Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

There are certain elements of this game that I like. HOWEVER, the amount of sacrifices that were made for these new features are not worth it. On the positive side, the graphics have received an update. It isn't a drastic change, but it is refreshing since The Sims 3 was beginning to look dated. The animations are a huge improvement too, which is good because the robotic feel of TS3 was very annoying. I also found the game to run very smoothly on my computer. No lag whatsoever, on a slightly-above-average PC. Unfortunately, that's where the good ends. The major selling point of this game, emotions, feels like a gimmick to me. And it certainly does not make up for all the things that have been removed. The new controls and UI are horrible. It took me almost an hour to get a feel for the controls, and right now it seems like a huge downgrade. The edge-scroll feature is broken to the point where I have to use the WSAD keys to move around. The UI has been dumbed down so much that it impedes gameplay. This is particularly true with Build/Buy mode, and i fear that new players will be lost trying to build their first home. Color customization has taken a huge step backward. We no longer have control over the color wheel and custom patterns. Instead, we are stuck with whatever presets Maxis has decided to include. There seems to be a lot of options with furniture, but Create-A-Sim and Build mode are severely lacking. Hair colors are the worst off. While the hair styles themselves are great, there needs to be more variety with the colors. Since Maxis removed such a huge feature from TS3, I'd expect them to give us at least double the amount of color options. The world sizes are too small. I actually don't mind that they replaced the giant open world with smaller, connected worlds, but there simply are not enough lots. There are two connected worlds, each with 16 residential lots. Considering how the original Sim 3 town had 90+ lots, this is a mess. While I technically wont have 32 lots running at the same time, i liked having a variety of lots and OPTIONS in my game. I usually have 10-12 families running at a time, so after 2 generations, I will have already used all the lots in the game. A third (connected) world is GREATLY needed. The biggest offender, however, is the lazy approach to life stages. Toddlers are gone from the game entirely, while teenagers have been given almost identical models to their adult counterparts. It is very difficult to tell the difference between the life stages, aside from children. Toddlers need to return, and a preteen stage needs to be added to make up for these "adult" teens. Along with these missing features, the game is riddled with smaller instances of cut corners and lazy design. The game needed at least another year of development. I have no doubt that many of these problems will be fixed in the future with expansions and patches, however I am not sure the current base game will be able to keep me occupied until then. While i certainly look forward to future fixes, I am not happy with the current state of the game. It provides some entertainment, but after a few weeks I may be back to The Sims 3.