InZOI
I got Zoi because I am weak. lol My thoughts are mixed at this point.
The early access reviews I’ve seen always emphasize the graphics. While the graphics are good, they are not anything special. Many new games are coming out with much better graphics. The reason the graphics seem so great is that people are comparing them to The Sims 4. I feel these comparisons are misplaced, at least when it comes to the visuals. The Sims 4 is purposely campy and cartoony. InZOI is more realistic in general, from the gameplay to the world-building aspects.
The graphics are powered by Unreal Engine, so of course, they are going to be gorgeous—that’s the new standard. I would like to see more emphasis placed on the gameplay. In all fairness, the game is still in early access, so those aspects are harder to gauge.
Having said all that, people who spend most of their time in The Sims building houses and designing worlds will probably love this game. The building and decorating options are amazing. I’ll have to let someone else talk about those, though, because that is not my gameplay style.
Regarding gameplay, as I said, this is a very different game from The Sims 4. The player has control over many aspects of the world that just don’t exist in The Sims franchise. You can adjust community involvement, sanitation, appliance durability, city safety, health levels, and more for the whole city. The karma system is still unfinished, but it seems like it will add a whole new dimension to the game in terms of realism.
While you can’t control more than one household in your city, the world settings mean you can influence the overall direction your population tends toward. You can’t set the probability of actions based on karma (yet?), but you can for conversations. For instance, you can make the NPC Zois in your world generally snarky and mean by adjusting the Conversation Karma Positivity and Negativity controls in the Manage City tab. You can make your population generally happy (or mostly depressed) by changing the Positive/Negative Emotion control. I assume that these changes will have noticeable—and possibly profound—effects on how your Zois interact with their world.
I haven’t mentioned the AI aspects of the gameplay (the super-beta Smart Zoi feature) because, so far, they seem too unfinished to judge properly. So far, my Zois have often acted in exactly the opposite way I would expect based on their "Inner thoughts," but, again, this is a beta feature in an early access game, so I will reserve judgement -- for now.
I will continue to follow this game (I paid as much for it as I have paid for fully released games at times, so I wouldn't want to just walk away at this point, regardless. I've spent too much time on it to get a refund. lol). I am looking forward to seeing how things go.
