Ah, so they finally took my advice! The great huge thread of comparisons.

I'll make my post short: Sims 2 is my personal favorite, never played 3 or 4, will never do so, because all they've done is remaking a classic without improving it in all ways. With every iteration, it gets worse.

The Sims 2 - in my personal oppinion the best, and hands down one of the best games I have ever played, maybe even the best. Been playing it since 2005 and I still find out new things about the game that I had no idea about, these tiny details. Once you play the game you will after a while notice many tiny details this game has. Did you know that if the painter of a painting dies, the painting rises in value? Or that mean sims can cheat in chess? And that cats might sing along when somebody plays the piano! The latest thing I found out was that if a guest sim at a wedding makes a bladder accident, she will get a memory of '' embarassed myself at a wedding '' or something. It's however not the tiny details that makes the game good. The game has an overall humor and charm all over it, the sims reactions and feelings towards other sims feel real and genuine, and you also get the feeling that family members actually love each other! There are plenty of careers to play with funny chance cards, aliens is a really nice addition, the downtown really has a downtown feeling. It just feels like you can do so much with this game, it has yet to bore me actually.

The Sims 3 - the game with the open world, story progression, customization and where the pets are better than in the prequel. The game is a bit heavy and it was a mistake to not make it a 64-bit game, but the things this game offers that the prequel lacks in are really great and refreshing. The family members don't seem to like each other though, careers we're even more fun in The Sims 2 and for some this game has tons of bugs. The game however has a lot of great content and things that makes it great. I love that I can kick out a family member who has become adult and then check back to see who he married, what kids he got etc. The seasons in this game gets a whole new meaning with the open world, when winter and fall becomes a pleasure to the eye and spring and summer gets new interactions and things to do. The game is a little rough around the edges though

The Sims 1 - a game I did not grow up with, but I still admire the retro feeling it gives one. Love the charm and humor this game has, but dislike how hard it is to get friends, the fact that aging does not exist and that you have to work everyday! A game I admire a lot, but also not something I'm crazy about.

The Sims 4 - the result of EA's greed, something we already saw in The Sims 3 but becomes clearest here in The Sims 4. The game offers new stuff, but on the cost of old beloved stuff. Creating sims and downloading lots/houses is clearly the funniest in this game, but the new shiny interactions wears out fast and in the end you keep asking yourself what to do next in the game. It also becomes clear what a step back this is, with the lack of open world, free customization, toddlers, fireworkers, policemen, grocery stores, video games - I could go on all day. It was even said in the early trailer that the tragic clown and social bunny would make it in the game but '' things change '' like som Guru once said to an angry fan or something. The neighborhoods are very small and you run out of space quickly after playing for a while - eventually you'll have to delete other lots to place new ones. Also known as the project Olympus who was supposed to be an online game but was scrapped after the SimCity fiasco, hence the lack of toddlers and open world. The sims here are advertised as smarter sims, but in reality, a sim won't react if they see their significant other make out with someone else and a sim can easily just become flirty or inspired by taking a shower.

The Sims - Never played it. I wasn't into gaming when it came out, and it had already been replaced by Sims 2 by the time I got into gaming. I've thought about trying it, but haven't been able to get past how primitive it looks in screenshots. I also like to get in close to my sims, and every screenshot makes it look like it's got a fixed distance of "really far away isometric top-down view".

The Sims 2 - It was the first game I played of the series. There was just something so much fun about knowing nothing at all about sims, and jumping right into Sims 2. I had so much to learn, even took me awhile to figure out how to get food. As I added EPs, I just had more and more fun with it. I don't think I've enjoyed any sims game to date as much as I enjoyed TS2 back in the day.

