Ranking Every Expansion Pack in The Sims 4

it's been about a year since I last made a video ranking all of the expansion packs for The Sims 4 but in the last year we got three new ones so that video very quickly became outdated so it's probably about time that we revisit that concept and rank all of the packs again I feel like these videos are really helpful for a lot of people because I get asked all the time for my thoughts on Sims packs and especially about Which packs I think are worth buying and I can totally see why you'd want a second opinion before spending like $40 on a game so in this video we're going to go through every expansion pack so just the expansions not the game pack stuff packs or kids and I'll walk you through what the pack comes with what I think is good about it and I'll put it somewhere on this tier list between must have and not for me just keep in mind that this is my personal opinion and you might have a completely opposite opinion of these packs my least favorite pack could very easily be your favorite pack and that's totally fine I'm just making this video to answer questions that people ask me all the time about these packs I'm not trying to start a fight okay we're allowed to have different opinions part of the reason I wanted to do this now is because there's a pretty big sale on Sims packs right now so if you've been thinking about buying any of these this might be a good time and if you do buy any Sims packs now or like literally ever you can use my Creator code at checkout all you have to do is hit this apply promo code button and then type Lil simsy and then press apply and then I will earn a 5% Commission on the purchase and you don't have to use mine you could use a different Sims creators code instead but I just really encourage you to use somebody's code it's free for you you're already buying the pack and you can support our creator that you like at the same time so it's kind of a win-win for everybody I always feel a little bit awkward promoting my own Creator code cuz I don't want you to think that I'm like begging you for money or like trying to trick you into buying Sims packs I just know that a lot of you are going to buy these packs anyway so I might as well mention it but it still just feels a bit awkward to me I'm not used to it yet let's go ahead and dive into this though because we have 15 expansion packs to rate starting with the first ever expansion pack for The Sims for get to work now you're going to notice a theme here because a lot of the older packs are just objectively worse than the newer packs and not even just for expansions the stuff packs the game packs they all kind of experienced this it's almost like they hadn't really found their footing yet they didn't know what kind of content was going to be coming in these packs and so get to work has significantly less content than a lot of the newer expansion packs do and don't get me wrong the content from this pack is Fun the main premise here is that you're going to work with your Sims so there's three new active careers plus a new retail system so you can be a detective you can be a scientist or you could be a doctor doctor and then if you wanted to you could buy your own retail business and then run a store and I actually really enjoy three out of four of those things I think the detective career is kind of buggy and not very fun the doctor career is also fun but it at times can be kind of repetitive I think that's just the nature of a fully active career in this game though because there's only so many tasks that you can do so every day it's like come in talk to Patient give patient medicine patient leaves and then you just do it over and over again all day it's a lot of like kind of menial tasks but sometimes you get to do surgery and that's fun my favorite career though is the scientist career and this one also can be kind of repetitive mostly it's like working on the lab equipment but you can also invent stuff with this career and some of the inventions you can make are things like a freeze ray so you can freeze other Sims literally in a block of ice and with that Ray in general you can kind of Torment people which is fun I think this one is just better also because there's so much more to do you've got microscopes and telescopes and rocket ship and lab equipment and the inventing machine and you're collecting Collectibles and you're gardening but then as a detective or a doctor you're kind of just talking to people and using like a computer or one piece of lab equipment so they're not bad they're just not as fun the retail system is pretty cool you basically buy a lot and then you can build your own store on it and you can kind of sell anything you can use mannequins and sell clothes you could sell artwork your Sims make you could just sell Furniture I've run stores where I was playing as a kleptomaniac and stealing stuff from people and then coming back selling it at my retail store so there's a lot of room to be creative here it's actually kind of fun it's kind of a grind to sell things but that's sort of the whole deal with this pack it's got some interesting clothing it's not the best but it's not the worst thing in the world this came out in like 2014 so it's not really you know thriving it also comes with aliens which is kind of fun but if you're looking for a really good occult type that has a lot of new gameplay the aliens aren't like the most fun one I'd probably pick vampires or werewolves or spellcasters over them but it having an ult type is a big plus the build mode is really wacky it's not really stuff that you can use to build houses so if you like building homes for your Sims this pack probably isn't for you it's really good for Community Lots though it has things like this cute Library cart it's got like sales signs and magazine racks security cameras hand sanitizer dispensers jail bars so if you like to build that sort of thing this might be good for you the world is terrible if you can even call it a world it's just these four Lots and there are three stores and one empty one Magnolia prominade is weird cuz it's like an extension of Willow Creek I think newrest is also meant to be an extension of Willow Creek and so there's no unique personality it's so tiny it's just this is kind of useless it's nice to have but it's not a reason to buy the pack I hate to say it but I could honestly play The Sims 4 without get to work most of the time and not even really notice I just used the careers so infrequently and the build stuff and the cast isn't that good so it just doesn't cross my mind to play with it it's not bad I just wouldn't recommend it as like a first choice if you're going to buy a pack the next one get together is kind of a wild card but spoiler I rank this one extremely high the main big thing here is the club system so the whole story with this pack is just like meeting friends and hanging out with them we got a cafe lot type we got a dance skill the clothes are mostly just fine but I do like a couple of the hairs a lot especially this braid there's a really decent amount of kit kids clothing in this pack which is really good because it's kind of hard to come by a lot of that stuff most of the time some of it's a little bit weird and there's like a night costume the build mode is way more My Vibes the whole pack kind of has this like tutor inspired build style so you might hate this but I love