In keeping with my recent itch to scratch the surface of some older Sims games, I found myself booting up The Sims 3 again. Now, I feel obligated to admit that The Sims 3 is easily my least favourite game of the franchise. The graphics are terrifying, the Sims look like freaky deformed potatoes, the animations are robotic and clunky, and much-loved features like the open world and create-a-style only made the game an unstable mess. Not to mention I find a lot of the gameplay people praise it for is actually quite one-dimensional and shallow.
Now, with that out of the way, we can get to what’s good about it and what made me decide to play it again after all these years. I love The Sims 4 Cottage Living but it made me miss horses all that much more. Horses are, perhaps, the only thing The Sims 3 did really well and I wanted to experience that again. So after jumping through a million hoops to make sure the game would even run at all on my new high-end gaming laptop, I could get it to run… okay. It’s mostly pretty smooth but the open world does still cause it to lag up a bit here and there.
I made my Simself and started a “legacy” on the largest lot in Sunset Valley, beginning my new life in a tiny shack. My Lifetime Wish was to be an Animal Rescuer so I quickly acquired quite a lot of pets from the shelter. I also started working on my riding skill in order to start adopting wild horses and maybe even tame a unicorn one day. In the process of bringing my equestrian dreams to life, I met a Sim named Gage Briody, fell in love, and married him. His Lifetime Wish was to become a Creature-Robot Cross Breeder… whatever that is. Apparently, it’s the top of the Science career track so he got a job at the lab.
Soon after, we unexpectedly found out we were having a baby… make that two babies, actually. Yup. Twins. I hadn’t planned on continuing my legacy until much later in life but now I had two daughters. Okay then. Somehow, we managed to raise two kids in our little shack with a bunch of animals and pursue our careers at the same time. Gage gained promotions quickly and I finally adopted my first wild horse and started entering show jumping competitions with him. We sunk most of our money into partnering with local businesses so our daughters wouldn’t need to worry about money in the future.
Another horse, a cat, two dogs, and a unicorn later, and Gage was a level 8 scientist and I was a level 8 horsewoman. Our twins were teenagers and we decided to pull them out of Smuggsworth Prep School so they could have a normal teenage experience, like prom. We worked hard during the week but made time every Thursday (which was the seasonal holiday) to do something together as a family, like attend the seasonal festivals at the park or have a family beach day. Sometimes we’d catch a movie and then pick out a tasty treat at the Deliciously Indulgent Bakery, a disgustingly overpriced Store venue that I bought anyway because I hate having money, I guess.
So what are my final thoughts on The Sims 3 after spending so much time playing it again? Well it’s definitely a more enjoyable experience if you have the hardware for it and if you’re tech-savvy enough to know how to tweak the game files to allocate more RAM to the game and to make it recognise your graphics card. When the game runs the way it’s supposed to, it can be pretty fun but when it comes down to it, I shouldn’t need 2021 hardware and advanced computer knowledge to be able to run a game from 2009. That alone still pegs The Sims 3 as the worst in the series for me. However, since I do happen to have the hardware and computer know-how to run it, I probably will still continue to play it every now and then when I’m feeling nostalgic.
And I must admit, I’m excited to see where my daughters take their lives when they’re all grown up. I wouldn’t mind seeing a few features of Generations added to The Sims 4, like proms, more after-school activities, and a boarding school system. I do all these in The Sims 4 anyway using some creativity and imagination but integrated gameplay would be pretty nice.
At least someone actually REPLAYS the game before saying “IT’S ALL PERFECT AND ALL THAT MATTERS TO ME!”.
Every game has it’s flaws and yes: Sims 4 is by far not perfect. But Sims 3 wasn’t perfect as well, especially when it comes to the graphic issues stated in the artice. Dogs and cats looked like freaking post-apocalyptic mutants from the Fallout series on my not-so-bad PC when I got the expansion pack back then.
Thanks for the article! Many people should really put their nostalgia-blended glasses off.
Visuals is a matter of personal preference, sure TS3 has aged a bit in that aspect but I’m still personally in love with its graphics and how ahead of its time that game was.