The Sims 3 - Definitely the most ambitious of the series, to a fault. What I mean is it had some amazing ideas, namely open world and CASt, but they were executed poorly. Don't know if the coders were to blame or just that it was too ambitious for the hardware at the time, but TS3 was and still is, quite a resource hog. I initially was very disappointed with TS3. I had a LOT of complaints, where in TS2 I never really found much to dislike. I thought the sims were very ugly, whereas in TS2 they had been cute. It seemed far more buggy and glitchy. There's things that bothered me from day 1 that never got fixed, like reversed hold hands animations and mouth position was higher for YA than any other age group. TS3 also had the most immersion-breaking ideas that I absolutely loathed, it was basically where all this "poofing" BS started: lack of car and bicycle animations (materializing into and out of them), sims materializing off of lots, magic food from the fridge, being born with cell phones, free clothes for everyone, selling crap right out of inventory, rabbit hole stores, and I'm sure a lot of stuff I haven't mentioned. It also lacked a lot of the cuteness and charm of TS2. Sims seemed a lot duller, less energetic, less reactive. Compare the "getting cheated on" reaction in TS3 vs TS2 for example. Also the lack of cut scenes and fears. Story Progression was also full of bork. I absolutely hated how it would randomly delete the pre-mades and replace them with poorly-dressed, clone-faced puddings.
However, I did really grow to love TS3. Open-world really did add a lot to my gameplay. CASt, I absolutely LOVED. I spend a lot of time making sims and planning their outfits. With CASt, I was able to get very creative with their looks and would spend hours playing in CAS, tweaking just the right look. With the help of slider extender mods which came very early, after a lot of practice, I managed to make sims I really liked the looks of, even more than TS2 sims - and that's with EA skin and hair. With additional sliders and CC skin/hair, I managed to make sims that I absolutely loved how they look, much better than even my TS2 sims w/CC. Mods like Awesomemod and the NRAAS suite took care of a lot of what I hated about Story Progression.
I'd tried going back to TS2 several times after becoming very accustomed to TS3. Although I had much more fun playing TS2 back before TS3, I was never able to regain that experience after TS3. I got so spoiled by open-world, CASt, body sliders, and the way I was able to make my sims look, that I missed all that too much when I went back and just could not really enjoy playing TS2 the way I used to.

The Sims 4 - It was fun at first, probably because it was new. Although I wasn't a fan of the cartoonier direction they took the look of the game, I do think TS4 sims are the best looking of the series (without CC). It's easy to make a good looking TS4 sim, no practice needed like in TS3, even some of the pre-mades and random ones look pretty good. Clothing looks better, facial sculpting in CAS works well, love the body sculpting abilities. First impression was the sims seem very energetic, almost too much (using the smartphone is practically a dance) and I liked how you can hear the different emotions in their voices and see it on their faces. However, poofing seems even worse than Sims 3 now. Rabbit hole stores in TS3 were bad enough, but now they've eliminated stores altogether. You just click on stuff and "poof", you've bought an item. Sims don't even bother walking off the lot or stop what they're doing like they did on TS2 when traveling to another lot. Magic food fridge is back, sims are still born with smartphones, and you HAVE to sell stuff by dragging it out of inventory now since there are no stores at all, and can't even "give gift" as you have to just drag stuff from one sim to another. Now that everything "poofs", it's now so easy there really isn't much to do. There's no more making a game out of small stuff, like having to save up money to buy a smartphone or clothes. The more I played, the emptier TS4 seems. The fake backgrounds, the tiny neighborhoods, it just feels like there's not much to it. Without open-world and CASt, I really have no idea what makes TS4 more enjoyable than TS3. Honestly, I find it quite boring these days. I think sometimes I still play it because I think my sims are cute and the game loads fast. Sometimes, I'll think about playing TS3, but decide, nah, I don't feel like waiting 10 minutes for the game to load. Probably the only thing I like better about TS4 over TS2 is the sims look better. IF I didn't care about that (which I do, love me some busty sims ), I would actually say TS2 is more fun than TS4.

TL;DR? In summary, I think TS3 was the best of the series overall. Every new game, I've missed things from the previous game, but open-world and CASt are things I miss the most.

