I don't think that this really belongs to the first thread so I started a new one.

------------------------------

Once more I followed my old motto, “Curiosity killed the cat”.

At the start I was only interested in two things: will InZOI run on my PC (it does) and in gameplay. I just grabbed a Korean-looking Zoi from the presets, changed the most awful clothing she came with and put her in a Dowon appartement – starting in Korea seemed the right thing to do. The only additional tasks I had was to define her Traits (only one, actually), Desired Life(style) and Preferences.

The first thing I learned: turn off free will, otherwise your Zoi will immediately disappear from your view; good luck finding him or her, especially if you are a beginner like me. The second thing: don't use WASD for walking if you don't want your Zoi to walk like a seasoned alcoholic. The third thing: if you send your Zoi to bed, take a nap yourself; you will probably wake up before she or he does. Otherwise, nothing special: most commands are new, of course, and you will bring up unexpected stuff for a while if you are a seasoned Sims player, but that won't last long.

Anyway, I let my Zoi loose on the town as soon as possible and quickly found out that there are not many places to visit; first, she went to a karaoke place (no bar in sight) and sang a song (terribly); that made her very happy and she wanted to get a microphone so I bought her one.


Narae practicing at home. I noticed too late that I should have turned the microphone the other way around. Well, at least you can't hear her sing.

On the whole, Dowon is a rather tedious modern town (quite realistic, AFAIK) but it has a big Buddhist temple at one end; I made Narae visit it on the second day but once more, not much to do: there are some easels around so she painted a little, ate some street food and contemplated a rock. You can't interact with the temple itself and there are no monks around either, but she met some other Zois and made a couple of friends (a pro hint: talk about AI and cryptocurrency); she hung around until evening to see the illuminated lampions (very nice) and left. I was becoming bored so I made her get a job, in K-pop industry, naturally (my evil plan from the very beginning). She was accepted immediately (obviously they did not hear her sing) so on the third day she started with a lot of other trainees who were singing even worse than she was. She did her chores (singing, dancing, some exercise, studying production) and went home. (Which, of course, is wrong – trainees, especially rookies like her, sleep in dorms and not at home.) And that's it, for now.

The bottom line? Technically, it works for me; no CTDs but small bugs, especially tons of clipping - or is that just bad design? It relies on TS4 a lot; graphics are better, of course, but gameplay is worse (to say nothing of the older games). The style is strictly realistic, not only graphics but also the ways Zois act and interact; no silly moments (whether that suits you or not is the question you have to answer for yourself).
Buying it now basically means taking a gamble: will the game become much better or not? Everybody agrees that it has a lot of potential but, once more, potential means nothing until realized.

Thank you for this report. I am sure more will be added to the game. Can we see more photos please?

Love your writing style PIco, your early review made me chuckle.
I am planning to give InZoi a year to see how it goes. By then it will be clearer to me what I am buying. I don't mind realism but some humour within the game would be good.

Totally agree. There needs to be humor and unexpected things to make the game fun and not boring. That was a concern with game Humble was doing. Very lifeless it seemed for a life simulator. Sims are quirky and ridiculous at times, which makes it fun. A fave thing in my 3 was did not pay attention and my grandma Sim had her red Ferrari with her, so drove that all around China. She was racing all over the place in that thing! Running over some bicyclists as I recall!

The only humor I encountered so far was purely coincidental and often quite black: for example, I just learned that a good conversation line is "Life's Best Teacher is Death". It works fine in the game so I must try it out in real life as well.

I settled another preset Zoi in Bliss Bay; I wanted to see that roller coaster in action. This time I could not find an appropriate appartement or house, so I had to build one on an empty lot; quite a chore. When I finally finished and started buying furniture I noticed a problem I overlooked when playing the demo: lots of stuff is available but no information except the price - one can assume that the more expensive object is better than the cheaper one but no idea how much better or how much worse than the next one in range it is. Very bad.

Anyway, I bought some furniture that looked decent enough and packed off my Zoi to the amusement park. She was, of course, too early; nobody but a street sweeper around.