Now what TS3 excelled in was its gameplay depth as opposed to TS4’s hollow and boring gameplay mechanics and this is why, it’s still considered as one of the best games in the franchise. Sure TS4 is a much prettier game, but what’s the point of good visuals in a game if there’s no actual depth to keep you engaged in it?
Visuals is a matter of personal preference sure TS3 has aged a bit in that aspect but I’m still personally in love with its graphics and how ahead of its time that game was.
What TS3 excelled in was its gameplay depth as opposed to TS4’s hollow and boring gameplay mechanics and this is why, it’s still considered as one of the best games in the franchise. Sure TS4 is a much prettier game, but what’s the point of good visuals in a game if there’s no actual depth to keep you engaged in it?
I actually have found the sims 4 much more engagin than the sims 3 ever was. It has tons of features but at the end of the day you could never really play with them all because it was so poorly optomised. I’ve been back to play the sims 3 in recent times and it can’t hold my attention like the sims 4 does.
The sims community is so big and we all differing opinions, for me personally the sims 3 is certainly the worst in the franchise.
Sims 3 has better AI, more events and small details that sims 4 still doesn’t have to date. Actual aspirations and whims that make the game fulfilling to play. Sims 4 has set dressing and pretty sims Next.
Like I said I much prefer the Sims 4 and each to their own.
Agreed. I found Sims 4 to have a lot more going for it and it can keep me engaged for hours. With all of the events, places that I can visit, being able to play as different sims to explore their stories, the visuals were just the dressing on the cake. Sims 3 is just to bland to me anymore.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who felt this way. After playing Sims 4 for so long, I just can’t get back into Sims 3.
nice peek back
I guess we can prematurely say that TS4 is better than TS3, because it’s still improving. The total costs for TS3 packs and store items were also way more expensive than what TS4 costs right now. If there were no more refreshes, I would put both games on the same tier. Neither have achieved how popular TS2 was in the gaming industry. That game competed with games like GTA, Half-life, etc. for a few years even after TS3 came out.
Will Wright created The Sims to be a satire of real life and so that players are an outside perspective to the silliness. A brain like his was essential to how funny it was. The current Sims team need to get in touch.
Basically, TS4 (2021) and TS3 level out. TS2 is the unbeaten life sim game. I played all. Everything on the Sims 3 store costs approximately $74,486.50. As for DLC/the game itself, the total is $439.81. That’s insane and the biggest turn-off to Sims 3. Sims 4 seems to be on the same route.
If they remove The Sims from their title, these two games wouldn’t even be heard of. They continue to piggyback off what Will Wright did with TS-TS2.
Everything on Store is 74.486? Lmao stop copy pasting that absolute lie that someone started spreading a few years ago. Count again and you’ll see that the number is MUCH smaller. Besides, we were literally able to get SimPoints for free by watching ads/redeeming pack codes. We didn’t have to buy the points.
If you played the games in its prime and lived in the US, you could watch ads to get free simpoints. The pack codes were technically points that you did pay for. Even if you remove just the world sets(since the worlds could be bought at any irl retail store), it still comes to more from those microtransactions than to buy all the sims 4 packs currently. If a person goes in now to start up their collection in the sims 3, they either have to rely on the pirated/turned into cc version of the sets or buy all the packs and then pay for more simpoints. Sims 3 store was way more shady than the pack settup of 4
It’s so bizarre how some people who have sims 3 as their favourite game get so offended at someone not liking it as much.
I’m primarily a sims 2 player, but I don’t think I’ve ever got mad at someone for saying they couldn’t enjoy it because everyone has different taste. I can definitely see why younger people can’t get into sims 2 and 3, especially when it comes to representation.
Here in Australia the gold worlds (sims 3) cost $40 AUD and the sets were $20 AUD, so it did get really pricy.
I strongely disagree. The Sims 3 gameplay is in NO WAY shallow or one dimensional. As to lag…use NRAAS mods and your game runs fine.
I switch between sims 3 and 4 all the time and 3 had at least personality. Sims 4 lacks personality.
There were certain things in generations I loved about sims 3, but otherwise didn’t care for it that much. I feel both sims 3 and 4 lost personality after sims 2
I’m not going to either disagree or agree with any of the opinions presented in this article because I 100% think the author is allowed to have theirs without being attacked.
