An honest review of the Sims 4 High School Years // Sims 4 High School years

oh hi thanks for watching my video so the highly anticipated high school expansion pack has been released and now that i've had the chance to have a little play through of it i thought it would probably be a good time to make a video review covering the main aspects of the pack i'd love to know in the comments if you've already played with this pack and if you have what do you think so let's begin starting off with cass the creator sim items are full of original and quirky designs lots of loud colors and patterns i found that some of them weren't really to my taste but i have to say the selection on offer is pretty good for creating unique style to sell on trendy which i'll get onto all of the clothing pieces have different themes my personal favorite was the kawaii themed items and as usual there is more on offer for feminine sims than there are for masculine sims there are four new teen aspirations with multiple levels to them drama llama live fast goal oriented and admired icon and there are three new traits socially awkward party lover and high achiever all of these traits have specific social interactions and if a teenager has a team trait they'll also get an additional trait in game called relatable in terms of build and buy you get quite a lot of objects in my opinion mainly school and team themed you don't get a lot in terms of build but there are plenty of furnishing items the teen stuff really reminds me of the teen style stuff from the sims 2 and i guess it depends on your own taste but the items in this pack are very much my kind of aesthetic and i think they look so good when you put them together to furnish a bedroom i haven't tried making my own school yet so i honestly can't say about the school themed items but the team stuff is quite detailed and looks good quality to me the world of copperdale is very pretty and has three main districts the top district rockridge heights is just the school and its associated spaces the middle district of prescott square is where you'll find the new bubble tea cafe and thrift store the library and a few residential lots and at the bottom district which is my favorite plum bite cove is where you'll find the pier with the funfair similarly to the other worlds there is quite a lot of open space so whilst you can't travel across the river without a loading screen you can at least explore more of the district without a loading screen unless you go to an actual lot the school you get is quite clinical looking it's quite boring but thankfully it is editable so you can make it as loud or posh as you like sadly high school isn't something you can recreate and place in other worlds i guess because it will confuse the teenagers as to where they should go because currently all teens in all of the world will go to the same school every day the school itself is quite big and feels a bit empty the only flaw you really need is the ground floor because you only have two classes a day and you'll only use those two classrooms but we'll talk more about the school day in a few minutes there is a football pitch just outside the high school although it isn't a separate lot it's just part of the background there isn't really much to do here to be honest there's basically just a cheerleading mat where you can practice cheerleading and there's a couple of sports themed events that happen here but again we'll come on to that later then there's the auditorium this lot is pretty empty most of the time it's mainly used for events like prom and career day which we'll touch on in a few minutes the pier is my favorite lot in this world well technically not a lot but it's such a great place to hang out with friends it's a pretty spot during the day and even better at night you'll hear carnival music while you're there and your sims will be able to go on three rides they are rabbit holes but sometimes they get scenario pop-ups that lead to either a good or bad outcome along with a mood buff the rides on offer are the haunted house the tunnel of love and the ferris wheel sims can ride with others or ride alone if sims ride with a romantic interest they can even woohoo in any of these rides speaking of wuhu in addition to the rides you can also get frisky in a photo booth on the pier an item you can use to take single or couples photos with a few pose choices on offer and if all that bouncing and sweating gets a bit much for your sims they can cool off with a tasty treat from the ice cream stand there is also the new lot of bubble tea and thrift store your sims can head over here to grab a cheeky bubble tea socialize with other teams and learn about fashion here you can use the clothes rail to create new fashion creations to list on trendy which we'll talk about in a bit more detail in a few minutes there is a park but there's not much point going there it's kind of empty and there are also residential lots and pre-made families placed here but i'm not going to go into too much detail on the families or the law because i might make a separate video looking at the families and how they're all connected so that's a pretty high overview of the creator sim build and buy and the world let's talk about the most important part of this pack gameplay so before we talk about school and the associated experiences let's talk about the sims themselves so now teenage sims experience puberty you'll see their mood buffs letting you know that puberty has started the patch update just before the expansion introduced body hair to the base game but with the high school pack not only will sims be able to have body hair but there will be some maintenance required as their body and facial hair will actually grow sims also need to take care of their skin as they might break out in acne