At least the black llama is misunderstood and still loved by the family. TS4 is the redheaded step-llama....or the "Cousin Oliver" :/

I have to say, I feel the same. Despite its flaws, some of which were fixed by the community, that open world, SP, and CAST still keeps me going. But who knows, maybe someday someone (cough*Paradox*cough) might pick up the baton and give us a real working customizable open world life simulation game.

I've never played TS1 - I've thought about trying it on occasion, but I don't think I'd enjoy the lack of moving-through-generations.

TS2 is great. Love the interactions. I love family-play. I like the baby-bathing. I like the unequal-relationship-points, the unrequited crushes, and so on. I would have liked more default faces, though. Family-play is my favorite and TS2 is great for that. I love the genetics. I like most of the humor in the EPs I had, even if I had to have my sims avoid drama professors and cow mascot and the cheating logic was problematic (to say the least).

TS3 could never hold my interest. I loved the idea of story progression, but I hated the implementation. It was just random stuff happening, when I had thought that it'd be trait-driven. I want my hopeless romantic, family-oriented, great-cook could to raise fat babies. Instead the couple with the bio about how they ignored their (now grown) kid had another baby. Random disappearances/promotions/weight-changes, etc. There were definitely a number of minor things I liked about TS3, but the only major one that I loved was CASt. Saved me having to have tons of recolors. Open world was nice, but not really a game-changer to me. I liked being able to click to pay those forgotten bills and other such things (like getting my stuff back if the burglar was caught). But the losses were too great for me to really enjoy the game. The lack of things for kids to do, the lack of baby legs and baby bathing and going to the fridge for bottles. No paying for clothes. Darn quests that involve leaving the country (or quests at all). No genetics - dyed hair inherited and so on. And I didn't care for the way sims looked (I don't make my own; I just want the game to generate ones that don't look clay-faced).

TS4 - never played it. The material I read about it didn't make it look tempting enough to buy.

Thanks guys, I think it's pretty clear now what I'm gonna do. I'm getting my new laptop on Monday but it's windows 8 (or 10 I don't know they gave me this upgrade thing I'm not sure), so we'll see how that works!

thanks again for so many answers in so little time, you guys are truly amazing, and its nice to hear about people happily geeking about the sims as much as I do (but nobody understands meeee!).

I do have to say that I recognise myself a lot in what most people have to say on the Sims 2: even though it's nearly fifteen years old I still love this game to pieces, it's got such charm, and the add ons + custom contents make is such a great experience, that I really, really reeaaaaally (really) don't want to give up on for a nicer looking but not as fun version of the game (like no ghosts, no cars... NO GHOSTS! that was like THE fun/cool feature when it first came out! that is just rubbish!).

So I will give a try to TS3 and TS4 just so see what it's all about, but I think my priority will be to install TS2 next week, and start all over again (yaay) for the hundredth time probably :P

Huh? All of the Sims games have ghosts, so I'm unclear what you're referring to. A non-Sims game, maybe?

Sims 4 didn't have ghosts when they first released it but added them later in a patch. Frankly I only like sims 2 ghosts because I don't want playable ghosts or ghosts that marry and have babies, to me ghosts are dead! Their job should be to scare people and that's it.

Agreed. I like the idea of playable ghosts but the problems arise when your sims can interact with and hold conversations NPC ghosts. My legacy founder lost his wife right after she gave birth to their children. Her ghost still haunts the house (even though he's now on his way to becoming a ghost too). It's kinda hard to grieve when you can still interact with your dead spouse like they'd never died. I still like the option of having playable ghosts but if they're haunting my house, they need to be regulated to just floating around, scaring people, and fuckin shit up

And with that, they removed me as customer too. As for majority, meh, you and I both know that we have no clue about the numbers. Not even EA, because that clearly shows if you look at TS4 sales.

