PROBLEMS with TS4: Realm of Magic
So this was the pack for The Sims 4 so far that I’ve been the most excited about. I am gonna say it again but I prepared a savefile dedicated to witches with over 400 sims that have unique backstories, are fleshed out with traits, careers, relationships, clubs, skills, custom builds, and heck even phone cases! I was so sure they were gonna NAIL this pack like they did with Vampires, and although many parts of the Vampire Pack were a bit ‘excessive’ in my opinion, that’s a great problem to have because it’s usually the other way around.
So with TS4: Realm of Magic we get the new world Glimmerbrook, which looks very similar to Granite Falls (TS4: Outdoor Retreat), but is a bit more magical and has its unique quirks. I like this world a lot and I think it’s drop-dead gorgeous and was hoping they would recycle some Granite Falls assets for this pack since it takes a lot of their budget to create a new world with new plants and objects, and I would rather have that part of the budget go to spellcasting, which is what the pack is actually about. Glimmerbrook is awesome, with the exception of their non-functional messed up houses that are missing doors and have weird missing textures that if you’re anything like me, you will need to fix to be able to play in, which is annoying when you have to do that for every new save you start. We should just be able to throw ourselves into the game and not have to fix things before we get to the fun stuff… Not everyone likes renovating houses for hours like Lilsimsie, and even she’s mad, so.
Then we also get the magical realm, which looks really cool and has a fascinating story behind it, but to be honest I don’t know if I’ll use it that much because it kinda kills the story behind it when you see regular old townies walking around in the realm and using magic like they’re part of that secret world, like no. Just no. This renders that world essentially useless for me and a lot of other players.
The Create-A-Sim items are kinda lackluster, but the ones we do get look awesome and I like that they tackle different styles of spellcasters with their gothic, preppy, shady and hermit kind of clothes. I have so much CC I don’t necessarily yearn for more CAS content, but it is fun to get new meshes to see what CC creators will do with them! I’ll take it!
The Build items look phenomenal and I just want to praise EA for giving us a brand new style of content and also A FULL SET of objects (Except missing cupboards for the new kitchen, damn this is getting old), but it does kind of become less versatile when some objects have magical effects attached to them, like the desk for example. It’s cute and all, I get it, but I might want to use that desk in a normal house and now that house will have a complete set except for the desk because it’s too magical for the story I’m telling with them. I wish they just removed the magical effect completely or at least made two versions. Or I just use another desk, it’s not too big of a deal.
Now to the Gameplay… HERE WE GO RANT TIME
Okay so, first of all, I think the spells and potions we get are pretty lame as they don’t really add anything new to the game. They don’t add any new gameplay features or mechanics like if you remember Genies from TS3, they had an ability to control sims which temporarily added them to your household with a cool effect where you could literally have full control over them like your own sims and make them behave pretty much however you want. Why didn’t they add any mechanics like this? They basically only recycled vampire powers, made base game cheats into spells, or stole the SimRay ‘Freeze’ interaction from TS4: Get To Work, and they don’t add basically any new animations aside from the ones the spellcaster uses, which is also like two, one for casting on others and one for casting on self, so it looks super repetitive when they cast spells frequently. And to rub salt in the wound, we don’t even get any new spells when we have other packs like TS4: Seasons, which is such a missed opportunity on making weather spells, or vampire and witch fights with TS4: Vampires? Why do these start feeling more and more like independent games instead of packs meant to EXPAND our game?
Also, spellcasting is just so glitchy, I mean the spellcaster doesn’t even face the target of their spell, so it just kind of breaks that feeling of “Oh my sim is doing this!” and feels more like a “My sim is doing.. something? OH the sink is fixed!” you know? And when they’re really close to the sim they’re casting on their animation will clip through them like, oh the quality… And I’m not gonna lie, I was kind of hoping for less whimsical and magical glitter effects in this pack than we had in previous games because I view magic as a hidden force and not as glitter flying everywhere, but damn this pack has like NO EFFECTS, when you cast ‘Strangeify’ on a sim, they literally BOOP (Shoutout to Romeo) into their green and witchy face. I get it’s not easy to do a transition, but come on, add a smoke effect to cover up that hard transition AT LEAST? And just the utter lack of reaction from the person being cast on totally breaks it even more. They just stand there like completely unaware their face was just messed up, or when you make two sims fight or kiss, they just walk there and do it immediately with so little notice like it’s a cheat, and it’s even hard to even find the sims that are being cast on because it just looks so ordinary. Isn’t this a magic pack? We could get the “vampire mesmerize effect” at least to show that the sims are commanded?
Even if spellcasting weren’t glitchy, it’s still way too overpowered in my opinion. Sure we have curses to mess things up for us, but you can just make a Curse Cleansing potion, Copypasto it infinite times and never have any problems. I also wish that there was a potion for setting your sims age back by just one day instead of “BECOME IMMORTAL” or “FREEZE AGE”. It would give us reason to keep making potions and trying to keep our sim alive, giving us actual gameplay and story.
The Familiars, in my opinion, are just so silly. You know how Kids Room Stuff added Voidcritters which are the sims equivalent of Pokémon? Well now you can have them as a witch familiar, so apparently, spellcasters are actually Pokémon trainers? Why would you even put those things in here like they are not supposed to exist? And we only got a Raven as our only normal familiar. I will probably only use those ravens and I wish they could sit on your shoulder or something like in previous games but no, they just flap around endlessly behind you like some seagull on the beach facing a strong wind. I know technically we only got one Voidcritter but the other ones are just weird too. I can understand some phoenix, fairy, dragon or Sixam owl being in the game but the rest are literally Pokémons.
Final breath is normal sims that drink potions can’t get cursed… Why?! This would have been a perfect way to mess up sims lives?! And now normal sims can only get positive things from drinking potions? That’s so lame and so overpowered.
I am beyond disappointed in the game pack and this has been a horrible year for the sims with Strangerville and um, Island Living, which both lacked in depth and gameplay. Unfortunately, not even a fraction of this will be fixed by EA, so I pray that some talented modder fixes this game pack because let’s face it, modders continue to do it better. I adore this franchise and can’t help but sit here and rant about this mess, and don’t think I’m bashing EA or anything but damn they need to step up their game because they’re throwing dirt on their whole fanbase.
Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.