Quote: Originally posted by cmarie87
I started my Sims journey with TS1... I was 12 years old and in awe. I only had the base game, but played it for hours, days, weeks, and months on end. It will always be a classic but it’s in another league, and to compare it is unfair - at the time of release, it was groundbreaking and TS1 is the reason we are here today having this very discussion.
Then came TS2. I was overwhelmed at the difference. The graphics, the way I could customize my sims, the different clothing options, the animations and small details... and 3D.
I ended up with every EP/SP... and I could play with endless possibilities and never got bored. When I got tired of playing with my “modern” sims... no problem, I created a new folder and made an entire new world with DRs and CC to make a medieval empire. I built a beautiful castle with a prince and princess who were guarded by knights, and an on-site royal physician.
I loved the genetics, the chemistry between sims, the social interactions... it was so real and lifelike. The expansions were like an entire new game, with added features and new stuff to discover and overwhelm me all over again. The babies... we could pick them up and carry them anywhere with us... they were actual sims and not objects. I didn’t have to feel guilty because I left my baby in the bedroom while I ran on the treadmill... I could put baby in a CC baby swing in the same room as me. I was never fond of the toddler lifestage though, I never really did get into family-based gameplay because the toddlers/children were difficult to manage without mods (I mean come on, they’d come home from school with fun in the red - school isn’t THAT horrible!).
And don’t get me started on all the CC/mods that are available... how you play your TS2 is practically limitless because of all the EPs and custom content out there.
I will forever sing praises for TS2.
Enter The Sims 3.
I was still occupied with TS2 at the time, and I didn’t want to lose all the features and additions (because lets face it - the base games are bare-bones and boring). I bought it for my daughter... she played it on and off but kept going back to 2. I watched her play a few times and wasn’t really impressed. I stuck with TS2 and never did play 3... so I cannot offer any honest feedback. I do have opinions of it based on reviews and forums I’ve read, but those opinions don’t really matter because they’re not based on my experience.
Here we are almost 20 years later with TS4. I was still playing TS2 up until a little over a year ago. I really hadn’t heard much about 4 until I watched my daughter play the demo version... her laptop screen was broken so she had it plugged into the big screen, so I got to see everything. She was in CAS creating a new family... and I was instantly blown away. Then she moved her family into a house... and that’s when I really got the urge to play it for myself.
So, I got the game and everything that had been released up until that point, which I think was seasons. I was instantly hooked... playing for days on end with no sleep. I can finally play family-style and make multiple generations because the toddlers are amazing, and the children are actually manageable. Of course I have some gripes about certain things, and there are quite a few simple things that I miss from TS2 (like lounging on a bed/couch, reading a book while lounging on the bed, cuddling/relaxing on the bed with your partner, sleeping with my dog in the bed... etc) but overall, I do love TS4.
Aside from what already I mentioned above, some things I don’t like are: everyone just having a cell phone - I miss having to go to the store to actually buy one if I could afford it, having all clothing available all the time - I miss having to go to the store to purchase new outfits/accessories, it gave my sims something to work for other than to just pay bills, having to fill my fridge with groceries (although I downloaded a mod that took care of that problem), and as others have mentioned... I miss the firefighters and burglars. I don’t miss the repo man, I actually like that your utilities get shut off instead of having your stuff taken away. I think one of my biggest peeves is that there’s just a bunch of separate worlds with no connection or way to connect them. If my native Sulani sim wants to go to the gym, she shouldn’t have to travel across the “world” to somewhere with a completely different climate - I leave Sulani in a hot weather outfit and arrive in a coat with my feet buried in snow. I miss how you could connect your home neighborhood with a downtown and shopping district from TS2.
Anyways... that’s my take on the matter. I can’t honestly say that I like one over the other, I can say that I love both 2 and 4... there are great things about them both and downsides to both. After I installed 4, I kept 2 around for a while with the thought that I’d get sick of 4 and eventually want to revert back... but that never did happen and I ended up uninstalling and deleting all of my CC. I’m fully dedicated to TS4 now and while there are certain things I miss about TS2, I haven’t regretted making the change.
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I'm impressed that you still own and can run TS2. If I remember correctly, I purchased or received as gifts all of my Sims 2 games and packs as actual physical CDs - complete with those puffy plastic boxes that opened and closed like books. My current PC rig doesn't even have a slot for any physical media beyond a USB drive. Unlike a lot of long time simmers, I don't have firm, fond memories of TS2. I know I played it. I know I was every bit as obsessed with it as I was with TS1. I actually think I clearly recall a pretty fun glitch in which my TS2 university student went swimming and ended up with bubbles floating out from under his armpits forever. I also loved toddlers and life stages. Otherwise, though, I was perfectly happy to move from TS1 to TS2, and it felt like a nice upgrade. TS2 was The Sims, 2.0, and although I loved it at the time, it doesn't inspire me to dig out old game boxes and try to reinstall.