these kind of older homes so I use this build stuff all the time one of my most used build packs it has some really nice fancy furniture too with these like fancy cabinets and desks and then you compare it to like these weird modern nightclub things and the DJ booth and these dance floors but basically if you were a builder this pack I think ranks really highly there's not really a lot to discuss as far as gaml goes because it's not that big but surprisingly I use this club feature all the time not really as they intended I don't normally join clubs like the garden gnomes I usually just make my own but just to give you a couple of examples I like to play with Legacy challenges a lot so I often have cousins and extended family who don't live in my household sort of like how Nancy lives with Stanley instead of with her family so I might make a club and add people like her husband why is this guy stealing my vibes what are you doing in that costume but I might add like my family into this club and then I can easily hang out with them and invite them over all at once without having to like call them up individually sometimes when I'm playing as like a child or a teen I'll make a club that has just other children or just other teens so I can meet people that are my age it can be kind of hard to meet other Sims when your kids are in school so I like to use the clubs a lot for that and I also like to use this as like a substitute for online dating sometimes because we don't have that so I'll set Club requirements like not married or maybe other adults and then I'll go through and find some people that I might want to date just so I can meet them more easily this has been a lifesaver for the 100 baby challenge but it's also just nice when you're first starting out with a Sim to like instantly meet a few people I literally use this in every single save and the world this is by far at least in my opinion the best expansion pack world out of all all of them you compare this to the size of Magnolia prominade and this has like a million Lots this one is objectively significantly bigger than any of the other expansion pack worlds I think they're like overcompensating for how bad they get to work one was I like how it has this old part of town and then like a newer more updated part of town it's got a couple of fancy neighborhoods to live in one's an island and you might not love this tutor style but this is my favorite thing in the whole world so I am obsessed with windenburg I would rate get together very high like maybe even up it must have and I feel kind of silly doing that cuz I don't think it's worth $40 but if you're going to get it on sale and it's on sale a lot these days I think it's worth grabbing especially when it's on sale for like $20 and it's the same price as a game pack next we have City living which is a completely different vibe and I think this one's ranking might actually change now that we have the rent pack but the idea here is just living in the city so it's got apartments that was the main new gameplay feature it's got some really fun festivals that take place around the town it has some really great new townies penny bazaz is one of my favorite Sims in the entire The Sims 4 the clothing is really really nice I use a lot of this stuff all the time especially this bear costume and I'm actually not kidding when I say that I really like it the build stuff is kind of fun it has like a more modern vibe to it I really like this canopy bed I also use these game posters all the time shockingly oh and basketball it has a basketball hoop too it also has a few really cheap items of furniture like these sort of broken dirty fridges and stoves and those are really nice for rxs riches or building like older places it has a really nice collection of dirty stuff just in general in this pack they introduce semi-active careers where you could have your sim go into a rabbit hole career or work from home and I think that's a nice happy medium with the active career stuff but they do that a lot now we have a lot of those semi-active careers the world of San mauno is one of the best in The Sims 4 though I think you just can't really beat this cool skyscraper highrise dense City yes you can build Apartments now with four rents so you don't need this pack to have Apartments but the apartments in this pack are kind of Classics and now we can move the windows so they're a lot better and they range from really tiny Apartments to like absolutely massive three-story apartments and you can live on pen houses so there's actually a lot of variety of different places to live and when you break it down into number of units there are so many Lots in this world I really think it's one of the best worlds in The Sims 4 but it's not my favorite pack so I'm going to rank it pretty high at very good if you you buy this one you're not going to go wrong it has a lot of really nice stuff in it and now we're moving on to cats and dogs and this one honestly is a complete must have for me literally every single one of my Sims has a pet the main features here are obviously having a cat or a dog but also you can run your own vet clinic and this works kind of similar to the retail system from get to work where you can buy a new lot and then set up a business there but running a vet clinic is actually really fun and I think one of the more underused features of the game I don't really ever play with that the big highlight here is just customizable the pets are as well you can completely paint on them in cast the pets are more customizable than human Sims which is kind of funny when you think about it but it's pretty cool how much they have cast for humans is also pretty nice we have a lot of really nice hairstyles some really cute clothing there's some funny items like this little toddler cat sweater there's adult cat sweaters I think the big standout here though is the pets and the kids stuff more so than the adult stuff this is also one of my favorite build modes in the entire game and you can tell that I kind of have a style right I love this sort of older furniture all of cats and dogs kind of has this Cape Cod vibe to it and there's some really beautiful Furniture in this pack my favorite window set in the whole game and there's a lot of Windows in this set as well sometimes we get packs that have like three windows and you can't do a full house this pack has a million windows and for multiple different wall Heights as well and then it also has a bunch of Vet Clinic stuff and like some Community lot signs I like these little dog and cat statues a lot so if you are a person who likes to build and if you mostly just build houses you'd probably get a lot of use out of this if you like the blue Suburban Vibe this pack is like blue Suburban Heaven all of the wallpapers come in blue all the furniture comes in blue and this world brindleton Bay is easily one of my top five worlds out of all of the Sims 4 packs specifically these two lots I build on all the time all the time I really like it here in this world It just fits my build style really well and I think that the fall trees are really pretty I've always been a big animal person it's no surprise I have three cats in real life but cats and dogs to me is a must have it's like way at the top of the list honestly higher than get together is I'm putting it at number one for now and then we get Seasons which also is one of