Also, please think about what you are saying here. TS3 was very badly optimised in general. The community had to come up with solutions to make it run more smoothly. For CASt this was combining packages into larger ones (so less single files) to make it load a lot faster ingame. Another was bad routing on official EA worlds. Community came up with fixed worlds (also store bought worlds, mind you!). Another was NRAAS mods to get rid of stuck sims in a repeating loop, or abandoned cars that kept being generated (amongst other issues). Community fixed that (as well as it could with the tools they have).

I can understand why many player don't want to go down that road. Using mods to fix glaring problems with the game. But my point is that all those things EA could have done instead. Potentially better because they are the cooks, right? They created this game. But apparently their solution is just ignoring it and then cutting out major features for the next TS lol. You automatically assume they did that because the concept was wrong. That something like CASt could just not work properly, even not when started from scratch in a new engine. I claim that this is a bad assumption. I think EA is just not capable or at least does not care. Just look at the performance related solutions that the community came up with for TS3. Did EA ever fix the routing issues in EA worlds? Take some time to look at their history of fixing the big problems in TS games.

I am always going to be pissed off that one of the best looking worlds ever made, Isla Paradiso, is so laggy and borked it's unplayable (unless you like the game freezing every 3rd second)

Don't want to disrespect ellacharmed, but that fix doesn't solve shit in my game

Whoa! 32 disagrees! Don't think I even got that many

I feel like I've said enough about the topic already though so this will be short. I certainly feel similar about sims 3, it took a lot to get it working. It took outside mods to make it fun. If there was never a Nrass I have a feeling that so many people wouldn't be as sympathetic towards it as they are now. That mod really saved that game IMO.

TS1 is TS1, it's really not fair to compare it. It would be like arguing that Mario is better than Pac-man. We respect TS1 for showing the industry that these games do have a audience.

TS2 will be the best for many. I think it was for me too. I spent countless nights playing it.

I think TS4 is a good game and that if they do it right, people are really going to appreciate the base game features. It really depends on what they add though and I feel that way for all sims games. I think it has a ton of charm and people just don't ever want to say anything good about it ever. I think people should do, say what the game does right. If you want devs to listen you have to present more than 'Your game is trash/garbage'...any ways My sim does things like finds out she's pregnant and goes to run to tell her husband, or just two siblings deciding to sit down and watch TV together. I had a instance last week where family members were hanging out around the pool. I think it has a lot of charm and does a lot of things right, they just have to do the expansions correctly. The biggest issue I have with it are no toddlers and the size of the worlds. To me those are the biggest issues, if they fix that then i'll really love the game.

Oh, I absolutely agree with you that 3 desperately required mods to turn it into a playable game. And lucky for EA that NRaas, and others, did make that game a success. Still, they provided a framework that allowed those mods to work their magic by allowing for an open world. And it took years for some of the best mods from folks like Twallan and Pescado (and Ani_ and Nona and Inge, and countless others) to get things to where they are "today". I remember when MC was quite limited in what it could do compared to the "full" experience reached after a few years of development, or how Twallan's SP needed time to mature to provide the kind of granular control we now take for granted. But, if TS3 did not offer an open world (and CAST, and their own SP, broken as it was) those great mods would not have been created.

As to 4, well, you're correct, posts that state "your game SUX" are pretty useless, but if you look at the vast majority of critical posts on this forum, you will not find many of those, and the few that do sneak in are poorly tolerated by, well, just about everyone. I think in fairness, most critical posts have revolved around concrete issues such as you yourself noted, which right now remain toddlers and the size of the worlds. You're having fun with the game despite those issues, and that's great. But there are a number of players who remain disappointed because of limitations such as the ones even you noted, and they're a bigger deal to those players than perhaps they are to you.

And remember, things like pools, ghosts, additional base game careers, and family trees all came out quickly after the launch, despite the initial explanations offered that things like pools were "too difficult" from a routing perspective. So constructive criticism does appear useful in motivating the developer to revisit game design choices. But, yes, "I hate your game" is counterproductive for achieving change.

I don't think the Sims 4 is ready to be a contender in this thread yet. It needs more EPs. So...TS1 all the way!

