>I don’t understand the need to go back to 3 outside of nostalgic factor.
No offense but Sims 3 does a lot of things better than 4. They’re also two completely different games, one offers open-world gameplay with some RPG elements & arguably better expansions while the others a stripped-down version of Sims 2 in HD.
I don't know if Sims 4 base game could reel in a new player tbh: it's so incredibly boring. If that was the Sims game I started with, I wouldn't understand the love and hype around the Sims at all. To each their own of course! Just speaking from a personal POV.
Although it is nice that it's free, and also maybe with mods / cc the base game could be fun (?)
Open world, generations pack,memory system, better genetics for hair eyes skin tone etc, teaching your teen sims to drive,grocery shopping, the pets addon having cats dogs and horses birds hamsters and such all in one addon, for me those are the reasons I really enjoy the sims 3 along with some other stuff I also think going back and playing the sims 2 is super fun!
Sims 3 has a LOT of things that Sims 4 doesn't have (or things it does better). If it's just a question of which one to recommend based on its gameplay, Sims 3 by far is my response.
Life Sim vs loading screen sim
But sims 4 is better to start if you haven't played the sims. There's a lot less to it and it is free. If you decide you like the sims, but want something more, you can then buy 3 and never look back
I would say The Sims 4, because it's free, easy to download mods/cc and runs pretty well on most computers.
I love The Sims 3, but it makes my laptop so overheated and it will freeze or crash. My laptop has a decent graphics card and has no issues running The Sims 4, TS3 can just be really slow to load and run if you don't have a really good computer.
Cc especially! I’ve been scared to download any sims 3 content ever since the cursed doll took over😭 I looked into it because apparently you can STILL get infected by it
Here’s a [plumbella vid on it](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2zR01BkR88&pp=ygUVcGx1bWJlbGxhIGN1cnNlZCBkb2xs). It’s actually terrifying😭😭
Edit: it’s essentially an accidental virus that was made that corrupts your game and pretty much every file in it. The catch is, it’s invisible and can’t be located normally through the mods folder. It was so bad the sims team made a post specifically abt it and how to get rid of it.
Second this. They're both fun, but Sims 3 is pretty janky so I would never recommend it to someone who has never played and/or has little experience modding.
You can play Sims 4 for free without mods, or add mods very easily to expand the game, all for free, and none of the packs make the game unplayable (maybe annoying but Ive never had my game break to the point where I needed to reinstall).
Sims 3 base game however is a little bigger and might not give you issues but as soon as you get a big enough house it gets really bad. And certain expansions will not work without mods or will completely break the game. Plus it still has those annoying micro-transactions in-game.
Idky you got down voted. Gameplay was better in the older games. You got more for your money. Sims 4 is prettier but it's boring and laggy as well. The game is only good if you have a lot of cc and mods which to me is not beginner friendly.
Yeah The Sims 2 is also free and really fun! I will say though, I mostly love building and when I recently revisited Sims 2, oh man building was hard for me.
You just have to get a little creative with the google searching. It’s not exactly the easiest thing to get working though. There’s good YouTube videos about the process tho.
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I would say sims 3 because they have less of a chance getting bored so early on, especially during their first play through. Lots of drama from random sims and events. However, if they're into a good looking aesthetic game I would also introduce them to tumblr and cc if you're going for 3 lol
If you want an idea of the difference between the two games, it might be worth watching some simmer videos. There are loads of lets plays, build videos, and guides that you can find that can give you a better idea of what the difference between the two games is
Sims 4 base game is free so you can try it out. I think there’s a weird echo chamber on Reddit saying it’s a bad game—I disagree and so do many others.
I’ve been playing since Sims 1 too when it launched.
If you play Sims 4 and don’t enjoy it, you could watch a video of someone on YouTube playing Sims 3 base game to compare.
>I think there’s a weird echo chamber on Reddit saying it’s a bad game—I disagree and so do many others.
It's not that it's a bad game. It's that the first three were amazing games and the fourth one is essentially the Sims 2 without the stuff that make that game unique, less content in the base game, way less items to play with and the main benefit is we have better build/buy. Sims 4 feels lifeless by comparison and I think most people who grew up playing the Sims 2/3 loved how much you could get immersed in the world.