my top top top favorite favorite favorite Sims packs if you're going to buy just one Sims pack I would say that you should buy Seasons I never noticed that there's a Sim getting struck by lightning in the main promo image oh my God but the idea here with seasons is that it adds seasons and weather to the game there's something to be said about people thinking that Seasons shouldn't be a pack and it should just be base game but that is not the reality of the situation seasons has always been a pack in the Sims in like every Sims game ever I agree that it would be cool to have in the base game but that's just not the point of this video whenever I talk about Seasons being my favorite pack I get comments that are like well Seasons shouldn't be a pack yeah but it is so this is the world that we live in but anyway as far as gameplay goes I really feel like this pack completely changes the entirety of the game having weather all of a sudden makes the game so much more lively and realistic having the changes of Seasons helps with the passage of time making more sense in game the way Sims age up and the way their lifespans work it's kind of weird sometimes and I think that having seasons change alongside it helps it feel a little bit better one of the best parts is the whole holiday system so by default the calendar has a few holidays on it things like Winterfest and love day I will say it's kind of America and Christian Centric cuz it has like a fake Christmas and a fake Thanksgiving but you can add and delete holidays however you'd like to and you can completely customize holidays so you can make a holiday on any day and make whatever Traditions you want make it celebrated however you want so I might go in and add a Halloween or like a big summer blowout type of holiday if you wanted to make a holiday where your Sims fight people you could do that I mean you can literally do whatever you want this pack also has a new gardening career and truthfully season's kind of like bus gardening in general right now the whole Gardening Skill is totally messed up we all know it's super glitchy so I wouldn't let gardening entice you with this one cuz gardening just doesn't work right now but it also has scouts for children and teens and I really like the scouts after school activity I use that all the time as far as cast and build goes this has a lot of winterwear cuz obviously before this we didn't really have winter coats or anything so it adds a lot of clothing to fill that void it has some cute hairstyles stuff for all ages there's a beekeeping feature so there's beekeeping clothes I really like this little Christmas tree toddler outfit that they added and this pack shocker has some of my other favorite build Furniture the windows are kind of more of a Craftsman Vibe I would say it has a really fantastic window set it has some nice columns lots of Decor in this pack for Seasons as well so like little banners that you can change the Swatch of to fit different holidays it has some cute little toddler pools and a swing set as well it's got ice skating it has a new flower arranging skill it unfortunately does not have a new world which is like the main downside of this pack but I kind of think about it how this pack changes every other world completely so when they made this they had to go through and make like winter for every single world for example and it makes all of the worlds so much better and so much more lively that I can almost give it a pass for not having a world I would rather it have a world but again it is what it is and I just I like everything else from this pack so much and I cannot play without it so this one easily to me I think is the best expansion pack Way by far top top top of the list best expansion pack if you're going to get just one I would get this one you might feel differently but that's sort of how I feel about it and then the next one I feel kind of the opposite about this is get famous um get famous was like Peak Sims 4's flop era there was something going on this year when this came out where like all the packs had these disaster worlds they were like mistake ridden get famous as world is notoriously bad and I'll show you why in a minute but kind of the whole idea here with this one is to be famous so it adds a whole new fame system and you can build Fame from a few things being high level in any skill can help you be famous being a writer being a painter but more so being like an actor so it has a new active acting career which is a funny way of describing that but you literally go to the Sound Stage and you play as an actor in the game and it's kind of cool cuz you take these gigs and then you play different roles and the set changes it it's actually kind of a fun career the cast is fascinating because there's a combination of like cool trendy clothes but also costumes for all of the acting gigs so there's some really weird items of clothing ranging from like these wacky historical updos to like Chicken superhero costumes the build note is also kind of wacky because it has like three sets there's the literal set stuff where you've got green screens and cameras and lights and set pieces and then there's this like gilded horrible really fancy furniture set and these things all have a hot pink zebra Swatch and then there's kind of like a midcentury Vibe sort of set as well so it's just a a really strange combination I don't even want to talk about the world I ignore the fact that I'm playing here right now cuz I did bulldoze this lot but Delo Valley is I think the biggest flop of expansion pack worlds there was so much potential with the concept of this like fancy La World they could have put some beach Lots they could have given us some apartments I love this Hollywood Hills Vibe up here at the top but the problem is they did stuff like this Museum I'm warning you okay this will shock you they just I don't know it's so weird it's so weird these lots are all too big the whole area around it is like little little teeny tiny houses like you see in LA and then there's a 50x 40 lot this should have been like 5 20x 15 Lots I think this one's not even touching the road there's a whole Road beautiful Street there and this one's like this far away from it I hate when they do that and this house don't even get me started they literally forgot to add toilets in this house I don't know how this happened but look at this bathroom is this missing anything do you think I see a tub I see a shower there's a sink oh well there's no toilet okay let's look in this one uh shower tub sink no toilet down here on this side we've got a huge on Suite bathroom tub shower two sinks literally a whole section that could be perfect for a toilet still no toilet so for some reason the Bailey Moon family just doesn't use the bathroom they do have a toilet downstairs I'll give them that but just one so this has potential to be a really cool house but there's like these oversights that don't make any sense I will say one thing this pack has my favorite item in the entire game this is a shark Pond you can stock this with sharks and your Sims can die in there so that is the one Saving Grace of get famous the shark Pond and the acting career I use that shark Pond a surprising amount but I'm going to put get famous I'm not sure about just fine or not for me but if I put get to work down here I think get famous is worse than get to work so I'm going to put it