🎉 Happy 20th Birthday to The Sims 2! 🎉 (Poster obviously made by yours truly) Even though I only started playing The Sims 2 in July 2023, it quickly became one of my favorite games. I loved it so much that by the start of 2024, I tracked down and bought all the original copies of the expansions. Now, they sit proudly on my shelf, and even though I’m new to the game, there's this weird sense of nostalgia I feel every time I play. Maybe it’s the sound of the CD spinning in the drive or the unmistakable 2000s aesthetic of the furniture—it just hits differently. As far as gameplay mechanics go, The Sims 2 really stands out.
It blows my mind how The Sims 2 feels more realistic and polished in some ways than The Sims 4. The attention to detail, the depth in gameplay—it’s like they perfected the formula and then drifted away from it in later games. It’s a shame they moved away from that level of realism. The fact that The Sims 2 was the last game without all those microtransactions and endless DLCs is part of why it remains the best for so many fans. Each expansion was packed with meaningful content, not just small add-ons.
I really hope the magic of The Sims 2 influences the direction of future Sims games because it captured something special that newer versions haven’t quite matched.