I was one of the people to disagree. I can't speak for anyone else, but my reason was that even though I agreed with many points made, their tone when it came to 4 reactions was unnecessary. Even though some people are tired of hearing about it, those issues are still huge points of contention for many in the community. It makes no sense to belittle that.


To piggyback on this...my take on many of the "I hate sims 4" reactions have been followed by "because" and an actual reason. Personally, I think what follows "because" is the difference between real criticism and "your game SUX" comments. I haven't seen many without something to follow it.

Also, H.O.W. comments that 3 took a lot of work for it to be a game people can enjoy. I agree with that completely, and I agree with eskie as well that what was broken was fixed by the community as well. But then again, what's the most wide-spread criticism about 4? "It feels incomplete." "It feels unfinished so I'm waiting for the right CC/_pack to come out so I can enjoy it." Heck, even H.O.W.'s comment says something similar. If I remember correctly for 3, a lot of the problems with gameplay were corrected by the community around the time of the first EP thanks to Pescado.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that 3 had core problems but they weren't outside the realm of what the community could fix. 4 has core problems that it seems only the developers can fix. Judging by EA's past, I wouldn't rely on EA fixing any of the larger issues.

That aside. I agree with you MadameB

The sims 1,for me,was a great game because it was simply fun.( I don´t know if anyone remembers what " simple fun" is anymore, so that´s why I mention that detail.) Back then, not so many game-altering mods existed,and I didn't even have the internet at first,lol.
It took some time to master the sims also,they basically peed themselves in public,or died when you looked away for a sec. At some point I got really good at playing that game and outsmarted my self destructive sim-families ,and great satisfaction followed. Building in the sims 1 was extra interesting. 90% of the time I just wished for all the things we have now,and now we have all those things. Amazing!

The sims 2.. well first I was in mild chock. Everything was so slow-moving in that game, compared to sims 1. The emphasis at first was on "young romance"-interactions, and I preferred the sense of darker humor from the sims 1 really, not to mention the music and the classic style-themes from "Downtown" and "Superstar". It took time to learn to build in the sims 2 as well,and at some point later I started to use the game only for building houses,decorating houses, and creating neighborhoods,but never really playing much. I would still build,gardens mostly ( and never play) in the sims 2,if it wasn't for win8 compatibility-problems. So for me,the sims 2 was very much about architecture. I also felt the light and colors was beautiful in that game. Old pictures I kept from the sims 2,still strikes me as genuinely beautiful and "artsy".

The sims 3 for me, was all about creating or downloading giant worlds and downloading patterns and match home-styles,and not so much about controlling little sim-people at all. They pretty much minded their own business in there and I never really liked the sims 3 as a game. The sims themselves felt absolutely dead in the head,and gameplay was way to easy. The sims themselves where also unnaturally ugly and lacked all charm. And the poor children in the sims 3 was bordering on scary. It was very much fun to create show-rooms and houses, and color match pillows ad nauseam, but at some point I felt more like I was working for an interior design-company rather than playing a game.( I suppose the sims 3 is a great tool for professionals? I for one decorated my living room IRL only after first building several models in the sims 3 )

The open world-thing never impressed me much. It was just too much going on,and to many rabbit holes to place. It was only after making the exact right combination of Pets, (horses) Midnight Hollow (the houses) Supernatural (the moon) and Seasons,obviously,that I started to appreciate the sims 3 a bit more. Finally I could create the "very magical story" I wanted. The light and mist in Supernatural was to die for. But was it really worth all the money and time spent on configuring that monstrosity of a game (with mods and store worlds and objects) ? Nah. I still have it installed though....