not for me Island living oh my this one has the opposite problem that get famous has where the world is amazing but the game play kind of Falls flat I'm sorry but one of the main features being to sit back and relax is hilarious you're telling me one of the three main features of the pack is to do nothing but the gameplay here is is based around the island so you can help out with the town's people by like helping them with little tasks you can engage in the local culture and like go to the mini festivals and things like that and mostly just swim in the ocean the the big gameplay stuff is the ocean this is cool you can swim in the whole open ocean there's boats that you can use there's lots that are half on the water so you can build stuff on stilts if you want all of the cast is very Island Vibes obviously a lot of it is like swimwear focused or hot weather type of clothing the build mode is also very Island focused I think that one of the best places this pack shines is actually in the Landscaping it has some really lovely tropical landscaping and I use this stuff all over the place we also got things like pool loungers and pool towels for the first time truthfully I don't really use a lot of this furniture very much because I find a lot of the wood tones kind of hard to match with other things we also got a new kitchen set but not upper cabinets it has a couple of these shelves just these three like weird skinny shelves but no cabinet set that matches the counters and actually when the pack came out it didn't even have an island counter they had to make one because of how much backlash they got for it it was literally just the one counter so kind of a big yikes but it does have an island counter now it just didn't before and I guess the other big thing which for some reason is not in these promo images is that it adds mermaids so you can play as mermaid in this pack sort of like with aliens the mermaids aren't very good it's cool because you can be a mermaid but they don't have a lot of special stuff to them when you think about the other occults like the vampires and how they have that whole skill tree and all these different things they can do mermaids can't really do anything except like be a fish so I think they kind of fumbled that one I wish that they had done better I've always said that if they're going to go back and do an expansion pack refresh I'd love to see them do an island living refresh and like add more stuff to mermaids the world is really cool but if you're buying this pack you're probably just buying it for the world the gameplay is nice but it kind of feels like a game packs worth of gameplay it doesn't really have that one main feature that an expansion pack usually does it has a lot of like small side features and I guess that's because the main feature is the ocean and that's cool I like it but it's not as big as the other packs are I'd probably rank Island living somewhere in between pretty good and just fine but I'm leaning towards just fine right now maybe that's because I live in Florida and I don't care about having a beach that much I'd rather live somewhere else with my Sims but Island living isn't my favorite pack and don't get me wrong they all have pros and cons and they're all different for everybody so what I don't like about it you might love about it just bear that in mind the next pack we're going to talk about is discover University and this one I really really enjoy I think playing in college is surprisingly difficult in a good way it's actually hard to get your Sims through school especially if you have multiple Sims in one household and I wish that the Sims 4 was more difficult a lot of the time so I really enjoy that about this pack I think it's really cool how there's two rival schools I do wish that it was slightly less rabbit hole filled but saying that I hated the active class from The Sims 3 in The Sims 3 we had one active class and two inactive classes and I hated the active one so maybe I don't want that in The Sims 4 I don't know this pack has some really weird skills too like it has a new robotic skill where you can literally make a robot Sim and a robot Sim is basically an ult type and you can make them which is pretty interesting we've got things like pingpong we have a ton of new dorm style furniture so that's one thing that might be a pro or a con for you all of the furniture is kind of tucked into two different categories there's like really fancy University of bright Chester exterior items like these beautiful fancy old windows I use those all the time as far as furniture for that set goes we have a couple of things like a bookshelf one bed a fireplace but not a ton of it most of the furniture is more like this sort of Ikea Vibe and that I think is good that's what you need for dorms we also have some kind of weird modern windows that I never use I just don't care about these big wooden things we got a soccer ball we got laptops we got bikes for the first time in this pack one of the other big main features is living on campus with roommates and the roommate system is kind of strange so you can make a house that is marked as University Housing and the number of beds that you have determines how many roommates will live there and they all have like distinct personalities where some are messy and some repair things that break and some cook and just put like lobster on the coffee table and you can use that roommate system outs side of University if you want to I don't really do it cuz I don't find it that fun but it is an option for you the dorms are kind of ugly I'll just be honest but I still like to play in them and I think that playing with this pack is really fun the world of bright Chester isn't really all that useful if you're not playing with University it also has some kind of flop builds these two are some of my least favorite builds in all of the Sims for this one Larry's Lagoon oh my God this build is horrible I don't know what they were thinking and it's not as big of a deal anymore because everybody has access to the gallery before back in the day console players didn't have the gallery so it was even worse but come on what are you thinking and the whole inside empty completely empty this build just it makes me mad when I look at it and it does take a long time to play University I usually actually turn aging off when I play University but that's because I mostly play on short lifespan and if you tried to play University on short lifespan you'd be like dead by the time you finished cuz it takes like 3 weeks this pack is also very very young adult focused anyone of any age young adult adult or Elder could go to college but the stuff is very young adult focused and there's not anything for kids teens and younger which makes sense because it's for college age students but just something to keep in mind if you're looking for more kids clothing this is not the pack for that I'm going to put University up at pretty good cuz I do have fun with it I'll be honest I don't use this pack that often I don't have most Sims go to college but when I do I have a fun time with it and that brings us to Eco lifestyle where finally we are out of the Sims for flop ERA with builds this pack when it came out was extremely hated I got a lot of hate for liking this pack when it first released but I think that the community has kind of changed their mind this pack is about recycling it's