However, I do generally dislike this article overall. I don’t want to come across as a negative Nancy or be offensive to the author in any way, shape or form, but I have read their past writings and I unfortunately think this is one of their weakest.
You simply cannot revisit a past game of the sheer size of The Sims 3 and have your final write-up be just seven paragraphs long. That is way too short to give any in-depth perspective on the game in question, which now only worsens the controversy around this article online: there’s just so little evidence of proper research (which I’m sure the author has done) that people will cherry-pick anything from the few sentences that do give some reasoning. And in those few sentences, a bias towards The Sims 4 is extremely visible. The article reads as unreasonable and rushed and it doesn’t do this site and this author any justice.
Because, once again, I have read some of their other writings in the past, and those were honestly really fun and super cute! SnarkyWitch is a worthy addition to your team, I truly think so, but I think this article could have used a little more proofreading and editorial work. 🙂
Of course it’s “bias” this is an opinion piece, it’s completely subjective and is about someone’s personal taste; it doesn’t need to be in depth or cover everything about the sims 3.
I don’t know why some people get so upset, that there are those in the community that disliked the sims 3, I don’t know how it impacts someone that a person doesn’t share the same taste.
My personal favourite is sims 2, but I completely understand younger people struggling to play it because of lack of story progression, static lot times, aging graphics. I can’t still love the sims 2 best even if others don’t.
If did a little bit of research before making an article, you’d know that CASt and open worlds do not cause the lag themselves. It’s the poor optimization. And saying “horses are perhaps only thing TS3 did well” is just not it. There are a lot of departments that the game is excellent at.
Hi Ella, thanks for your feedback. As for research, I played The Sims 3 for about five years, so pretty much the full length of its run. 🙂 I got it on launch day and played it right up until The Sims 4 launched. It’s difficult to condense five years’ worth of my experiences into one article like this so I instead decided to focus on this particular save that I played for several months recently, instead. And you’re right. The game is poorly optimized, including in areas of open world and CASt, which is a shame because were the game actually stable, it could be a lot of fun. Unfortunately, it just isn’t for me, despite so many years of trying to convince myself that it was, and going back to it for several months to try and give it a second chance.
Always appreciate respectful feedback!
Sims 3 did an extremely poor job with showing other cultures. Since both packs with other cultures(World Adventures & Island Paradise) push the whole tourism aspect pretty hard and don’t try as hard to showcase the countries outside of a tourism light. Also you had to pay extra to make it well.
Then we have occults, sure we have great variety, but many of them are pretty shallow. Vampires required 2 packs and were still pretty shallow; Werewolves were just outright boring and shallow;Merfolk were alright just slightly more shallow than in 4; Witches were alright; Zombies were eh unless you bought the plants vs zombies collab stuff in the store/from the deluxe edition; Can’t say much on Genies, Imaginary friends or many others as I have yet to own the packs via steam; Fairies & plantsims seemed like an exception since they were pretty fun and had indepth gameplay.
Aliens in 3 were overly complex for sims just from another world. I honestly prefer the version of them in 4, even if I don’t have GTW.
I couldn’t agree more with this article. I’ve played Sims 3 for quite some time before Sims 4 came out, and although Sims 4 had an incredibly rocky start, the game did persevere and became a fairly good game. After playing Sims 4 for literally over 3000 hours in total since I’ve owned the game, I simply cannot go back to Sims 3. Sims 3 just isn’t as fun to me as Sims 4 is, and with all Sims 4 has become, I have really no real reason to return to Sims 3.
Also, after reading a lot of these comments, some of you really need to grow up and realize not everyone will share your opinion. You’re free to like, or love, Sims 3 as much as you want, but there’s no reason to attack or criticize someone for simply having a different opinion. I’ve seem how toxic some of you are over somebody else liking Sims 4 over anything else, and there’s no reason for that high level of toxicity over an opinion. Grow up and let people enjoy their games, or, if you’d like, cry some more over someone else having a separate opinion apart from your own. You’re only embarrassing yourselves in doing so.
Disagree: sims 4 may have better graphics but sims 3 have the smaller details that the sims 4 lack, charm, personalty, and consequences.