TS3, however? My God, TS3. I saw that open world and I was hooked! Whereas TS2 felt like a perfectly fun and perfectly reasonable update to TS1, TS3 felt like it improved upon the original concept of TS1 and TS2 by several orders of magnitude. Let me say right off that I have the luxury of a nice PC. We custom build our PCs at my house, a fact that makes it easier for us to swap out parts and make upgrades over time. I can completely understand how people with out-of-the-box, stagnant systems that are/were a few years old may have difficulty running TS3's open worlds and custom textures in a reliable fashion. Like all Sims games, TS3 is/was occasionally glitchy for me, but I never (or seldom) experienced lag or exceptionally long wait times. Base game only, the open world was every bit the revelation in TS3 that life stages had been in TS2. Beyond the base game, though? World Adventures remains my favorite Sims expansion ever. I love taking my sims on adventures in Egypt, China, and France!
I'm one of those Negative Nellies who, like the TS2 purists before me, chose a sims hill upon which to die. Mine was TS3. I bought and played TS4. I made the transition, but a piece of me really always missed TS3. TS4 boxed me in. Why couldn't I bounce back and forth between one sim at the gym and the other at home? Why were so many franchise staples patched in after release, instead of ready on release? Do I really have to go back to loading screens again? Unlike previous installments, TS4 stripped down the experience without adding anything new and revolutionary to draw simmers in from the outset. Life stages and open worlds had been game changers. My sims were hardly ever in the house! TS4 was... TS1, but prettier, and with every sim competing for the Emmy for Most Dramatic Performance in a Daytime Soap Opera. Gradually, with the help of new packs and some free patches, TS4 started to add back all the stuff it should have had anyway: toddlers, pools, terrain tools, and so on. There are things about TS4 that I really love. The Lifetime Aspiration system is much smoother and more fun to play. Pathfinding works. I adore the holidays that come with Seasons and the cool little street festivals that come with City Living. I am a fan of the skill tree structure provided by packs like Vampires, Magic Realms, and Get Famous. Aside from the play-doh hair, TS4 sims are colorful and lively; the art and animation are absolutely adorable. I don't hate TS4, but I feel like they released the game too soon, without a strong enough flagship feature, and that they've struggled ever since as a result of that misstep.
So what did I do?
I put my convictions to the test. I reinstalled TS3 and all of my packs and content - even store content. I created a sim, dropped him in Roaring Heights, and... hmm, well, results were mixed.
I absolutely love, love, love the open world. I played just base game for half a day before I realized that I was missing content and enabled my expansions. Then, I sent my newlywed sim fella to France on his honeymoon. The graphics are a far cry from TS4. The animations are a lot more jerky and static. It is, frankly, odd to be picking grapes in the middle of a zombie outbreak. And then the glitches started. Out of nowhere, shortly after arriving home with her new baby, my female sim sprouted pathfinding glitches galore. She kept falling through the ceiling, or seeming to bathe somewhere between floor 1 and floor 2 even though the bath was on floor 2, or stomping her foot and whining about not being able to reach the mailbox that was right in front of her face. In France, toggling between the male and the female during their separate adventure missions sometimes led to unexpected crashes. I found a random wild horse in downtown Roaring Heights. The poor thing seemed also to be a victim of this sub-par pathfinding. His thought bubble indicated that he was stuck, as did his habit of simply standing there, stuck, for hours. I tried to get my female to go interact with him, but... she got stuck in a taxi boat, pathfinding. With graphics all the way up to ultra, 60 fps, and the resolution crystal clear, the game ran like a dream for 2 days. Then came the baby, and then the glitches. I'm not sure if the baby is a coincidence or not, but the glitches seemed to coincide with the sim's pregnancy.
Honestly? I had forgotten the glitches.
TS4, by contrast, rarely if ever glitches. It runs unbelievably smoothly. The expansions feel more integrated and less patchy or piecemeal, like they're part of a cohesive world rather than clumsily pasted on after-the-fact. The Lifetime Rewards are better. The relationship building is better, too. The emotions and animations really make sims light up. The ability to travel seamlessly between worlds is awesome and, honestly, something that should have been implemented long ago. Skill trees are bomb. The non-rabbit-hole careers are fun. The (too-small) neighborhoods are lush and beautifully rendered. I think TS4 is finally the better game, but only by a little, and only after 5 years of development.
If we ever get a TS5, I want it to be a mash-up of TS3 and TS4. I long for open worlds and vacation-style travel to more than just the jungle (although the jungle is, admittedly, pretty beautiful). I wonder if they could make the open world optional for those of us who have computers that can run it, but still allow those with weaker machines to play family-in-a-box, loading screen style? Same with the Create-a-Style tool? I loved being able to mix and match and customize everything. If we could add those two features back into TS4, along with some different vacation destinations, university, and more lots per world, it might be the perfect sims game. But EA will need more than that in TS5. They won't only have to manage not to strip back the game like Ramsey Bolton with one of Reek's fingers, but they'll also have to add something truly new and innovative. That's why TS2 and TS3 were bigger hits: they expanded on the original premise. If we get a TS5, it will have to take one big step forward if it wants to succeed.
So... TS3 was my favorite, but TS4 is the better game... as of now. It just took five years to get there.