I've been a fan of The Sims since the year 2000, and I've kept up with nearly all of them, save The Sims 2. TS2 came out around the time that I was far too obsessed with World of Warcraft to give it much attention. But I did get some time out of The Sims 3, which, for all intents and purposes, is a pretty great game. My favorite packs are Into the Future, and whatever the one's called that added fae and zombies.
Zombies!
And then I remember snapping up The Sims 4 as soon as it was available, and getting pissed off that I couldn't even make a pool because there were none in the game (yet).
It was pretty barren when it launched.
But, like the last two games, The Sims is a game that's consistently built upon, and in order for that to continue happening, they charge you for the addon content. A practice heavily mired in controversy as either a thing that's totally fine, or extremely bad.
My top recommended expansions and packs are now: Seasons, Vampires, Cats and Dogs, Get to Work, Eco Lifestyle, Life and Death, and Enchanted By Nature.
Life and Death is also really great, and the world included with it is peak cinema.
Yes, you can totally go without even touching Werewolves, which, I think is also a pretty cool pack, but I don't find them essential to the experience. Feel free to grab that one, too, though.
You see, when I was in The Sims 3, I messed around with the vampires, the zombies, and the fae, and I'm definitely still waiting for TS4 to have zombies. But the Fae are finally in the game, and now that I've got all my preface-text out of the way, it's ... cool!
Take the Realm of Magic expansion, but strip out all the cringe Harry Potter references (fuck Hairy Plopps), and add a magical skill that lets you walk around and age up random sims, and you've got Enchanted By Nature (I'm aware MCCC lets you do this, too). Stick this together with Life and Death, Seasons, Vampires, Eco, etc, etc, and I wouldn't even understand why you'd need any mods to expand the experience. Mods that, by the way, are like, 99% the reason you see people hollering on update patch note comment sections, like:
"Game broken!!!!"
Yes, because you aren't handling your mods properly.
But, I've built onto a house that sits upon a tree with a Fae I made myself, a Strangerville sim who somehow died, and a vampire who wandered in from an older household in my save file, and then I cut off all the electricity and water to create a little candlelit hovel of depravity and trickery where anyone who dares walk into my house uninvited has their luck reversed twice, their plasma drank, and their age, upped.
That was all after I briefly played a scenario sim and made Jim Pickens eat a bad grilled cheese.
That's besides the point though. I just wanted to share a rare Jim.
To make this less long, and more to the point: Don't listen to the loud ruckus-makers, that's all they're good for. A bunch of miserable people, half or more of which are trying to run the game on broken scripts and broken custom content, and consistently blaming Maxis for their own user-created issues.
No, Sims 4 isn't perfect on Linux, but if you're on Linux, you already know you're gonna tinker with stuff.
Suffice to say, Enchanted by Nature is one of the best things Sims 4's got so far, and I hope the trend continues.
Although, yeah, sure, maybe it's time EA/Maxis took a look at how Blizzard handles expansions, and, I dunno ... uh, made things a bit more streamlined? Less used-car expensive?
That's a thought.
Source: https://mkultra.monster/gaming/2025/09/ ... in-sims-4/