so they'll need to remember to apply facial cleanser teens can develop crushes on other sims when a sim develops a crush they'll suddenly get anxious around them and will be feeling tense they'll have new social options like write in diary about crush think about crush or even try to get over the crush in the presence of your sims crush they'll be able to publicly declare their love or just subtly reveal it teens can also post about their crush and have romantic interactions with other sims over social bunny the new social media app which i'll talk about in a second for now let's look at the school experience so a typical day of school consists of a couple of hours of free time in the morning then your sims will attend their first class then you'll have a long lunch break and then the second and final class you can go with your sim to class but there isn't really much you can do you don't have the option to nap in class make friends or work hard like you can when they went to school previously and there's quite a lot of free time during the day which is quite nice because there are things you can do in that time like socialize with other teens choose and decorate your locker or use the football pitch to practice football or cheerleading there's also a cafeteria your sims can go to and eat with their friends during lunch team sims can be rebellious in a few new ways as well with this pack they can prank things like for example they can place a stink bomb in someone else's locker they can vandalize things like the teacher's whiteboard they can sneak out of their house if they're invited to a college party and they can get detention if they're caught playing a prank or skipping class so in addition to attending class teens can also choose from four after-school activities cheerleading football chess club and computer club sadly the activities are similar to the ones before the expansion so they are very hands-off sims will just go to their activity and leave you behind so they're just rabbit holes the cheerleading and football activities have a bit more to them though even though you can't go to the activity sims can use the cheerleading mat and football at any time to practice they also both have their own events every week there is a sports and cheerleading pop-up on the football field both events have backdrop photo ops food stalls and activity stations where sims can play football or compete in a cheerleading competition depending on which event is taking place there are also two part-time jobs on offer in addition to after-school activities the job of and influencer so the influencer career is a job with three promotion levels where you work as a fashion influencer for the fashion app trendy your daily tasks will be to submit reviews you'll also get sponsorship opportunities that result in payouts and performance gain or financial loss and performance decrease you can also use your entrepreneurial skill to draft a business plan and submit for funding and you may even receive gifts in the mail from companies you did sponsorships for thrifting is also introduced with this pack but it isn't required for the job and you don't need to be an influencer to participate that being said it does go very nicely with the influencer job so naturally you probably would get involved thrifty is the new app on your sims phone that behaves kind of like depop your sims can buy entire outfits made by other sims listed in specific categories and you can use the clothes rails in the thrift store to go into creator sim to put together your own look you can choose what type of style your outfit fits into and you're given a limited selection of clothing based on what the store has in stock once you've made your outfit it will appear in your inventory you can hype it up by wearing it around other sims talking to sims about it and posting about it on thrifty and of course you can use the app to list outfits for sale the streaming career is a bit more hands-off than the influencer one your job is basically to stream yourself playing games the streaming career also has three promotional levels there's also another app added to your sims phone the social bunny app this is pretty much an app that you can actually open and have more control over your sims social media than ever before you can add friends send dms post about experiences and tag others in your sims posts the thing i like about this app is that you can post about things you've actually done so for example you can't post about prom unless you've just gone to prom and you can also pick an emotion to associate with your post and whilst you can't actually write the post yourself you can see what your sim has written other sims will message you and your sim will autonomously send messages to others as well so that's the gist on a couple of the new phone apps you get with this pack let's talk about some of the events starting with prom and promposals part of the teenage experience in the high school expansion includes attending social events like the one i mentioned for football and cheerleading the most exciting event as far as i'm concerned anyway is prom prom occurs every saturday and it's sprinkled across the week leading up to it at the start of the week you'll get a pop-up stating that prom is coming so it's time to start thinking about who you want to go with prom is such a big deal that it even gets a separate section in the social pie menu for teens teens can talk about prom agree to skip it together ask for advice or ask another sim to prom as friends or as a date your sims can make promposal signs and get down on one knee to ask their crush to prom that's if your sim hasn't been asked out first other sims have free reign to approach you and ask you to prom as either a date or friends sims also approach you to ask if