Your Growing Together Rating!
It is time yet again for my favorite question: how would YOU rate Growing Together? Please remember, though, as always: this is supposed to be a helpful thread for those who are still on the fence...
Forum Discussion
So far I'm giving it a 7 out of 10.
I only downloaded it yesterday. But I played for a good 6 hours, myb a bit more. It took awhile to add mods back in, and I realized that I had forgotten to take some out that needed serious updating.
But once I got in, got situated, aged up the babies I populated the town with, and then went to my main family and made sure the relationships were all set; I was finally able to start exploring the pack.
While there was some really cute stuff:
Themed drinks at the baby shower if you hire a mixologist
New sentiments
Obviously all the baby stuff
Infants (Adorbs)
Potential cross pack growth and depth (haven't seen too much yet)
Milestones
There were some things that I'm not as thrilled about when you actually start playing:
1.)Since they didn't update the family tree and the way sims recognize those relatives, this new family dynamics system only makes that even more apparent. And while it's a really nice thing to have, there's issues:
Step-relationships literally DO NOT COUNT for family dynamics. It's as if every step-parent literally went "Eff them kids" Household member only. And the kids feel the same. They don't show up in the family profile at all either.
And we already didn't have In-laws recognized on the family tree reliably, definitely not in the Sims profile. But now it's really highlighted bc they don't even show up in the family profile.
2.) I'm not going into the friendship bracelets thing I already have feelings about it and the bffs system in this game.
3.) Back to family dynamics you can't edit them for people in your family (the ones actually recognized as such) who aren't in your household. Like if you are in the Sims profile there's no drop-down or anything for a sim you know, that you don't have a dynamic with yet. You just have to wait for a pop-up.
4.) Likewise there doesn't seem to be a way to cheat Milestones for infants they you aren't actively playing. I couldn't find the promised Quirk cheats either, but they might be around.
5.) Pie-menu reorganization will just take getting used to and that's fine. I will warn you, that when you pick likes and dislikes, for your sim&another, it limits the things you can talk about. I thought it would just be that the things they liked would have higher success or be highlighted, and things they didn't feel either way about would still be there. And maybe you could see the disliked, idk.
But actually you'll click certain sims and only be able to talk to them about a few topics. My one Sim only had about 4 topics to talk to their father about. Likely the only 4 they had in common. Which was hard because we were at the baby shower and none of those interaction where on the menu, in those categories. So I had to cheat everything, because no one was "Gushing about baby."
All in all it's cute. It definitely adds to the game. And I will probably play until my infant is a child before giving them another baby. I have a half finished treehouse in the backyard, bc I was so busy with family reunion, baby shower, and then she went into labor helping her wife finish building it. I want to see the full infant experience, and new toddler stuff, before trying again with more babies.
But if you haven't gotten it yet, I'd say keep in mind that there are definitely things they could've done better. Things they could've worked on. Old systems that could've been changed or improved that would've made what we just got blend so seamlessly. So you might have moments of "Oh why is this like this, that's not great." But I'm still glad I got it, because I wanted Infants, and having seen the let's plays of people who played with infants without Growing Together, I gotta say, it looks boring.
I only downloaded it yesterday. But I played for a good 6 hours, myb a bit more. It took awhile to add mods back in, and I realized that I had forgotten to take some out that needed serious updating.
But once I got in, got situated, aged up the babies I populated the town with, and then went to my main family and made sure the relationships were all set; I was finally able to start exploring the pack.
While there was some really cute stuff:
Themed drinks at the baby shower if you hire a mixologist
New sentiments
Obviously all the baby stuff
Infants (Adorbs)
Potential cross pack growth and depth (haven't seen too much yet)
Milestones
There were some things that I'm not as thrilled about when you actually start playing:
1.)Since they didn't update the family tree and the way sims recognize those relatives, this new family dynamics system only makes that even more apparent. And while it's a really nice thing to have, there's issues:
Step-relationships literally DO NOT COUNT for family dynamics. It's as if every step-parent literally went "Eff them kids" Household member only. And the kids feel the same. They don't show up in the family profile at all either.
And we already didn't have In-laws recognized on the family tree reliably, definitely not in the Sims profile. But now it's really highlighted bc they don't even show up in the family profile.
2.) I'm not going into the friendship bracelets thing I already have feelings about it and the bffs system in this game.
3.) Back to family dynamics you can't edit them for people in your family (the ones actually recognized as such) who aren't in your household. Like if you are in the Sims profile there's no drop-down or anything for a sim you know, that you don't have a dynamic with yet. You just have to wait for a pop-up.
4.) Likewise there doesn't seem to be a way to cheat Milestones for infants they you aren't actively playing. I couldn't find the promised Quirk cheats either, but they might be around.
5.) Pie-menu reorganization will just take getting used to and that's fine. I will warn you, that when you pick likes and dislikes, for your sim&another, it limits the things you can talk about. I thought it would just be that the things they liked would have higher success or be highlighted, and things they didn't feel either way about would still be there. And maybe you could see the disliked, idk.
But actually you'll click certain sims and only be able to talk to them about a few topics. My one Sim only had about 4 topics to talk to their father about. Likely the only 4 they had in common. Which was hard because we were at the baby shower and none of those interaction where on the menu, in those categories. So I had to cheat everything, because no one was "Gushing about baby."
All in all it's cute. It definitely adds to the game. And I will probably play until my infant is a child before giving them another baby. I have a half finished treehouse in the backyard, bc I was so busy with family reunion, baby shower, and then she went into labor helping her wife finish building it. I want to see the full infant experience, and new toddler stuff, before trying again with more babies.
But if you haven't gotten it yet, I'd say keep in mind that there are definitely things they could've done better. Things they could've worked on. Old systems that could've been changed or improved that would've made what we just got blend so seamlessly. So you might have moments of "Oh why is this like this, that's not great." But I'm still glad I got it, because I wanted Infants, and having seen the let's plays of people who played with infants without Growing Together, I gotta say, it looks boring.