about living off the land it's got things like solar panels and water collectors so you can be fully Off the Grid if you want to it's got some interesting skills as well you can make candles you can use the fabrication skill to build Furniture it has my favorite item the dumpster where you can dumpster dive you can also wo in the dumpster the big main feature though are the neighborhood action plans and that works by having your Sims vote on this community board and you can vote for things like maybe having an artsy community that gives you art skill boosts you could vote for we wear bags and everybody will have a bag over their head at all times in the community and you can use that in any world but if you're living in Evergreen Harbor you can vote on improvements to the town this is an example of that you can make votes for modern developments and like green improvements which will plant a lot of new plants it like paints some of the buildings it kind of like gentrifies some of the houses um I don't know it also takes like two weeks in game to finish but it's interesting and the furniture in this pack is so good I use the E lifestyle build stuff so often I'm not really a big modern house person but if you are this is going to change your life so many doors and windows so many it has some fantastic beds even for toddlers there's like a little canopy bed we've got huge sliding glass doors there's pretty chairs and couches and this actually isn't all of it because there's all of the fabrication stuff that your sim can make as well so you might have to use debug cheats to access those in build mode but they are so pretty it's so nice one of my favorite build mode packs to be honest the cast is pretty good too it has some nice hairs and some nice clothing not my favorite but it does the job and it kind of fits The Vibes of the pack we also got facial piercings for the first time in this pack so if you're looking for that kind of thing like a nose piercing we have those in Eco lifestyle so this one is good for a person who likes their Sims to be kind of crafty Evergreen Harbor is kind of a weird one too because it is a little bit ugly like some of these houses you can just tell from even far away that they're kind of ugly but it's cool how you can change it it also has these Community spaces and these can be grown and changed into a maker space or into a community garden and that's cool but it takes gameplay to get there the major Pro of this world is that it has two different apartment buildings so it's the first time we got Apartments outside of San myuno and they're both really small we have that one and also this apartment building and you know I love small apartments and then game I really desperately want more of them so if you're looking for more Apartments this is a good option but now that we have the rent pack I probably wouldn't tell you to buy this just for the apartments buy this if you like the idea of the changing the world and the cool crafty gameplay there are other packs that are better for apartments that just happens to be a plus of this one I like Eco lifestyle but I feel like the apartment thing used to be really carrying it for me I might even put it down at just fine but like ahead of Island living we're finally on the top row and we're going to talk about snowy Escape and I have to admit I have some bias here for snowy Escape because they asked me to do a couple builds that are in the world of this pack snowy Escape is kind of a weird one the game play might not be all that enticing to you it's kind of like Island living but the opposite cuz it's a Cold Mountain instead of a hot Beach this one is very Japanese inspired we have some really beautiful cast and build mode honestly some of the best cast and build in the whole game lots of really nice clothing for all ages and it's good for cold weather stuff too so if you're looking for more cold weather things this is a great pack for that the build items in this pack there's a huge window set there's some amazing Furniture it has some really fun things like the vending machines which can kill your sim that could be a good or bad thing I'm just saying for me it's good so I like them and there's a lot of them too and the main gameplay here they describe it as chasing your Thrills finding your Zen creating your sanctuary and defining your lifestyle that's a whole lot of words that say nothing basically you can ski you can snowboard and you can go to like a spa so we have this new Onsen lot type where they have a really beautiful hot spring you can like hike around this is Sims hiking that's one of the main features I don't know if that's interesting to you just having your Sims walk around but there are cool things to walk around and see the big thing I think mostly is is the thrill seeking skiing and stuff you can also climb the mountain there's a whole Mountain Expedition and a secret lot at the top when you get to it and that is really fun and you can die doing it because you can fall off one of the rock climbing walls and die I've never had a Sim die from that by accident but I have forced it before part of the issue with the gameplay of snowing Escape is that it's extremely tied to this world and you might have noticed this but the things that I like the most about Sims packs are when they're really versatile and they can be used in all of my households the top of my list are the three things that I use for every single Sim every time but if you wanted to play with snowy Escape you kind of have to come here because you can't ski elsewhere you can't hike elsewhere so it doesn't seamlessly mesh into every single one of my Sims households and to be honest I never have them ski I never come here that might be because of how I grew up like I'm from Florida we I we don't have mountains I've never been skiing like I don't I don't do or think about this so it's not that interesting to me but if you ski or you grew up skiing you might like it more I do love this world I love a lot of the things in it but it's not my favorite pack I did build three of these Lots I built this big mansion down here I built this starter home and I also built this family house so I feel weird about this one because I do really like it but I don't see it as like a must must must have it's fun if you do have it but it's not an everyday use for me I think I'm going to put it down at pretty good no do I want that ahead of Eco lifestyle oh no I'm putting it behind Eco lifestyle but above Island living I'm overthinking this I think after that we got cottage living and I am a little farm girl at heart I play so many little farm games stardew Valley coral island like Dreamlight valley I really love this kind of stuff in other games so it's fun to have farmy stuff in The Sims the whole core of this pack is living in the English Countryside on a little farm growing crops raising animals you can have sheep cows or chickens you can also befriend a fox and a bunny if you want to this one is fun The Vibes of this world are really fun the cottage core clothing is amazing some of the best cast in all the game I think at least in my opinion this might not be your Vibe but it is my vibe in real life I mean like this you could see this shirt being in this couldn't you this is totally my vibe the build mode is very British Countryside house so we have a nice collection of Windows the problem with this pack is that we