EA was kind enough to give us a review code of The Sims 4 Seasons, so we are able to show you some of the features before you buy it.
Sadly we didn’t have a lot of time to play with the pack this time, so we made a selection of things we think are interesting for you to see.
Create a Sim won’t be covered in this review, as we feel the team did a pretty good job of that themselves in their live stream – link at the end of this post.
Seasons
The most obvious thing to write about in this review is Seasons. When you start a new save, you get to choose in which season you would like to begin.
Each season has its own set of weather types that are most common for that season, as well as environmental changes.
All the worlds behave differently in all the seasons. Oasis springs won’t have as much snow as other neighbourhoods. At least during winter I didn’t have snow in Oasis Springs, but I won’t say it won’t happen at all. The other worlds do have snowy weather more often. Below you see the difference between Oasis springs and Brindleton bay during Winterfest
Garderning
Gardening has been overhauled during the last update. But with seasons it gets an even bigger overhaul, because the (harvestable) plants react according to the season! When they grow, and when they bloom or give harvestables will now all be determined by the season. If you want to bypass this and have the plants grow in every season, you’ll need to grow them indoors – you could even build a greenhouse using the new glass roofs (also included in this week’s free update).
Previously mostly pointless but pretty, the flowers in the game now have a bit more purpose as well. You can gift them on love day, or you can arrange them into bouquets. Arranging is a new skill that you can work on to get better and better bouquets.
Careers
There’s two new “careers” in this pack. The quotation marks there are not a slight on the second “career” because in terms of gameplay it’s very much a fully fledged career path – it’s just that it’s for kids!
But first, for adults there is a new career to go with the Gardening overhaul. The gardener career has two branches – botanist and floral designer – which focus on the gardening and flower arranging skills respectively.
Something that was introduced with The Sims 4 City Living were the careers that are a bit more flexible. You can choose each day if you just go to work, or work from home and get certain tasks. The Gardener career has this same system and the tasks from home range from buy a seed packet to researching plants.
Scouting
Scouting is the after school activity added for children and teens, and as mentioned above in terms of the way it plays it’s a lot like a career, just a bit less linear.
The kids can earn badges by completing certain tasks. When they are currently doing a task that earns them points for a badge, a small icon will pop over their head showing which badge.
You can view their progress on the scouting badge board. There are 9 badges to be earned and they are the same for children and teens. Scout meetings don’t seem to have much effect from what we can see so far, but your Sim will go away for a few hours to their meeting.
Other gameplay
We have seen how holidays work in the live stream from The Sims (link to it at the end of this post). But with it, there is something fun for kids to do as well. At the crafting table, they will be able to craft now, instead of only draw. They can craft stuff for specific holidays, or just season general. This will give your family house a new dimension to decorate your house with!
Build/buy
There is not a whole lot of new items in this expansion pack, but what there is, is very usable! There are no new floors, roof textures (although, we got 6 new roof textures with the update before Seasons, so who’s complaining). There are 3 new wall coverings, a very good range of windows in the same style, new front doors as well as an inside door.
Of course there is the new swing, but there is only one of them as well as a sprinkler to play in but, there are new beds! 3 even!
Something that can also influence your build, but is a mix between gameplay and build/buy, is the decorations. There is a new item, “The Attic Stack Decoration Box” that lets you select decorations for your house. If there is a holiday going on, there is a fixed decoration type for that holiday and you can decorate it all at once, or you can select everyday decorations and decorate your fence, the eaves, the friezes, the spandrels and foundation. And each of them can be done separately, making is super customizable for each build or holiday.
What I really miss though in build/buy, is the option to change seasons in build mode. During winter or early spring, the plants will be dead looking, making it hard to landscape your garden in those seasons. So you either have to wait until it’s summer or you have to just guess what will look good. This is something I hope will get an update in the future. Or that they give the option to toggle all season effects off in build mode. But the future will tell. For now, I would suggest you start with summer if you want to just build.
Also good to consider, decorations on the house do show up on the screenshots in The Gallery, but do not transfer if you place the lot.
Conclusion
This is a huge expansion pack, however it doesn’t bring much in regarding build/buy – and it’s even less in build than in buy. But this is more than compensated for by the customisation of the decorations on houses as well as the other decoration options, the flowers from flower arranging and the kids’ crafts.
But we think EA missed a trick with the fact that you can’t change seasons in build mode, to get that right season for your plants – this would be an awesome quality of life addition for builders, hint hint!
The gameplay is amazing and gives your Sims a whole range of new activities. Most of which I haven’t been able to try yet!
I think this expansion pack is a great deal, but if you don’t like the idea of changing seasons in your game, and just want new build items, then this is obviously not the pack for you. For those that love Create a Sim and/or just playing the game, it’s amazing!
And don’t forget if you want to see a whole load of detail on this pack including Create-A-Sim, watch back last week’s live stream on the official The Sims Twitch stream.
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