izigame.me

The TS4 base game is free. You may look at it and figure that for a free game, surely it can't be that bad. But once you start playing, you will immediately begin to notice the cracks. Unlike previous Sims games, TS4 lacks depth and engaging gameplay, making the base game feel like an unfinished demo. Travelling anywhere requires loading screens, relationships are shallow, and the sim AI is frustrating and annoying. There is so little to do in this game. And naturally, you are going to begin to look at the packs, which the launcher advertises whenever you open the game.
Buying packs is expensive. There are so many that it can be overwhelming to pick, especially since many of them seem like they add essential features that you need. And worst of all, purchasing these packs will not fix your game. It will actually make it worse. For every tiny bit of gameplay you will also have to put up with more annoyances, longer loading screens, and more bugs. And there will be many bugs. Some of them are bad enough to corrupt save files and crash the game. But because packs are so expensive, you try to convince yourself that it isn't so bad. You may even spend more money, and feel more indebted to this game. How could these packs be so expensive and so shallow, so broken? You may think it is your fault, that you are missing something, that you made the wrong purchases. And so it looks like the only escape from the hole is to dig deeper.
EA is a company that does not care about this game. TS4 has so many game breaking bugs, and packs that have been broken since their release years ago. They have a long history of ignoring player complaints, refusing refunds, and continuing to push new content no matter the backlash. They have no accountability, because this game is too big for a few players to hold them responsible. Every trailer hypes up every new pack as a must buy, and after release EA goes radio silent until the next new pack, leaving players to struggle with their newly broken game, because each patch breaks things further.
TS4 is 10 years old. It is not going to get any better. If you are in the market for a life simulation game, then you should look at any of the recent newer entries to the genre. If you download the base game, even though it is free, it will tempt you to buy these very well advertised packs that will break your game. The game engine was terrible to begin with, and piling more content on a broken foundation only makes things worse.
There are two positives to this game: first, there is a very engaging build mode, and it's quite fun to design different houses in this game. There are still bugs, but they're minimal if you don't have a lot of packs, and you can take some beautiful designs and share them on the public gallery for others to download. Second, TS4 has a huge dedicated modding community, so if you're playing on PC and can mod your game then you can get so much engaging and interesting content for free thanks to the work of these talented players. I don't think they're enough to make this a good game, but you may feel differently.
If you already own the game and are thinking of buying a pack, three rules to follow: 1) look up several gameplay videos. Make sure they're complete, with no cuts to hide bugs or annoyances. There's a million different Sims channels on Youtube, so do your research. 2) Never buy a pack full price. There are enough sales that you can wait until it's at least half off. 3) NEVER preorder a pack. They will try to entice you with exclusive content, but it is not worth it. New packs are always broken and may not get fixed for months, if at all.
But if you don't own this game, don't get it. The sunk cost fallacy is the main reason for this game's success, and EA have very good advertisements and a huge online community to encourage you to spend a little more. Maybe this time the game will be worth it. Maybe this time they'll be different. But after 10 years of consistency, maybe its time to accept that there never was a good game here, and it's time to let go.