I recently returned to The Sims 2 after primarily playing The Sims 4 during the last ten years, and I found that it has several qualities that I prefer to those in The Sims 4. Considering it'd been so long since I returned to play a main game in the series other than The Sims 4, I suspected that it was the nostalgia of The Sims 2 that had me ing it as being more fun, and perhaps a result of playing the game during a time in my life with fewer responsibilities. In the end, it wasn't just nostalgia influencing my opinion.

The Sims 4 has celebrated its 10th anniversary, and it shows no sign of slowing down, with a new expansion announced and set to arrive in time for Halloween. However, being the longest-running base game and the entry with the most extra content due to the variety of packs that have been released for the game over ten years doesn't make it the best base game by default. In comparison to other versions of The Sims, I would even go as far as saying that The Sims 4 might be the most boring among them.

The Amount Of Content Available For The Sims 4 Is Overwhelming

Too Many Packs Add Too Little

I find that the set-up for additional content for The Sims 4 has a few flaws, and I wouldn't be surprised if this was intentionally done for the sake of getting as much money out of the game as possible. The packs are separated into several categories, from full expansions to kits, and the category basically indicates how much the pack will cost and the type of content it'll contain. Full expansions are the most expensive, but they include actual changes to gameplay, such as new life stages and new locations. Meanwhile, kits are the cheapest and include mostly cosmetic additions, like furniture and clothing.

The idea of separating additional content like this isn't necessarily bad, but I don't think it's exactly satisfying in the way it's been implemented, either. In this case, I'm talking mostly about the kits. They don't cost much, about $5 USD, but they also add little in of content, and in a lot of cases, the amount added isn't even worth the money. Usually, when a kit is added and what it'll include is revealed, it feels like more of a patch than anything. The result is you often feel a bit disappointed by the packs, and few of them are worth buying, if any.

Now, we have a game that costs over $1,000 in 2024 if you want to purchase all the available content. Plus, there are expansion packs that add features that should've been part of the base game, such as Seasons and Cats & Dogs. So, we have this game that's bloated with extra packs, and while some of them bring fun features, others just feel like a lot of bells and whistles. I see The Sims 4 as a case where more isn't always better, and having condensed expansion packs that give you more for your money instead of many small packs would've helped.

How The Sims 2 Feels More Rewarding Than The Sims 4

It Didn't Overstay Its Welcome

I found that there are quite a few reasons that I prefer The Sims 2 over The Sims 4. First, it's more challenging to keep Sims alive in 2 compared to 4, which also makes having a family survive for multiple generations more rewarding. Some features that make survival difficult include the slower filling of Needs, the inability to just spend reward points on a potion to fix Needs, and Sims aren't as fire-proof as they tend to be in The Sims 4. Second, the programming of the Sims' free will in 2 makes convincing them to do tasks so they live rather tough.

Then, there's also the fact that The Sims 2 wasn't the primary entry in the series for a decade. It polished the gameplay and graphics of the first game, added additional content through expansions to make it feel more complete, and then it bowed out to allow The Sims 3 to take over. There weren't endless expansions that kept driving up the total cost of the game, only to keep adding features to the extent that it'll be hard to convince me to switch to The Sims 5 when, or if, it ever comes out because I don't want to start over with the bare minimum content again.

The Sims 4 Is Polished But Not Perfect

It's Also Crawling With Bugs

Even after a decade, The Sims 4 is full of bugs, glitches, and anything you want to call issues that make some features not function properly. I know it's normal for each main game in the series to have such issues, but it feels worse when the game has been around for so long and receiving active updates throughout that time, and you have more content being added that brings its own set of issues to the mix. It's pretty messy in practice, but being able to use cheats, mods, and console commands can help with the burden — until there's a new patch that might affect them.

That brings us to the point of how polished The Sims 4 is. It has a ton of content and features that we haven't had in past games, and for the most part, that content plays decently enough. However, it doesn't have that touch of a challenge that The Sims 2 had, and I often end up bored after I create a house and family in-game. I can leave my game running for hours, then come back, and not much has happened. In the end, I think that being too polished hurts the game more than it helps.

I've played The Sims since the first game, where fires felt like a constant threat, and every house succumbed to the threat of cockroaches. As much as I love the series, I find myself wishing that The Sims 4 took more inspiration from its predecessors and kept some of the challenges they had that made it tough to survive. It turns out that it wasn't just the nostalgia talking, and I saw a lot more flaws in The Sims 4 after I went back to The Sims 2.