I ranked it a 4-star. I haven't played any of the previous Sims games, so all the missing content wasn't really an issue for me. I've enjoyed the game quite a bit, and have spent a lot of time exploring the different jobs and aspirations. I really only have a couple (moderately minor) complaints.
The time doesn't always go into super speed when you're sleeping/at a job. I don't know if people have figured out how to fix this one yet... for me, 90% of the time it was an issue with my radio. I would go to work, realize my time wasnt speeding up, turn off my radio in the room I was in last, and bam it sped up. Sometimes I would have to turn off the laser light show as well.
Secondly, I don't like how easy it is to "force" a Sim into feeling the way you want them to. I don't know how previous games worked, but the emotions system in Sims 4 needs to be a little harder. It's extremely easy to avoid being in any bad mood, and its pretty easy to "lock" yourself into a "Very emotional" state. All you need is the +10 environment picture (or a series of smaller environment items) to get to +3 happy, enough emotional paintings to get +3 emotion from that, and then another +2 from anywhere else. Usually easily obtained by looking at an emotional painting and listening to the radio while you work. Adding a laser light show like I mentioned earlier pretty much gives you a cheap (and permanent) +1 happy moodlet near it.
To sum up that last one, it's extremely easy to get to and stay at a very emotional state. Even when you're low on hygiene, or just got back from a rough day at work, or maybe you're just feeling naturally sad or angry... you can step into a well decorated room and listen to some music and suddenly you're ready to grind out a book, or hack the National Security Agency.
I think that negative emotions should in fact count as a negative to your current emotional state, so if you've got +5 inspired and +5 happy, being exhausted (-3) will still drop you into just Inspired (+7) instead of Very inspired. Or something like that, so there's actually some incentive to working with your Sims emotions instead of just brute forcing them into the right one.
Outside of that, there's a couple of small issues, mostly minor glitches, like moodlets not properly updating when Sims change rooms. Or Sims refusing to clean up, saying they don't have a path (when they obviously do). The fact that the Sims don't seem to build their own relationships, jobs, or anything else unless you're actively at a site with them is annoying, they should automatically advance their skills and job based on what aspiration they have while they are "offscreen". For people like me, that play mostly in their house, it's annoying to stroll around town and find it exactly the same as it was 3 sim weeks ago. A bunch more minor issues that I can't really think of off the top of my head.
I think if I had played previous Sims games, my rating would probably be a 3 instead, as it IS an amazing game, and a looks like a great building board for future expansions and/or content. But it still has a bunch of glitches/game-play that could be fixed or streamlined. Given that they've already released new content, and announced that more free stuff is planned, I'd say I'm very happy with the game, and can only get happier.
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