... waiting ...

There is a very nice beach next to the pier but, of course, no swimming in the sea (or anywhere else - no pools available so far). At 9 AM employees started arriving and she bought some popcorn (Zois are hungry most of the time). After ten the park slowly came to life and she could finally have her ride. Afterwards she said she was not feeling very well and, to be honest, neither was I: it's a very fast first person ride. I sent her home to recuperate and left her there. - I intend her to be a freelancer, probably a writer; I want to compare the results with my TS3 and TS4 writers.

Meanwhile, Narae is bravely soldiering on.


Practicing dancing with other trainees

By now she reached level 7 in singing but her singing is just as terrible as it was at the start. To make sure this was not a glitch I bought her a guitar and made her reach level three: no audible difference either. Krafton crammed a lot in this game but it is still an alpha.

Thank you for the update. They will need to fix clothing unless those are mandatory things for them all to wear.

If you mean the second snapshot: those are their "work" uniforms. They are trainees, not workers, but the game treats them as such; they even get paid, not much ATM, but still. Once more, this is wrong: trainees don't get paid, just the opposite: they accumulate debt (for training, lodging, food - anything and everything) during their training years and they have to repay it, with heavy interest, after they start performing.

The more I hear the more strange this all seems. The game is starting to have a Stepford Wives vibe to it?

The stuff I'm seeing is all pretty people doing pretty people things, which is not my thing, but it's fun to keep up with what the players are discovering. That photo of the amusement park looks an awful lot like the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk (only very cleaned up), especially if that bit of art deco possibly-Spanish revival architecture in the background is the arcade.

You ain't heard nothin' yet.
By Friday Narae became a senior trainee and also reached level 10 at singing (she sings OK by now and can do various genres and even practice interviews; others are still terrible). I was told that she could take part in a singing competition: excellent, I thought, some great snapshots ahead.
The competition was to begin at 8 PM Sunday; this meant she had to somehow survive the rest of the weekend. She spent most of the time walking around the town, visiting those few places that can be visited, trying some busking (nobody was even faintly interested). selling paintings abandoned on easels here and there, eating street food and drinking far too much coffee. She also went fishing and caught a very big fish; I tried to make a snapshot but the game would not let me, for some reason (is the bigness of Korean fish a state secret?), so you will just have to believe me it was THAT big.
Sunday evening finally came and she was told to go to the competition. She entered a taxi but the taxi did not move. I thought that the game froze and reloaded; same result but I noticed that other cars were moving. I thought buying her a car might help; it did not. Finally I capitulated and went on 'net to search for an answer. And, sure enough, I found it.
IT'S A BLOODY RABBIT HOLE.
You are supposed to stare at the taxi for three hours and then you are notified of the result.
So much for realism.

Sigh, not sounding good atm. so hope things are fixed. If not, I will just stay with Sims.

On the morning of the second autumn day Narae unexpectedly aged up. I went online and found out that nothing can be done about it. Most players want the option to turn aging off completely; I would prefer the TS3 solution of manually defining how long age stages (and seasons) should be. But that is not the worst problem I encountered.
I reloaded and sent Narae to work; only after she arrived I noticed that she could not do anything. I reloaded once more, this time with "My Career" open: her job disappeared the moment she aged up, even before the notification (about aging up - her being fired was never explained) appeared. Once more, I went online and found two explanations:
- This is a realistic representation of K-pop industry. Might be true: in K-pop anybody over thirty, especially if a woman, is (with very few exceptions) considered to be ancient and expendable; similar occurrences have happened in real life and will happen again. However, this would imply that Krafton wants to give us a realistic picture of K-pop which, as we have seen, is not the case. In a way that's understandable: as big as it is, Krafton would be torn to pieces if it tried that.
- This is a bug because it happened to Zois in other professions as well. More believable but still a hell of a coincidence.
Whatever the reason, all of this broke the game for me. I noticed that Narae could reapply at the same company and I made her do it to see what would happen: she became a clerk, with a fourth of the salary she had before. Enough.

