I had a long time to wait for this. My old computer couldn't run it - by the last few weeks, my old computer was struggling with running a web browser at the same time as Twitter - so I had to wait until financial aid came through to upgrade. And then Sims 4 was half price so I managed to scrape up the money earlier than I'd expected. (I'll have to wait a while for Outdoor Adventures though, which is a pity coz it looks neat.) So I'm playing new game on new computer and even have a new mouse that doesn't seem to have a middle button so I'm not sure what that would have done for the Sims 3 camera controls anyway.
I LOVE the loading times. I've opened the game about five times today. I feel like I can pop in and play for ten minutes, even, without it being much of a hassle. With the suburbs separated I do find I'm not traveling much further as much as I did in Sims 3, but I do quite like them anyway. The worlds overall feel a lot smaller since they're, what, three residential neighbourhoods, a park and a commercial neighbourhood? But my first test Sim lives RIGHT next to the magic tree entrance to Sylvan Grove, so that's pretty handy.
I'm finding I really don't have space in the smaller starter houses for much. I don't have a computer yet because there's nowhere to put it. The shelves don't seem to be big enough to put my frogs on, so I have a line of them on the floor next to the tv. I love that you can choose the height of things you put on the wall though, and consequently have multiple things in one tile. I have a column of about four mounted fish that give my Sim a lot of confidence when she comes out of her bedroom, even though she's not that social. I need to get the elemental display board soon though because she's a gardener/collector and I don't really have a way to build focused mood yet. (On that note, the first times I sent stuff off to the geo council I got it back fine but my last lots seem to be taking a really long time. I have no idea what's going on with that.) My cow plant also died really quickly because she went off to fish in the grove, came home exhausted and went to bed. It presumably got hungry while she was fishing and died just before she had time to feed it in the morning. OTOH the skeleton looks awesome, and I couldn't really be bothered feeding Sims to it anyway.
Grafting plants is awesome! However I had a message pop up saying there was information on new plants in my notebook and as far as I can tell that's something I need a computer for? I miss the skill journal from Sims 3, I don't really feel like I know what the skills are doing or what I'm working towards. Do I get anything from completing collections? No idea! I've even finished one (the eggs, of course) and I still don't know because I wasn't paying attention when I finished it. Aspirations are neat though, I'm getting the hang of switching between them now. I also like multitasking. I had Sims eating, watching tv and chatting at the same time, filling hunger fun and social as well as cooking skill. I ended up selling off most of my harvested plants just before I quit last time - when I went to fertilise or pick bait most of them were listed in very small amounts, a huge huge list of them in no particular order, so trying to scroll through and find the four fish in my inventory when I have 100 each of seven or eight different plants is a bit nightmarish.