have a few different window sets I like it best when they give us one window set with like 15 different windows in this one we got like four different window sets with a couple windows and that's not as good cuz you can't use them as much on a full house I need more window size variety but it does have some really nice furniture like cute cozy beds with floral print there's some nice brick wall paper apers some patterned wallpapers it has a lovely kitchen set it's got some really nice Landscaping that is unfortunately only in debug but it's so good like one of the best Landscaping sets in the whole game is in this Pack's debug obviously it's a farming pack and the Gardening Skill is like completely busted cuz all the plants keep breaking but hopefully that'll be fixed eventually it's not this Pack's fault I think that the giant crops in this pack are fine it's like the base game gardening that's broken but it does affect you if you're trying to play with this pack and you can't get get your crops to work because the whole skills broken so something to keep in mind there's also some fun little neighborly tasks kind of like Island living to help the other villagers there's contests for the best eggs and the best giant crops so that's a cute feature I really really love henford on Bagley I think this is one of the best worlds it's not that big but it's not small either it's got three worlds we have this pretty waterfall area there's like a Farmland area and a small town I wish it had a few more Lots but I've been thinking that about every single pack recently so it's not this Pack's fault I really really like cottage living it's one of my favorite expansion packs you can kind of tell what my vibes are just by how we're ranking all of these but I'd put cottage living up at very good I'm going to put it high on the list and then we have high school years which uh this one is a disappointment to me I thought it would be so good and I just the active High School is weird and I never use it but I'll walk you through what it comes with the whole idea of this pack is about being a teen so it's got an active high school so you can go to high school every day with your teenager and that comes along with a few different after school activities like football or the chess team you can go to prom there's an after school career day there's supposed to be a graduation ceremony I personally have only been to that once none of my Sims get invited to that anymore I the graduation has like always been broken since the pack came out for me I don't know why it doesn't work it's never worked the pack in general is kind of buggy it is weird also when you go to prom and like you can't really do much cuz it's so short so they kind of just stand there H I almost wish that some of this stuff wasn't an active career like if the prom they just went to it and I got popups kind of like how in The Sims 3 they had prom and they would go and then you would get like a notification that was like oh my God your sim had their first kiss at prom or oh no your sim tripped and fell so they're embarrassed at prom I'd almost rather have that than have the awkward half prom experience that this pack comes with the other big thing is it has a combination bubble tea and thrift store shop so there's a whole new thrifting thing where you can Thrift for clothing there's some special clothes that are just in that store there's a social media app called social Bunny and it's more like a real social media app so you can open it like a popup and read what people are typing of course it's the same few things over and over again but it is kind of cool and you can flirt with people or build friendship on there and it's kind of an effective way to passively build relationship in the game so like strategy-wise it is useful to have and use all of the cast is very teen focused and it's very trendy stuff which is kind of fun I like to have more things things like this I also love this because this is going to be such a time capsule in like 10 years we're going to look back and be like oh my God the clothes and high school years are so cringy but that's fun I love that about it cuz they're very very trendy right now it also has some nice new makeup and that is a first because normally packs have terrible new makeup but this one has some good things the build items I describe this pack as being more of a buy mode pack than a build mode pack so it does have some windows but not really stuff that I use very often it's mostly just a a few Necessities to build the exterior of a high school in kind of an art deco style emphasis on kind of the rest of it is mostly teenagers bedroom stuff and that is really nice there's a ton of new beds there's a ton of new Decor a few different little furniture sets with different themes lots of clutter and posters and stuff like that fairy lights canopies it's a really nice pack for teenage bedroom decor so if you like playing The Sims and playing with like small family households this is probably a good pack for you if you don't don't play with teenagers ever there is no reason to buy this but if you do play with Sims families and you often have teens in your house this is a good one I'll be honest I use the high school very rarely I'll be honest I probably send my Sims to active High School like twice in their teenage lifetime I don't go to it every day it's kind of repetitive and boring but it is nice to have as an option the world is really cool I'll give them that it's got three neighborhoods one is the high school so it's kind of a small world but we have a cute little downtown in this section and then across the river there's this little Fairgrounds and you you can ride the ferris wheel you can go in the cuddle carts you can buy ice cream and I do use that part a lot it's cute for going on dates and stuff I think the big issue with high school years is that I want it to be better than it is and there are a lot of things that I use about it just the main thing about it I don't use that much I'm torn between pretty good and just fine it's like right in the middle of this at the low end of pretty good and the high end of just fine I think as far as how often I use it I do use it more than these three but I don't know if it's actually better than Eco lifestyle you know what let's do it like this high school years just find Eco lifestyle pretty good that's my final say and you might feel differently about that but that's how I think I feel at least how I feel right now this could always change I don't actually know where I ranked it last year but that was the last one that we had in the previous ranking video the next three are all new packs so first we have growing together and growing together is about family gameplay and and playing with younger Sims essentially primarily focused around infants but also some things for children and toddlers this one has a lot of really seamless gameplay features that fit into all of my Sims gameplay so one of the big things is the new social Dynamic so your Sims might be jokesters or they might be close or they might be distant from their family then we have the new Milestone features which are the biggest deal for infants because as infants get Milestones they learn how to crawl and how to sit up and how to hold things and how to walk and as you're building them they can actually start to do new stuff like hold their own toys or eat