I didn't originally plan on playing with the horses much, they just didn't appeal to me. But, after trying out the pre-made family, the Martingales, I love horses! To me, they put this expansion over the top for being worth the purchase.
I ended up making a household with the new lifetime wish called 'The Jockey' where you need 40,000 in winnings, and also registered for the new Self-Employment of Horseman where you make money from winning competitions and from selling horses. I have thus far sold 2 trained horses and only made about 10k in winnings. It seems a little slow, with only being able to get 2 competitions a night, for about 5 (I think) nights a week.
Over all, the dogs and cats are totally awesome for the cute factor. for example the 'awwww' action with kittens is hilarious, and watching dogs roll over the ball when playing makes me laugh every time.
The new town is ... new. I like it a LOT more then Bridgeport, though I have seen some strange pathing bugs. For example, a sim can't walk from point a to b in a straight line. Sometimes they just refuse, or they can't walk through doors etc, It may be due to the new door action to refuse pets access to some rooms. This is minor and to be expected, I don't think any expansion hasn't had a few bugs.
Some new additions that are nice to have:
- random name generator ( never noticed it before )
- the preview function for lots, nice for saving time when looking to move a household
- the building and buying tools, sorting by collections. was in the patch just prior to the expansion, but still like it for building theme homes
- new house pets, I love the new birds and cages. I have 4 birds and the tree displays, love watching them fly around my house
- the collection finder reward now also shows rodents, snakes, birds and turtles!
Just a few of my likes/loves about this game. I haven't run into a single serious negative thing yet with the expansion.
Edit: I just remembered one small negative thing, If you create a sim who has the 'animal lover' trait, they get a negative social hit whenever they socialize with someone who specifically is any of the three 'cat person', 'dog person' or 'equestrian'. To me this seems a little odd, if you like all animals, you should at least be neutral about any animals, not negative.
