I started playing about 2-3hrs ago, maybe earlier, my first impressions are this:
Backstory: Playing as a family of 8 (7 sims and a dog), in Brindlton Bay. The family did not have a garden before and was kind of boring to the point that I was considering killing off this long legacy story, The family had completed most collections and had over 2 million simoleons in the bank.
Starting the game:
I started the game in Spring, and have gone for each season lasting 14 days. The family lost 2 million simoleons but quickly made it back from their jobs and authenticating artifacts, a little too quickly in my opinion. Money certainly is far easier to earn now than before the pack came out. what used to take a few sim weeks, instead took 4 and a half sim days to make back.
So once, I stopped watching the rain and fixing my sims clothing, the gameplay became kind of fun. I started a garden out in the open and brought in Patchy to assist, my family other than the two kids are level 10 in everything. Anyway, I started out with one little thing for garden, and evolved into various plants. I've gotten most of my plants to evolve to the nice stage and I found that if I spent the time talking to the plants they were more inclined to evolve than those that I didn't talk too.
I do agree with Playalot, in that there is less maintenance of the plants, like less clearing of weeds, I don't know about watering yet as it's been a rainy spring so haven't had to water plants yet apart from when I first planted them.
When Patchy has nothing to do, he will come inside and dance to the stereo or play on the computer like any other NPC will do when they come over. so if you don't want him inside then lock off areas, but not had a lot to do with him yet.
I enrolled my kids into scouts and we are at the second scout level and working our way to the third level. This I'm finding a bit of a challenge, as I can't repeat the same activity for a couple of days, if I want it to count.. still working on the ins and outs of it so it could just be that I wasn't doing it for long enough.
The Holidays are interesting, we had our first holiday (season premiere of a game of thrones like show), which was fun, we had to watch tv and then had a couple of whims to blog about it and talk about it to other sims, again a little tedious but kind of fun for a quick event.
Skill Gains: Learning from books is kind of slow, even if you have the speed reader trait, it's still very slow, if you try and learn video games from the computer, it's a bit hit and miss, sometimes it's fast, other times it's really slow. Been far too wet to go out into the world and try some of the outdoor activities.
Umbrella's: They are a pain sometimes, if my sim goes to stand outside in the rain ready to go to work they won't put their umbrella up, even if directed, but if they come home from work again they occasionally put their umbrella up. so my sim goes to work soaked and uncomfortable or comes home dripping wet cause they don't want to put their umbrella up. The umbrella designs are cute, but the umbrella action of it going up to protect the sim from the wet weather, needs a little fine tuning.
I'm not sure if this is just my game, or another of those bugs, but sometimes when someone comes home from work or school and I direct them inside either by telling them where to go or by clicking that little house button you see on their picture, they will go to the spot you directed, then walk right back outside to the front of the pathway, to then walk right back to the spot I directed them to in the first place, the only way to cancel that bit of randomness is to direct them to do something else, like homework or dancing, anything quick and near the front door.
The clothes are great, but I've found my sims don't automatically change into they warm or cold gear unless directed (livestream suggested they automatically change when they walk outside), still figuring it out, so it's possible that I'm missing the obvious.
I am really liking it so far, currently on day 12 of 14, of spring, so will update again when I get to the next season.
Update 1: Day 5 of 14 of Summer, Brindlton Bay is very wet and very humid, think tropical type area, the thunderstorms seem a little violent, and have made me jump a couple of times cause they were quite loud compared to the rest of the scenery.. also partly because I had my computer sound turned on for a change, so wasn't expecting it.
The plants are loving the rain and storms and are evolving fairly quickly when they are soaked in the rain.
Currently attempting to romance Patchy, so we shall see how that pans out..
Scouts are getting there, finding the outdoors badge to be the trickiest due to the weather, out of 9 badges, my child sims have all but 3 of them, so getting there.
Best tips for the scouts, is when doing fitness combine swimming and dancing, socialising is easy and you can get the good deed one fairly easily at the same time, just do a mix of friendly and funny interactions and stop to check your progress after every eight or so actions, to be sure they are counted. the gifting is also fairly easy if combined with the creative badge, get the crafting table and craft as much as you can, then gift those crafts, the science badge, well if you start with a child sim, you just have them do experiments on the mini lab table (the one that gives you mental skill as a child).
Honestly, most of the scouting badges are straightforward, even doing your homework, extra credit and extra projects count towards the studious badge.
Flower Arranging is an easy career, but getting the skill high enough to please people enough to pay more than 12 simoleons is a little tough, fun but tough, will be experimenting soon with the botanist side of the career as well, to see which side of the new Gardening career is the more interesting branch to complete.
will see what happens next in the morning, for now, it's my bedtime.