finger food so it's really cool to play with infants with the Milestones it makes them so much more realistic and so much more lively I do play on short lifespan most of the time so most often I don't really get through most of the infant Milestones because there's just not enough time but if you play on Long lifespan or like with aging off you probably would really like this infants and toddlers also have quirks now in this pack so they're all kind of different you might have one who's a light sleeper or one who's a Messy eater one who cries a lot stuff like that adults can have a midlife crisis or get burnt out with this pack which is horrible that is a downside to me I hate the burnout future there's also a few new parties you can have baby showers and family reunions there's a new Rec Center Lot type which we'll get into in a second the cast is so my vibe it kind of has like like a grandma energy but in a good way with The Cardigans and and the like loose fitting pants it's just really cute and there's a lot of stuff for all ages in this one plus a ton of extra freckles and birth marks I don't really agree with these skin details being locked behind a pay wall I wish that everybody had these but as a very freckly person I think these are very fun to have the build mode items are also so good there's like more Craftsman stuff in this pack but in a different way than seasons has and there's some really nice stuff it also has a treehouse some kind of cool modern Windows this little owl thing is one of my favorite items kind of dumb to point out but it is cute mostly it's the front doors that I like the best about this pack though the build mode front doors are really nice the world that comes with this pack is called Sans sequa and it's kind of San Francisco inspired this one I really want to like this one because I love the idea of this pack but again I think it was kind of a flop like get famous where they have this city section but everything is so spread out and there's no actual density or way to live in the city they could have had a small apartment building like Eco lifestyle had but instead we got these like really distant lots and because it's all so spread out you can't ever see any Sims you go to the city and there's like nobody walking around this is kind of like a little suburban area and then this is a whole neighborhood around the rec center I actually did the builds for this world as well I built the rec center I built this house for this family and I built this blue Suburban starter home I feel strongly not just because of me but like because of everybody these builds are really good it's a nice world for the builds it's a nice world to play in it's nice to build in too cuz it's open there's lots of nice big grassy areas attached to streets you can kind of build any style here I just wish for gameplay that maybe it was a little bit smaller like like the lots and the neighborhoods were closer together they probably were trying to do a good thing by making it bigger so there's more room in the environment for you to spread out but I there's not enough lots to fill in that big space does that make sense still though growing together I think is one of the best packs I love having all of the gameplay features it's so good the build the cast the world it's good it's it's a nice pack and I use it all the time like literally every single Sim ever is affected by this pack it's kind of like seasons in that way where it's all encompassing if you are not a person who likes family gameplay this won't be fun for you but for me I use it all the time and then we move on to horse ranch and I truly did not think we would ever get a horse pack in The Sims 4 I was saying for years there's no way there ever going to make horses well they did make horses the horse cast works very similarly to cats and dogs so if you're familiar with how that works you can make the horses very customized the same way and the big gameplay here is just horses you can ride horses you can jump with horses you can compete in horse competitions but you can also make and sell nectar so basically you can like age wine but it's rated T14 so it's nectar there's mini goats and mini sheep which are kind of like chickens from cottage living but they're goats and sheep they're really cute they're kind of fun to have like look at this little thing do you see how tiny it is isn't that cute you can build barns you can build houses you can raise the horses if you are a person who likes horses you are going to love this pack I have had a lot of fun playing with this pack I'm not a horse girl okay I never have been I'm a big animal person though so I'm not surprised that I enjoyed it I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would but this also just isn't something that fits into my average gameplay like most of my Sims are not going to have a horse you need a lot of space and a lot of time to have a horse with how much work it takes to raise them it's kind of hard to do it and have a different job being a Rancher kind of has to be your job if you want to have a horse and I just don't want all of my Sims to have to deal with that plus I want to live in like San Muno and you can't have a horse in San myuno I guess you could but why would you saying that currently my legacy challenge in Evergreen Harbor has a horse anything's possible and I know I just criticized the previous World Sans sequa for being too vast and open but this is a good example of a time where it makes sense to be vast and open like these three lots are actually quite far apart from each other and this area of gallop and Gulch is very wide and there's a lot of trails to ride around but it makes sense to have wide vast trails in this farmy area it does doesn't make much sense to have wide vast areas in a tight-knit Suburban neighborhood you know this one's got three sections this part is more Farmland it's called Ryder's Glenn and then this part is the town of new Appaloosa which is kind of a cute reference to Appaloosa Plains The Sims 3 pets world and one of the other cool things is that the lots are actually kind of small which I typically prefer you can see right here on this one the lot itself is only 40x 30 but they've added this fenced in area in the back and there's like a horse ball over here so it kind of looks like that part of the land belongs to these Sims and all of the lots are like that there's also a lot of things like horse jumps and barrel racing practice dotted around the neighborhood so you don't have to have it on your lot you could use the ones that are out and about and I really appreciate them doing that I forgot to show you the cast and the build mode stuff I got to ahead of myself the cast from this pack is very Yeehaw like extremely Yeehaw lots of leather and flannels and and stuff for working on the farm a lot of denim items as well but there is a good mix of stuff for kids if you need it and the build mode also very yeeha but in a really fun way I like this a lot more than I thought I would and there's a bunch of beds in this pack too it's all very wooden and very rustic we even have a kitchen set so if you're looking for that sort of rustic Vibe you can very easily achieve it in this one this rocking chair is one of my favorites in the whole game now and surprisingly These Bricks I use these bricks a lot too and if you do buy this pack and you're a builder there's some