Well, curiosity did kill the cat.

If I recall, there were many glitches in the Sims 4 for a long time and a litany of criticisms. Early access means you get to be part of the solution by finding what doesn't work. Good luck!

An update for you.... there are more and bigger glitches than ever in Sims 4 today.... but we are still calling them out for it!!

I deinstalled the game (I still have it in My library, of course) and returned to the safe bosom of my TS3 family (brave Margot is fine, thank you; she is a doctor by now). That calmed me down and I remembered that I forgot to add or correct some hints in the posts above.
- At start the game usually stutters a lot. When I fired it up it for the first time I thought my goose was cooked, but it was over in a few moments.
- Once, I suddenly could not load my save. My fault - I did not have the latest driver; updating it solved the problem. Don't do it automatically, though, because some graphic cards require just the opposite, an old driver. Look online for advice. So far, (sub)reddit is the best place to go to.
- My PC was overheating, not critically, but still. On the other hand, it does that with most new games - hardly any are optimized, especially those in early access. Do what you can and hope for the best.
- When choosing Preferences pick up some that your Zois will be doing all the time, like cooking, cleaning, street food, etc. They might just as well enjoy it, even if you don't.
- When sleeping, game speed can be maximized. Sometimes it kicks up automatically, sometimes you have to adjust it manually. Sometimes it slows down automatically and sometimes it does not: be vigilant if you don't want to search for your Zoi all over the town.
- The hilarious thing about those dialogues is that every option is meant sincerely. Koreans have real problems with irony and don't understand sarcasm at all. Get used to it.
- I finally understood what the point of a blur + a towel is. When a Zoi steps out of the shower the blur disappears and if the towel was not there, we would see his or her butt which, of course, would be terrible.
Also:

Zois have constant problems with their footwear. There is something rotten in Korean shoe industry,

Bliss Bay looks like a 1-to-1 copy of Santa Monica and its pier.


Definitely, don't expect any sort of tongue-in-cheek humor or societal sarcasm.

Another thing I have not mentioned yet.

After Narae already started training I realized that I was doing it wrong: most K-pop trainees start very young, 13 or 14 years old, some even younger. Therefore, I remade her as a teen, settled her in the same appartement and immediately found out that she could not get any job, even a part-time one. Still, I decided to let her go to school for a day to see how that works. (Trainees are supposed to be educated at their company, with predictable results.)
School starts at 8 AM and lasts till 5 PM; Narae arrived on time ...


School on the left, fitness grounds on the right. Narae was given a backpack when she entered the school grounds.

... but other, obviously more experienced students started arriving only after 9 or 10. The school is a rabbit hole; you hear the bell ring a few times and one thing happens - in her case, she could (and did) have a consultation about her future; she was advised to proceed to university. (A small problem: so far, there is no university in Dowon.) I spent the rest of time staring at my screen.
At 5 PM she proceeded to the fitness grounds where she was supposed to stay until 7 PM. Another problem: almost nothing to do. She passed the soccer ball back and forth a few times (as exciting as it sounds) and chatted with other students; they started leaving at 6 PM so she left as well.
When she came home she had some homework to do. The first part was to "Study Animal Ecosystem Issues Caused by Pollution" on computer, but when she approached it it immediately exploded (perfectly understandable). She could repair it but, remembering my TS experiences, I decided against it and bought her a new one; she had a ton of money anyway.

I decided I saw enough and reloaded the first game.

ETA: I just had a discussion with another Zoier (?) on YT. The main lesson: read the small print. - Narae losing her job was not a bug: eligible age group for any level of trainee is "young adult" and becoming an "idol" is not even an option. After your Zoi ages up she can only become an "employee" and advance to CEO. After she will age up again she will be retired (read: thrown out), no matter what. The last part goes for any career.
This is definitely not the way I want to play any life simulator.

I have one more debt to pay: Marion the American writer's story. Here is at least a bit of it.

