Going in expecting the game to be a 1:1 Sims replacement is a bit much.
I do hope it improves over time.
It sure wants to be though. Seemingly.
It’s a good goal to have, but expecting it from the early access release isn’t the right mindset.
It’s the developers or publishers themselves that shouldn’t hold these kind of expectations. Because it’s when they fail to hit a target that their enthusiasm fades and we’re left with a rushed project, abandoned halfway.
Its kinda bizarre that there are so few Sims clones/replacements.
Practically none really, but there are competitors coming out at least, primarily this and Paralives, probably because people are sick of EA’s shit.
EA have been pulling their shit for decades though, so its surprising no one has tried to eat their lunch before now.
I think it’s because life sim games are hard to make, and up until recently, no one thought it was worth the effort to make one, when most people would just stick to The Sims. It probably helps that TS4 has been out for so long, and TS5 or whatever they want to call their next one, seems far away.
The games industry is more than happy to throw away billions churning out copy-cat games, that compete in incredibly crowded genres, so it would have been nice if they had at least tried to compete in the one genre with only a single competitor. Its kinda funny that TS4s biggest competitor is TS3.
according to EA Sims 5 will never happen. Probably because they know they will lose so many players that have already spent north of 1000$
Keep in mind that “those games” also have decades of content added through expansions and mods, it’s very difficult to separate the true base games from what they have become today, in fact a lot of them were relatively simplistic and shallow in their very first releases too. Go play the first version of one of the Sims games with no expansions and tell me if you’re having a good experience with deep and interesting mechanics for your Sims, knowing what you know now of what the Sims are capable of.
We are comparing a game in its infancy to an established giant, of course it will pale in comparison… for now, and for quite some time. The question is whether it will catch up, because if it does, it’s going to become something very, very big. Yes that’s a big if, but it’s an if worth waiting for.
