Your Growing Together Rating!

So love the CAS, new personality traits, Objects & especially the cool new Treehouse. :p B)
As for the world Sequoia, Meh. :/

This is by far my favourite pack and I haven't gotten past infant stage yet! It fills in some of the toddler things from Sims 2 and Sims 3 that I felt were missing like teaching toddlers to talk and walk - I know we don't get that, but all the infant milestones mean that toddlers can already talk and walk so it doesn't feel like it is missing anymore. My infant has taken almost all of her long lifespan to get the milestones, so I feel sorry for those who play on normal and short, there's no way they would experience everything.

The family interactions are great, too, and something that has also been missing. My sim parents became "close" and earned the romantic trait due to their interactions. The self-discovery traits do come up often, perhaps too often, as I have to keep turning down the clumsy trait every time my athletic sim slips on the treadmill :D !

It is (for me) far less buggy than anything else I've downloaded in Sims 4. The only bug I've had is that sometimes the parents get stuck with the infant, but a quick reset has solved that every time.

The reason I couldn't give this a 10 is because I'm not a fan of the world. Everything is far too spread out and it's hard to work out what is real and what is fake (most is fake). My sim parents keep getting a want to use a bush for woohoo, but I haven't found one close enough to the house to use. I do like the library though, it has something for everyone, and I'm waiting until my kids are old enough before trying out the community centre.

I rate it 10. It got me back to the game. It's everything i have ever wanted.

I feel this pack will require some more playtime before I can fully form my opinion, but I'm loving it this far and it already feels essential. So I'm thinking of 9 or maybe even 10 despite that fact that I don't much like the world or CAS either. I just appreciate the gameplay systems and we have not been getting too many this kind. In my mind I keep comparing it to Get Together, the level it lets me manage sim behaviour.

10 as in very satisfied and makes me wonder what will be next in sims4

I ended up buying Growing Together, mainly for its compatibility system and kids related gameplay (I needed more interesting stuff to do for my group of wackadoodle 5th graders).

I haven't had a chance to deep dive into the pack yet, so I will come back and rate it at a later stage, however, I can already say with confidence that it is not a 10 for me, although I wouldn't go as low as a 5 either! My gut says "7" for now, which is pretty positive, right?

Let me share some of the pros and cons:

Not bad. So far an average of 8.5.

I still haven't updated or installed the pack but hopefully I'll get caught up in my game today.

I truly appreciate this pack - it has really added to the core of the game play. I love that Sims are now more fleshed out and the stories we can make with them. I appreciate that we finally have more of a challenge in the game. I understand that not all enjoy this type of game play but it is nice that those who enjoy a bit more of a challenge are finally included in the game. As a lover of the Sims 2 - I truly appreciate what this expansion adds to the game. It has made the game so much more enjoyable to play.

The only reason I gave the game a point off is because we once again get an itsy bitsy world.

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.

It's by far and away my favorite pack, and I especially adore the new compatibility system, milestones, plus varied likes and dislikes. Family dynamics also make a big difference in my gameplay, and I'm really loving the infants.

The reason I only gave it an 8 is that the world is my least favorite thus far. It's far too barren, doesn't have any unique housing that I usually associate with San Francisco, and is just plain boring and a waste of hard drive space. I would much rather they would have not added a world, and instead expanded on something else like elders, or even adding more buildable lots to existing worlds. If the world was better, it would have been a 10/10 pack for me.