I already said that I built Marion a house; I also bought her a car, the cheapest one, very big and very dull. I wanted to see how it works (automatically, not manually: I already knew that from YT and I was not particularly interested in driving over people or bumping into other cars). This was her second task; the third one was to find a man worth a sin.

First I sent her to a cafe at the other end of Bliss Bay; I thought it would be nice to have a drive across the town. No way: she drove for about fifty meters, a loading screen appeared, she drove for about a hundred meters more, got out and then she had to walk almost as far as if she took a bus. There is really no point in getting a car, unless you are interested in hurting people. But there are better games for that.

There were only a few visitors in the cafe, two women chatting at one end and two men quarreling at a table in the middle; nobody was eating or drinking anything. Marion bough a tiramisu (which she liked a lot) but, of course, she could not hope for a lesbian affair and she did not like the men, so she proceeded to an art gallery.


The gallery is quite nice; it even has a video section. I did not try it but it probably is (or will be) possible to replace the original video with one of your own.

At the gallery she noticed Roger, a man who seemed worth the trouble, and began chatting, first about normal things like cryptocurrency and taking care of your mental health. After they became friendly enough she proceeded to Discuss the Nature of Love and Shared Views on Marriage (not interested ATM, but she was wise enough not to mention that). Then she upped the ante once more, Talked Enthusiatically for a while and even Kissed Him on Forehead; that made her Excited and she could Express Affection with Fluttering Heart.


Expressing Affection with Fluttering Heart. Roger held to his mug till the bitter end.

They hugged and kissed for real and she Complimented Picture Uploaded on Social Media. By 4:28 they declared that theirs was True Love and I noticed that I had a problem: I knew exactly what my Sims would do in such a situation but my Zois could not. Finally I decided I should send Marion home alone and that she should then invite Roger over; the ploy worked, but only after I finally figured out how to do that (not via phone, as one would expect, but via map). He came flying, almost literally, and they made a beeline for the bedroom; she Set the Mood Next to Bed (what does that even mean?) and that was it.




Is this really all there is to it?

The answer is yes, but Marion saw the bright side as well: she said that at least there is no chance she would get pregnant outside wedlock. Quite a raunchy little game, even if it pretends otherwise.

Back to writing.


When your Zoi starts writing a screen appears floating above the computer. No idea what it is good for; it can't be interacted with.

As always. Marion started at level 0; she reached level 10 by Wednesday evening. She started with two genres available and got more every two levels; the ultimate one is Self-Development Book (). The game decided which genre suited her best (I'd like to believe that was based on her character, but I am not sure) and whether the book was bad, good or excellent; the selling price depends on these factors and moves, as far as I know, between 25 and 750M. Marion could not self-publish or send her book to a publisher; it just appeared in her bag (Zois have bags instead of inventories) and could be sold from there; no author copies. It took her about an hour and a quarter to write a book, so she could finish up to ten or even more a day, depending on how quickly she became hungry and what else she wanted to do. I played her until Friday to see what her weekly bills would amount to: 527M, so a freelance writer career is quite feasible, even after the cost of food, etc. (but so far there is very little etc.) is added. - The career feels like a poor cousin of TS4 one, but with more financial variety; TS3 version is not that quick, offers a lot of possibilities and is far more interesting.

I guess that other freelancer careers work in a similar way. Other ways to make money are available as well, e.g., investing in stocks: not very appealing ATM but that is the one thing we can't blame Krafton for.

I'm enjoying it for what it is. Early Access. It has a way to get there, but I have every confidence it will in time.

I'm stopping my judgement until the full game releases. I bought the early access and the game looks very promising. The only thing that bothers me is that the game has HUGE graphics expectations, (I bought a brand new pc this october with the newest graphics card and it STILL wasn't enough) but i can live with that. I think the game looks very adorable and the dev listens to the feedback

I read somewhere that cats have nine lives.