I was very critical to the sims 4 at first, I thought it would be "silly" and completely daft ,but I have changed my mind gradually after playing it non-stop for two weeks without any expectations what-so-ever. I play and the sims makes me laugh! (it´s very difficult to make me laugh),and I feel the charming mindless sim-fun is finally back in place. It carries distinct elements from the sims 1 (the blue/pink crib is back,and NO toddlers, and NO cars horray!),and that is truly great if you are a sim-purist or a strict sim-conservative like myself. It also has everything the sims 2 had,just better. Ok.potentially better. Because we only have a base-game yet. But the sims in the sims 4 do look and feel more like real people, a bit more like TSMedieval actually.... and looking at their lives in Willow Creek makes me think: this is what the sims in the sims 1 really did and said,and now I finally have a chance to actually see their facial expressions. It´s very cool that you can decide the shapes of their legs and the size of their feet even.

The building tools are downright awesome,and the miniature worlds are very well done. I do not want an open world with a million of lots to alter or build from scratch (all work and no play) ,and Ive been meaning to say to those who does: why don´t you just play the sims 3? It´s still legal,you know.

The sims 4 brings back all the things I loved about the sims 1 and 2 ( and 3,reluctantly). Hopefully the game play (like the career-challenges in GTW) isn´t going to be too easy or repetitive in future EP-s,because the way I remember it,the sims 1 was quite hard to master. Since the sims celebrates 15 years I now believe the sims 4 truly brings back all the best memories. For younger or newer Sim-gamers that feeling will never occur of course,and the sims 2 or 3 might be what everything else measures against. But for me,the sims 4 is just fine.( I just wish for some snow and some eerie mist ,and then "the Sims 4" would be absolutely, magically perfect. / *dies of old age.

I've only played 3 and 4 but I prefer Sims 4. So much.

I hate to say this seeing as I spent quite a bit of money on the Sims 3, but I never want to go back. While there are things I miss (CASt, terrain tools, actual sliders) the pros of S4 far outweigh the things that it doesn't have. I may be among the minority but I hated the open world of Sims 3. It looked cool and it was neat to be able to place lots wherever and really customize your town, but the lag was terrible. The cars always looked kind of silly to me, too. The neighborhoods of S4 actually give it a more realistic feeling, imo, because there tend to be a lot more people around. Plus, the travelling between worlds is awesome. And have I mentioned very little lag?

Multitasking is what really sold me, though. In S3, my Sims always had low social, because they constantly needed to cook or practice their skills or whatever instead of talking to others. With multitasking not only can they do those things while socializing but they do it autonomously! I find their needs a lot easier to manage this time around.

I also really like the graphics of S4. The Sims look a lot more distinct from one another and I like the cartoony look of them much more than those from S3. It's modern and not too pixelly. That always bothered me about S3, there's just something about the graphics quality and the lighting that makes me not really like the look of it - they always seem more like robots than people.

The Sims 4 is still in its baby days. I'm really excited to see what we can get from expansion packs, DLC, updates, and CC of course. Basements and business owning are what excite me the most about GTW and you know I'll be the first to get a pets pack if they make one. I mean, pets are something I miss from S3, but that's not to say we'll never get them in S4, right? I can play the Sims 4 for hours, but I always quit the Sims 3 in frustration from lag or bugs or loading screens. Sure, we've got those in S4, but I barely notice them. Sims 3? I have time to make a cup of tea and possibly drink it before anything loads, and I gave up on CAS by the end.

I agree 1000%. This goes with my preference that changing lifestates should be a permanent choice (looking at you, Sims 3 Supernatural). Death should have some finality to it. No coming back, but you can always talk to the ghosts and relive the days gone by.



Reminds me of this document posted by a Simcity 2013 dev. (http://www.stonetronix.com/gdc-2013/SimCity-OnePage.pdf)

They clearly seem to have put a lot of thought into the game but the problem? IT JUST DOESN'T WORK.

It was a fundamental misunderstanding of what fans wanted, and the implementation was the killing blow.

Maxis paid the price this month, I guess.

I'm glad to see that the community has smacked some sense into the Sims 4 devs, but it's a long road back.

Late last year I was playing all four games at once; quite an interesting experience. I should also stress that I was playing them with mods: without mods and the people who made all that cc all of them would be much poorer.

