Sims 4 is one of the emptiest sim games so far. The game feels half finished, the packs all feel half done. There are wonderful graphics and an awesome CAS but so far the game is pretty flat. I do love the building system which keeps me entertained more than anything else but the lack of innovation and new ideas within build mode goes hand in hand with the lack of innovation and new ideas amongst the rest of the game. In short, there's hardly anything 'new' in this game aside from clubs. Previous games have the same things and did it better. I can't help but shake my head a bit at when anyone says we should be grateful for any packs. Why, when they don't correlate to each other and hardly add anything to gameplay? I've never had an expansion pack feel so empty! Plus as another simmer said, the packs are all stand alone and don't carry on into other ones.
For a sequel, this game feels like the franchise has gone backwards. More so do to with the lack of options almost everywhere! Whilst I admit the clothing, hair and general CAS choices are really good in this one, outside of CAS the options are very few. Few places to build lots, few build mode options, few buy mode options, few careers, few aspirations -oh gosh don't get me started on the aspirations, I literally put anything and then proceed to ignore it - and few traits that have little to no impact on your sim. I spend a lot of time in CAS and I create this whole sim and personality, the moment I zoom out and see them start moving I instantly know they are exactly the same as every other sim I have made. Any difference is because of my own imagination and stories I hold on to. The emotions and watered-down traits stop sims from having any individuality. You leave your sims alone for a bit (which by the way they will be PERFECTLY FINE without you) and they go on to do repeated actions that every sim does whether it's to do with their personality or not. Remember in TS3 and you could train your sim to do more of a certain behaviour and less of another one? That seems gone now.
The (awful) emotion system that they claimed would make our sims so "realistic" actually turned them into predictable caricatures. I feel like I could get more emotion and insight into thoughts/feelings with the moodlets in TS3 than I can in TS4. Now the moodlets do nothing but add on emotional buffs I tend to cheat to remove. Can they please not always feel happy?! I love when they are just 'fine'. And such a lack of negative emotions! I actually really enjoyed the "very sad" emotion state my sim was in after her husband died, I commend them on the detail of that emotion, though only half the family got that and the rest were non responsive to their father's death even when seeing it right there. Also, it was easy to get them out of the mood and quickly into inspired or something (I really loathe 'inspired' the most). I'd be happier if they did away with emotions.
I'll leave my post here for today. I do enjoy the game in some aspects, I'm just disappointed because they could be doing so much more!