really nice debug l Landscaping in this one too so you won't see that in the preview but with the debug cheat there's some good stuff in there I really like horse ranch and I think it's one of their better packs but it's not my favorite I'm kind of Tor in between very good and pretty good but I think just because I don't use it that much I'm going to put it down it pretty good I actually honestly like all of the Sims 4's expansion packs I just like some more than others and that's okay I don't think that any of them are bad you might but I I think they're all at least fine and that leaves us with just one pack left to go it is the Sims 4 for rent and this one I think is kind of controversial I'll be completely honest there are parts of it that are kind of buggy it's definitely gotten better since release but on release it definitely had a lot of lag issues and some bugginess as a person who primarily likes to build in The Sims this pack is a complete GameChanger for me not even necessarily to play in the apartments but just having the ability to build custom apartments and custom tow houses is so fun this is something that I have been dreaming about since the Sims 4 first came came out this is like really and truly a dream pack for me as a person who likes to build if you don't like to build I don't think you're going to like this but the amount of customization that is possible is so cool I really have had the most fun I have ever had playing the Sams by building apartments and Tow houses with this pack in just the last couple of months I love this pack a lot of the bugs come in with some serious lag problems when you're building residential rental Lots so one of the things that I've been doing to counteract that is just not turning it into a rental lot until the very end so I'll build it as just a regular house and then the last thing I'll do is make it a rental and then assign the units so that helps because it limits the lag until just the very end of the build I know it sucks to have to find workarounds for a new pack like this but that's what I've been doing the main gameplay here is either playing as a landlord or as a tenant and I got to be honest I don't care about being a landlord I'm not interested in doing it it's not fun for me I don't play with it I have played a bunch as a tenant though cuz I like the idea of my Sims living in apartments and we just don't have that many of them and it's nice it's cool how things break and you can fix them I like those special events that can pop up this whole pack is sort of Southeast Asian inspired so all of the cast and the build and the worlds are inspired by that there's some pretty nice pieces of clothing and also some nice stuff for all ages my favorite shirt in this whole pack is actually for toddlers why can't I find it but there's a banana shirt for toddlers and it's so cute it is so cute there's some really nice dresses there's some beautiful hairstyles this one is what I wish my hair looked like this one right here so I really like the cast in this pack they a ton of Windows and Doors in this pack as well so great if you're a builder a lot of the furniture is very colorful and vibrant and patterned that could be a good or bad thing for you it depends what your build style is like I'll be honest I was a little bit disappointed by the world in this one I feel like it has a lot of potential that just isn't met first of all it's really small it's just two neighborhoods there's only nine Lots total which is the same size as a couple game pack worlds I will say a couple of these lots have multiple Apartments so I guess this one is like three lots when you think about it but considering there's only nine lots and three of them are empty I know that they're probably doing that on purpose to give you a place to build when you first start playing cuz it's kind of a build pack but it also really sucks for people who want to play the game that there's only two units that have apartments and and there's not really a lot of places to just start playing as a landlord you have to build something to be a landlord if you want to so there's no easy access for that they did these Lots themselves as well instead of hiring simmers which isn't really the best they're not terrible but they're not great either I just think that this world could have had some more lots and it would have made a big difference maybe even like two more Lots or something something simple but it would have helped to have a little bit more one of the other main features is the night market there's this beautiful market area down here and it's supposed to be this bustling Night Market but because it's a Sims 4 and there's no Sims around there's like you and the vendor and that's it so it feels kind of awkward and not like a bustling busy Market at all so while I love the rentals aspect of this pack I think the rest of it is only fine I feel really torn about this because I I'm serious when I say you probably should only buy this pack if you are a builder and it definitely has its issues but I love it so much my personal bias is shining through I want to put it up at very good just because of how much fun I've had with it it really is one of my favorite packs but I understand that it's got some problems I just think it's so fun I really do so if you're thinking about buying it just keep in mind that it has some problems it's really bad that it does but I I still like it I'm sorry it's so bad I shouldn't admit that but I do I like it and I think that is my final tier list for all of the Sims 4 expansion packs I'm looking at my own tier list from last year and look at this I put Seasons cats and dogs and City living at necessary get together University and cottage living at very good Eco lifestyle and Island living were pretty good get to work snowy escape and high school years were just fine and get famous was not for me interesting it's funny how people's opinions change over time so see this is not like a end all be all list okay even I don't agree with myself anymore so don't be offended by my rankings okay this video has been very long but hopefully it was at least a little bit helpful for you if you've been thinking about buying any of these packs and if you do buy any please use somebody's Creator code my code is just Lil simsy it is a really good way to help financially support your favorite creators let me know in the comments what your favorite expansion pack is it'll probably help people down below to discuss what they're trying to get because then they can get some more opinions and let me know if I should make a video like this for the other packs again we've got a couple more stuff packs now and we also have a bunch more kits now we haven't gotten any new game packs though since I last ranked them we had no game packs last year I've been talking for long enough so on that note I'm going to end this one right here thank you for watching have a wonderful rest of your day and I'm going to catch you all tomorrow okay bye everybody oh my God this is a multiple hour recording I'm so sorry this might be like an hour long YouTube video or Worse oh no why do I talk so much [Music]

Channel: lilsimsie

Views: 258,427

Keywords: the sims, ts4, ts3, sims 4, sims 3, fixer upper, lilsimsie, kayla sims, kayla, gameplay, challenge, pg, family friendly

Id: 8DCarCJ8Bak

Length: 51min 2sec (3062 seconds)

Published: Thu May 02 2024