The Sims 4: Growing Together is the thirteenth expansion pack that EA has released. The game apparently adds plenty of new content for children and infants, ever expanding on the life experiences that families share, but is this game worth coming together for or is it a hard pass?
Why do I do it to myself? Why do I allow myself to fall for EA’s flashy ad campaigns and promises the time? After severely being disappointed with the quality of cottage living, I promised myself that I will never, EVER buy an expansion pack, game pack, kit etc, upon release and take up my advice of only buying them when they’ve been discounted!
For the most part, I succeeded, until now. After watching LGR’s somewhat positive review of this pack, I decided to just purchase it and expand on my simming experience, but I’m going to be honest, I highly regret it! Read on to find out why!
The Sims 4: Growing Together, is meant to expand on family dynamics and add more content for children and the newly included infants, that came free with the base game. Create milestones and memories, to strengthen family bonds and create lasting relationships. Now correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t we see something with the Parenthood game pack that was released a few years back? Where parents would have to guide their children through various stages in life to help mould who they would be in the future?
Isn’t this just an overpriced DLC for a gamepack that kind of already exists? It sort of feels that way!
Infants got introduced recently in a free update, a new age group between baby and toddler, these constantly crying and constantly pooping humans were seemingly the focal point for this expansion pack, as plenty of the items were meant to benefit them. Well, it’s more or less made to benefit EA’s back pocket, let’s put it this way.
In the free update, simmers will have access to new infant related items and interactions, such as new cribs, however, if you want that baby carrier or baby changing table, then you’re just going to have to fork over £34.99 for the pleasure! It’s ridiculous. I personally believe that these items should have come free with the update, why put half the items behind an overpriced pay wall?! It’s rather scummy! Moving on…
As mentioned in this expansion pack features ‘strong dynamics’, where sims can cultivate long lasting bonds with particular sims or have sworn enemies- which doesn’t seem too new. Apart from a pop up, telling me that my sims have ‘good compatibility’ with someone, there doesn’t seem to be anything new included to really make this impactful!
The same goes for family dynamics, parents can determine whether they can be a strict or supportive parent toward their child. That’s it! There doesn’t seem to be really any impactful social interactions to really cement this statement. My toddler sim is still a fussy eater who is a free thinker and the parent just gets a sad moodlet constantly for ‘being too strict’, when in reality she didn’t even do anything or punish her child for not going to bed etc!
Included with the pack are a few nice items, such as the ability to teach child sims how to ride a bike, a cool treehouse which can be customised and upgraded and a new fishing town known as San Sequoia- but that’s about it! Yes, of course you get new clothing and hair items for your sims, but that’s to be expected with any pack these days.
Also another thing I noticed, is a bug where locations and sims would duplicate themselves randomly. At first, I just thought I was encountering NPC twins for the first time, however, nope. Many sims seemingly duplicated themselves into my world without any explanation behind it. To make this even more confusing, they have the same family links and relationships however, they would have independent relations with you?! Has anyone else encountered this?
Honestly, do I think that this expansion pack is worth it? Well, the question should really be, do I think that this should have been an expansion pack in the first place and to answer both of those questions, I’m going to have to say ‘no’! Save your money and your time and just enjoy the content you get for infants in the free update, because that’s where most of it comes from!
For £34.99, you are essentially only paying for a few new items and a so-called mechanic that we kind of already have! Growing together adds absolutely NOTHING to the core gameplay of the base game. However if you REALLY want this pack, I would highly suggest that you wait for this to be at least half price, preferably 70% off, as I can’t justify this high price point!
LGR it’s your fault I bought it!
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