you want to be best friends my experience with this wasn't ideal though as before i had the chance to ask my sims crush to prom with a proposal i made they asked me so i turned them down so i could instead prom pose but then they turned me down because i turned them down if only they waited a day before asking so let's talk about the actual prom event the auditorium is transformed with a dance floor balloon arches a seating area and a voting booth it's a gold event so you'll have tasks to complete like dance drink and vote for prom royalty the event was quite fun and about halfway through the teacher will take to the podium and announce who won from royalty and who won prom jester which is what my sim won overall i really enjoyed prom and it was nice to see it return to the sims as an active event in terms of events there is also the career day which happens every other week the event itself is nothing to write home about after i did it once i probably wouldn't be inclined to do it again it's basically three tables set up in the auditorium where your sims have to ask the three professionals about their job and then tell your teacher about it and the other event that happens at the auditorium is graduation the first time i played it i thought that there was a problem with my game because the graduation ceremony didn't take place for an entire week after my sim aged into a young adult there was no event in the calendar and no information on graduation in the lessons so i wasn't sure if it was even happening eventually it did though the auditorium was decorated with banners and a photo op and my sim took her seat and listened to the valedictorian speech by the way your sims can also become valedictorian although i'm not sure how because my sim had straight a's and wasn't asked to be one my sim went up and accepted her diploma overall it was quite a sweet experience not something i'd go to for every sim but it was a nice addition to the game i did encounter one glitch though my sim constantly changed out of her robes and i had to keep getting her dressed so that's an overview of most of the features but is it worth buying overall i do think it's good value for money and i am really happy to have it in my game teenagers feel a lot more beefed out and like a much more enjoyable life stage to play through there are some things that i wasn't happy about like the graduation ceremony happening so late and the robes glitching my sims teen icon aspiration didn't recognize that she had the required social bunny followers so she couldn't achieve her aspiration and i wasn't too impressed with the after-school activities being rabbit holes and also i was really hoping that the fun fair rides would give sentiments but they didn't even with those things happening i still had a lot of fun playing with this pack and i would definitely recommend it if you're into family gameplay however i would suggest waiting a while until some of the creases around out or at least until the game goes on sale because i think 40 is too much to pay for the expansion packs anyway i've heard from some of you in the comments about issues you've been having in your game for me the glitches i encountered were the graduation robes the aspiration not recognizing the completed goal and prom not happening because of a mod conflict so for that reason i would recommend with this pack that you watch a few review videos because everyone seems to have had a different experience this review is based on my own gameplay experience and i didn't have any other issues that were caused by this pack provided the mentioned issues are fixed i think this could be a really strong pack the world is fun especially the pier the school is boring but you can completely customize it and make it look however you want and i do like the way the school day is laid out so you can actually do things during the day outside of class prom was very well done i think i did have an issue during the first week where prom didn't happen on the same day as talent showcase however after googling it i found out that that was likely caused by an outdated mod i had in my folder and once i removed it it worked completely fine after that so i'm fairly sure that that's more of a mod conflict issue than an issue with the pack but let me know in this comments if it happened to your game without mods because if that is the case and the prom doesn't work properly even without mods then i would say yes definitely wait before buying this pack until it's properly fixed and just a few other small details that i liked were the sneaking out animation where sims are invited to college parties taking pictures together in the photo booth i enjoyed the pillow fight animation i love the trophies you can earn from after school activities the streamer avatar is a cute small detail and i also like the reward traits that can be earned by reaching the top level of an after-school activity and maxing out the entrepreneurial skill so yeah i really liked this pack and i can honestly see it becoming one of my favorites in the future this pack reminds me the most of teenagers in the sims 3 generations and i had a lot of fun playing with it but i'm curious to know what you think how did you find this pack i'd love to know in the comments but for now that's it from me thanks for watching i hope you enjoyed it if you did please like and subscribe you know i love it when you do that and i'll see you in the next video bye

Channel: Whiny Brit

Views: 19,365

Keywords: sims 4, sims 4 high school, sims 4 high school expansion, sims 4 high school years, sims 4 high school gameplay, sims 4 high school review, sims 4 teenagers, sims 4 teen gameplay, sims 4 students, sims 4 teacher

Id: 0uC94F-io8s

Length: 18min 7sec (1087 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 03 2022