experience is tedious and horrible
- If you don't like the strange, you'll have to finish its "story" before you can change it.
- Meta: It was Grant's pet project, many were against it, and it was made as a quick cash-grab because EA wasn't doing well and needed the money
- No hatchable dragons
- It sucks and I hate it
- Honestly, if you want a game pack with a narrative or quest, go for Jungle Adventure. It's superior to StrangerVille in like every way. It's one of the best Sims 4 packs, honestly
Realm of Magic
+ Spellcasters have a lot to play with - they can be evil, good, neutral, have various brooms and wands, practice different types of magic, etc. It's an occult storytellers dream.
+ This included unique eyes and ears (unless they only work if you also have Vampires? Idk), which expands your options even more.
+ The Spellcaster genetic traits are neat
+ It's fun to practice magic and see your spellcasters grow over time.
+ There are a few ways to creatively abuse the spells, like burning down sims' houses, committing insurance fraud and running a bakery without ever having to cook
+- It's better than Sims 2 and 3's takes on spellcasters, but this pack is far, faaaar behind Sims 1's Makin' Magic
+- You can duel sims, which is fun. THe problem is that they're all basically the same over and over again, and you don't have much way in controlling the outcome.
+- The sims have much more effort put into them, compared to all other Sims 4 not named Vlad. But that's not saying much. Also, they're ugly as sin. Absolutely hideous.
+- The Magic Realm is pretty and a nice idea. But it's way too small and there's nothing to do there. Aside from visiting it being a requirement for one of the aspirations, there's no reason to visit it. It's such a waste of a good concept
+_ Some of the spells are very handy and fun.But overall, spells are mostly glorified cheats or recycled content, with very few quirky and fun spells
- Glimmerbrook is dull and the houses are ugly. Like, some of the worst houses EA has ever done.
- The BB is decent, if niche. The problem is that there's not a lot in there, so you can't really make many houses with these. Very underdeveloped.
- The CAS is meh, you can tell that they sacrificed unique flavor for the sake of punk/normal clothes to appease the non-occult fans. Seriously, no witch hats? None at all?
- No hatchable dragons
- The familiars were terribly executed - they're glorified drones that make comments sometimes. They prevent you from dying of magical overload, but magical overload is so difficult to achieve that you have to actively work towards achieving it in the first place
- Potions are underwhelming, and you can't even make a good potion shop because they sell for almost nothing and need to be constantly remade. Seriously, most potion ingredients cost more than the potions themselves
- Overall, it should have been an expansion pack, because it couldn't reach its full potential in a game pack. It's decent or even good, but it could have been amazing