First I went to Narae, but she said that she managed to put her life in order since we parted ways and has a bank by now; she is counting money all the time and would be very grateful if she never saw me again. So I proceeded to Marion; she said that she was sick and tired of writing ten books (or even more) a day; as for Roger, he brought her a vase (which she threw in trash the first time she cleaned the house) and was never heard from again. In short, she was ready for a change of scenery and to Cahaya she went, dreaming of mermaids and luxurious hotels with pool bars.

On arrival she learned that first she had to buy a place to live. Quite an extortion racket: imagine arriving to Venice and finding out that first you have to buy a dilapidated palace on some stinky canal and only then you may proceed to a hotel. (Given the way Venice is going this will soon become true, but that's another story.) Being a smart girl she bought the cheapest empty lot; I asked her if she was interested in farming or mining but she retorted that she told me exactly what she wanted. She was getting quite annoyed so to the hotel she went and rented one of Water Villas.


Koreans have strange ideas about villas but these are mass tourism at its best.

She swam and snorkeled a little, but it soon got dark and she became tired and went to bed. She woke up at 10.30, ate something and went back to bed. She woke up again at 1 AM and went for a walk; the place was, of course, completely deserted but at least she got tired enough to sleep until dawn when she had a breakfast and went out to look for the pool bar. She found the pool; no pool bar but at least there was a waterslide - though she was, as always, too early. She waited on the beach, took a selfie with a turtle, finally had her ride (rather disappointing: the thing looks enormous but the ride is very short) and continued exploring. She found a spa and had a massage, visited a sauna and then discovered a nearby temple and meditated with a cat.


She also burnt some incense. Finally, at least something you can do in a temple.

There is a sort of a yoga place next to the temple so she took a sort of a yoga lesson; then she went to a peer and rented a boat to go to the Treasure Island. There she found some sticks, a pearl and yet another cat (how the cat got to the island was never explained) but when she returned to the boat, it suddenly disappeared and she had to swim back. She almost drowned but she managed to reach the shore, exhausted and long after the sun set – but at least this time she slept throughout the night. She did have nightmares, though.

The next day summer started, together with monsoon rain. (??? - this is a funny one. Monsoon does start in July in Korea, but on Borneo, which Cahaya is supposed to represent, it starts in November.) Marion stayed at the villa for a while, watching TV, but she soon grew bored and went to the spa to get another massage or two and then to the arcade to play some games and chat with other tourists stranded there. One of them told her that mermaids can be observed at a certain point between the islands so she sent the monsoon to hell (or rather, I did it for her), rented that boat again and went looking for them. And she succeeded.


Look! They are dancing! So beautiful, and majestic too!

Seven lives left.

Well, the thread got 22(000) views. I don't quite understand how that is possible - I watched it since it passed 10.000 and only twice have I noticed "2 people viewing", never more; the only logical conclusion is that all the other thousands were waiting for me to fall asleep. Anyway, time to wrap it up.

Technically, the game is still working fine for me: no CTDs, no freezes, no bugs worth mentioning (except for the disappearing boat). It feels smoother than it used to (e.g., no stuttering at the start). My PC is still overheating but not more than it used to.

Gameplay is also more or less the same. A lot more stuff, of course; in this, Krafton is faithfully following TS4. Some of it is working and some not, but since they gave us pools and swimming in the sea we can certainly hope that one day we will get movable chess figures as well. (They were just a pixel or two in TS but they did move, a quarter of a century ago. Laziness or the game being rushed? Probably the latter but in the end, it does not really matter.) Zois are the same good looking shells they used to be; their dialogues were streamlined but when left alone they won't say a word to each other. The only time Marion surprised me was when she found the cat on the island and started playing with it, and the only exciting moments were when she had to swim across the strait.

I think the game is good for:
- people who know only TS4 and are tired of it or can't play it anymore. I think TS4 is still better at the moment but InZOI will surpass it sooner or later - first though, Krafton must properly finish what is already there. One more thing they have in common with EA.
- people who love starting collections and completing them: they have a lot to do now.

I am neither so I will stick to TS2 and TS3. And I will keep on hoping that Paralives will provide what InZOI failed to provide, not a Sims killer but an interesting and fun alternative.