- The Sims is unassailable in my book. Not only was it the first one but it had that quirky sense of humor and a ton of silly little details, many of which never reappeared in any of the later games. True, by now TS Sims seem robotic but they did not seem like that at the time. Building is great, although it has its problems and limitations, mostly because of 2D. Still as charming as charming can be.

- The Sims 2 was *the* great leap forward because of 3D but mostly because of the life cycle it introduced; with later EPs many more improvements were made - university, open businesses to visit and/or to own, weather, etc. Some quirkiness was lost but not most of it. Sims were far better looking and seemed far more alive; they became even better as time went by, mostly because of modders' efforts. Some really intriguing Sims were introduced right at the start and more followed. Great animations, especially those "over the top". Building is great once more, although it still has some problems and limitations. (A lot of these were modded out, though.) For me, the most playable of them all.

- The Sims 3 was, at least in principle, a great leap forward as well, because of CASt but mostly because of the open world. It improved other aspects of the game as well: e.g., the young adult stage was separated from university and came on its own; careers were handled much more realistically (no more "friends needed to advance" requirement which I hated and had modded out as soon as possible in earlier games); etc. However, all of this was marred by sloppy thinking, even sloppier execution and, of course, by sheer greed: by now the game does not feel greater than TS2, only far more bloated. - Almost all of the quirkiness was lost and Sims looked dull and uninteresting. (Now you can download and play some great looking ones; in that case, their children will be dull and uninteresting. My advice - I tried it and it works: start with real weirdos and you will never be disappointed again.) Some good ideas in character design but a lot of them without real consequences; animations that were not copied from TS2 are far worse. Most of open localities were lost - a big minus for me. Building is better than in TS2, but, as always, has some problems. However: a lot of the worlds, some of the original ones and most of those made by people like Nilxis, are beautiful and Sims can travel to all of them (thanks to Twallan but also to the hated WA).

- The Sims 4 is, at least in principle, an improvement (but certainly not a leap forward) as far as emotions are concerned, but once more the concept was not thought through and the results can be disastruos. I actually loved to look at my Sims sitting around and chatting (they chat a lot in TS2 as well, though not when they are on community lots, but almost not at all in TS3) but even this was spoiled by "musical chairs". - The developers tried to reintroduce some of the features from the older games but did it badly; e.g., "friends needed to advance" appeared in careers (which are badly designed anyway) once more; they attempted to regain at least some of the quirkiness of TS and TS2 but obviously they are not capable of reaching that level of humor; etc. CAS is good but, again, spoiled by the general plastic look. Building has its problems but on the whole, it's the best so far and it will probably get even better. But where to build? What are these "worlds"? I used to call them "hamlets" but now I am playing CS and the first level you reach there, "a tiny hamlet", is far bigger than anything you will see in TS4. This and the fact that they broke the life cycle is unforgivable.

The final result: I still visit TS from time to time, if only to jump into the hole in the ground and have a ride on that silly roller coaster. I play TS2 regularly. I don't play TS3 as much but when I feel the urge to play a legacy game and have a look at all those worlds I do just that. I abandoned TS4.

I played ts3 vanilla for a long time and enjoyed it. I enjoyed it more when i introduced mods, but that was only last year. I understand that a lot of people don't feel that way. CAST was such an improvement for my gameplay because i'm very design conscious, i hate mismatching clothes and clashing furniture and i loved the creativity i could have in the game with the new colour options. Also I am obsessed with the open world.
TS2 i loved for its charm. I liked the matchmaker and the goofier vampires and the social bunny or whatever he was called. i liked the comically oversized objects and the reward objects were the best of the series imo. Also open for business.
Ts4... it seems...like it could have been incredible in another year. If they gave it more time. When i play, the seams in the game are impossible to miss when you explore the hood. The settings are beautiful but it's mostly backdrop. The sims feel lifeless. Also no toddlers but I know that not everyone needs those. It doesn't have the same amount of heart in it.

Only one of these games has an open world. Caso cerrado.