Your Island Living Rating

For what I want the pack for, vacationing, it is a full 10/10.

Gripes:

- With the way the Off the grid trait works now the old "Just make believe and use common sense" approach is much more viable.
- Cleaning up the island is a wasted opportunity, as it goes from idyllic to slightly more idyllic. Never once did I feel that the "polluted" neighborhood needed cleaning up, to the contrary, I have to actively dig for trash every day and even then half of the time it's just a decomposing fish. I had hoped for more distinct stages (both for the better and for the worse). The invasive species idea is neat. But from what I've seen so far they are not doing much invading, but seem to have forged a happy blended community with the local fish/frogs.
- No swimming skill, how come we have skills for each instrument, but everything sports related is summed up under Fitness?!

I'm having a blast , seriously. Played through a sim year-and-a-half, fully restored Mua Pel'am, earned loads of money fishing (40 types of fish, and not leaving the islands!) and collecting seashells/treasures, expanded/upgraded the starter house, became a mermaid, and just NOW started to venture outside Sulani.

I haven't even tried the new career yet, and only did one odd job, not even visited all places. The world is really gorgeous. It is a very relaxing place, very welcoming. Although, maybe the townies feel a bit TOO welcome....My house IS apparently THEIR house also :p

I do miss reggae music, and perhaps a new dance for the island radio station. It just doesn't look right with the regular dancing to that music. There are some other small hic-ups too, that makes me not give it a solid 10.

I can't rate it yet as I haven't got it, but I came to read this thread to decide whether I'll get it or not, and based on what I've read, that's a big yes. I'm off to buy it on line right now. Thanks for all the input/reviews/thoughts.

EDIT - Done. Woo hoo, It's coming!

"EnkiSchmidt;c-17130519" wrote:
For what I want the pack for, vacationing, it is a full 10/10.

Gripes:

- With the way the Off the grid trait works now the old "Just make believe and use common sense" approach is much more viable.
- Cleaning up the island is a wasted opportunity, as it goes from idyllic to slightly more idyllic. Never once did I feel that the "polluted" neighborhood needed cleaning up, to the contrary, I have to actively dig for trash every day and even then half of the time it's just a decomposing fish. I had hoped for more distinct stages (both for the better and for the worse). The invasive species idea is neat. But from what I've seen so far they are not doing much invading, but seem to have forged a happy blended community with the local fish/frogs.
- No swimming skill, how come we have skills for each instrument, but everything sports related is summed up under Fitness?!

I TOTALLY wanted the island to look really bad until my sim cleaned it up. I wanted dark nasty algae in the water and the coral to look pale and dying, dead fish on the shore from pollution, etc

I give a 8 because it misses some features I would have loved to see like Surfing or watching your sim underwater scuba diving. The new swim styles, the dolphin interactions, the kiss in water and the heavenly scenery make it up for it however. Overall, it's a great EP. Hopefully surfing will be added in a free update later on.

7. Sulani is beautiful and one of my favorite worlds so far! The cas is great and build/buy is quite nice. I love finally being able to go to the beach and swim in the sea, sailing, snorkeling or sunbathing. Mermaids are nice. I like the new stilt foundation. I like the ecological aspect they added. I like the new fish, plants and shellfish.


Now for the constructive criticism :
Mermaids are nice, I’ll admit I like them and yet I wasn’t really interested in them at first. But, I feel like something’s missing to them. They’re basically regular sims with a tail and the ability to summon storms or nice weather. Or and that need to go in the water regularly. They can’t even dive. What’s the point of mermaids if you can’t dive with them ?

Speaking of Diving, I’m disappointed that it’s a rabbit hole. I wanted to go under the sea. Also that could have worked with the new conservationist career, divers could pick up trash, save a dolphin or a turtle tangled in a fishing net for instance.

Where is the kitchen Island counter ?

It seems there is no secret lot, by What they said during the live stream I understood it is just a mermaid spawner.

I haven’t tried the lifegard career but from what I read it’s a rabbit hole too.

Went with an 8 purely because I miss hotel management and I wish we had more land activities or pool stuff

They reused a lot of old content. A lot of recipes are old. Even the coconut cake is the same mesh as the white cake. They reused the fire dance from GT and they’ve now used the same water animation for toddlers 3 times. Diving is a rabbit hole. Life guard is a rabbit hole. The mermaids are just sims with fins. They don’t do anything special other than the songs and calling dolphins. Honestly, this won’t be a pack I use. Jungle Advwnture had more game play imo. This should have been a game pack and I wouldn’t have been as disappointed. It’s not worth the expansion price tag imo.

I can not vote yet, have not bought the pack, but I will, we all will, it what simmers do.

I do not have the pack yet. But I do have the Lounge chair they added to the base game, so I will just comment on the lounge chair.
I was very happy to get the lounge chair, we have been wanting them for so long. :)

I liked the look a lot even without cushions, You can make it so many colors and I was happy to put them around the pool. :)
Then I tested them well yes everyone has that same simple lounge not cute, but it will do, this is the Sims and of course, they do not allow ladies to sit pretty ever. I feel they could care less about changing our sits or the lounge animations.

Sure I would love to see us move a bit while lounging so that our sims would look more realistic, but oh no we could have got hit over the head and it would not look any different, then if your sleep your head just go to one side. Ok whatever, That's is just what we will have. I did not like the lack of lounge chair animations one bit. They can drink if they bring the drink, also they can have a drink from inventory, that's a plus. So if they add chat it would be perfect.

Yay, you can sit on the side. read a book and chat, no big deal we had that already.

What is this all about? What upset me was You can not have a conversation or move at all while lounging, not that's just the worst, why do they do this type thing to us over and over we want to communicate with our families while lounging, or maybe take a drink. We should be able to move our head we are not dead, look at the person in the lounge chair next to us and chat.

To me, they do this to us because they can.
This is such a little thing but they rather we have to look and behave like a corpse while we are lounging, Thanks for that EA. :s

well at least we finally got the lounge chair we should all be grateful of course like I said as furniture goes I like them.

This is, honestly, my third favorite pack (#1 being Cats & Dogs, and #2 being Seasons). I just love the new world of Sulani. There are so many gorgeous hairstyles and outfits in CAS. There are lots more activities to do. Being able to build over water is really fun as well. My all-time favorite part of this pack is the mermaids. They are amazing. I love them so much and they make things more interesting and fun. I still haven't explored everything from this pack. I am still working on the Conservationist career and restoring Mua Pel'am.

I have two problems with this pack:
#1 Every activity like swimming, snorkeling, and aqua-jetting all build fitness skill. There is no separate snorkeling skill or even freediving skill. I was kind of hoping that they would be more separated. If you have mermaids, your fitness skill will increase quickly.

#2 When you free dive, you don't get to see them underwater. All you see is them diving and then they come back up to the surface. I was really hoping that there would be some underwater section like in The Sims 3, but I totally get why they didn't do this. It probably would have made it so you needed a lot of computer power to run this pack.