izigame.me

TL;DR: This pack comes with a lot of great assets that have nice visual synergy with a variety of those in other packs, letting you really theme an area. The bonus income from running your hotel chain is nice, and "managing" your chain is a neat side project. It is a bummer that you can't do multiple chains, and there are a few weird choices with the rating system, etc. Overall, I would say this is a good supplementary pack, and I wish the mechanics could optionally be carried over into some other packs with hotel buildings. I recommend picking this up on sale and/or as part of a bundle
So, this expansion is...alright!
I like the concept. Managing a hotel chain in your city is a neat idea; however, in execution, there are a few odd elements to me that drag things down a tad...only a tad, though....well..maybe slightly more than a tad...
Ok, ok, to start, there's a weird visual thing with the coloring. It can get a little weird in how it is applied to certain buildings, and I also don't like how I can't have multiple chains. One company just has a monopoly on all hotels. It is a bit weird. You pick a color and logo for your chain, and then it just is everywhere whether it fits the theme or not. I would think the branding of a tropical seaside resort hotel would be different than that of a log cabin in the middle of alpine wilderness, right? Alas, you can't have different chains, so you can't have different color pallets or branding. Unfortunate.
There's also some strange stuff when it comes to how you level up these buildings with regards to what needs to be near them. The requirements for some hotels necessitate these large forests or business complexes around them--and I mean right around them. This is fine if those are the types of hotel districts you're going for...but, even in real life, not every good hotel has a million things surrounding it. A lot of hotels--good hotels, even--might only cater to one big thing, like a major themepark. This is especially the case when you're talking about resort hotels--the retreats! Around the average hotel, you'll have some amenities sure; but, if it is supposed to be a remote getaway, I shouldn't have to surround the place with a load of offices, shops, and other crap the point that the business itself just disappears into the mess. A lot of hotels in real life aren't necessarily near anything, and how often to you see serene getaways in the middle of an office park or the middle of downtown? ...exactly.
Gripes aside, valid as they may be, this pack does add a neat source of revenue and a light management minigame of sorts, and what it adds can really help in a pinch and add character to your communities. The assets look great overall and establish some interesting visual differences from your growables, etc. There's a lot of utility with the cabin/wilderness hotels, which work well alongside some of the other buildings of that theme introduced from other expansions, like the Parks DLC. There's also all of these resorts that look great next to the Seaside Resorts pack or in a casino district of your own imagination.
On that note, I do wish there was more direct DLC inter-compatibility with this game because this pack in particular introduced an opportunity for it. For instance, in the Seaside Resorts pack and a few others, there are hotels and motels included as parks and unique buildings. It would be neat if they had a toggle button to convert them into functional hotels, like these. I know it is easier said that done because, well, they did this whole system where you have to hit certain thresholds of stuff to level up your individual hotels...but come on. They're meant to be hotels and you have a hotel DLC that adds functional hotels. It would just be nice if that were a thing that didn't require mods is all.
To that point, I'm sure mods pick up a lot of the slack for this DLC, fixing a chunk of what issues I may have. Still, if you don't want to play with mods or can't for whatever reason, it would be nice to see base game features like the ones I've mentioned. There are definitely improvements that could be made here, and I just don't think the pack lands as well as it should. For what it is worth, though, I do think this improves the base game, and I do make use of it in almost any build I make. It works in spite of itself, really. It's good...but it could've been great.
With that final note in mind, I recommend picking up this pack on sale and/or as part of a bundle.
I may have come off a bit harsh in this review, but I do actually recommend this pack...just maybe not as your number one priority...