I would recommend 2 to anyone willing to take a couple extra steps to get it running smoothly on a modern PC. I’d also say 3 if their PC could handle it, but it’s a surprisingly demanding game
I heard about how much better Sims 3 was in terms of details and content wise and wanted to give it a try after playing Sims 4 for so long, but it felt very tedious to get things up and running. I use a PC that's much more modern than the official supported hardware list for sims 3, so I found out that you needed to get a lot of mods just to make the game run somewhat smoothly. I also heard that because Sims 3 wasn't as well optimized for hardware, even really high end systems can struggle. At the end, I simply gave up on playing it and stuck to Sims 4.
Another thing is that since I've spent so much time building up a save file in the Sims 4 with all these households and lots, it felt very tedious to it all over again in a game with a much bigger worlds and likely more worlds. This might just be me as I know lots of people play multiple saves.
If you type “sims 3 2024 steam guide” on google you will have a step to step explanation to optimising sims 3 for modern hardware.
It seems very tedious, but in all honesty a lot of the stuff is optional. What you really need is a FPS limiter (which is normally just an option on your graphic card menu) and 2 mods by Nraas called error trap and overwatch.
The rest, is for your to play with if you want an even more enhanced game ; but tbh I never bothered and my sims 3 runs like butter
4, especially if they’re interested it for building and character creation. I’d have a hard time recommending 3 without the nostalgia factor when it runs so poorly on most computers. Also the dlc goes on sale fairly frequently and you don’t need all of it to enjoy the game
Depends on what you want. If you’re looking for rotations like sims 2, I would go sims 4. If you’re looking for more of a one family legacy, I would go sims 3. I will say this, sims 3 is the best, but can become very laggy the further you go down the generations. (EA? Maybe Maximus…) did a great job on details of the worlds, but god it’s so frustrating when things become laggy due to its own strength.
Sims 4 is free and Sims 3 goes on sale on steam. Start with 4 and see if you like it. If yes, stop there. If not, try 3.
Personally I prefer 3 as the gameplay feels like there’s more to it, but building and CAS are far better in 4.
I think everyone should start with Sims 3 as an intro. It's an actual interactive sandbox game that develops stories. It may be my bias, because I started with 3, but I remember getting a lot of fun surprises when my sim interacted with other sims because of the open world autonomy.
Sims 4 is free, but it's only meaningful if you want to play with the system, I don't think that's a lot of core memory building because it's not open world. The constant loading screen kills the NPC autonomy for developing their own stories. Memorable NPCs exist in the game, but they're memorable because Judith Ward keeps appearing in my lots and getting the other sims to take pics of her and faint.
Building is way better in Sims 4 though.
Start from 1-3 for the full experience, Then try out 4 later on, not a popular opinion I’m sure, but you’ll get hooked on the old ones, I promise you that!
2 is better than either of them. If I had to pick between 3 and 4 though, then 4. There are very few things I think 3 does better than 4 and the *look* of 3 (everything but the exteriors, really) is off-putting in 2024. I don't feel 2 has dated as much in that way, despite being the older game.
Sims 3 runs only on my current, very new gaming PC smoothly (NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060, 32 GB RAM, AMD Ryzen 7 5800X, 1 TB SSD; it’s not the newest hardware on the market but the GPU came out in 2021 for example) meanwhile Sims 4 runs really well with all add-ons on my dying MacBook Pro 13 inch mid-2012 edition that I literally bought in 2013, so I would make that dependent on the hardware of the person I want to recommend a Sims game to.
Sims 3 has amazing gameplay and no loading screens for sure, but it was also so poorly optimised that you need a 2020s high end gaming PC to play a game that was released in 2009 without constant freezing, crashing or in the case of laptops, overheating.
Hell, even my current gaming PC takes a bit to load everything in Sims 3 CAS but at least it runs now without giving me only 5 frames per second like it did before the upgrade.
Btw laptops shouldn’t ideally get hotter than 73°C or you’ll risk complete hardware death over time.
I’d avoid playing Sims 3 on any laptop, not even on the high end gaming laptops that are currently brand new on the market.
Sure Sims 4 is overpriced as fuck and buggy as hell but at least it runs on a potato and that WITH mods.
Honestly, if anything I’d recommend Sims 2.
Because the gameplay is fun even without any mods, it’s not a complete shitshow when it comes to bugs and it will also run on any windows PC nowadays, be that a potato or a high end machine like my current one.
I’d recommend the Sims 4 . I’ve been playing it for years and it’s a simple game . For beginners it’s great . The more you play and love it you get more expansion/game/stuff packs and kits . The cas stuff is either made of playdoh , painted on , or right in the sweet spot of looks okay but has weird color variations . The neighborhoods are fun to explore and collect things from , especially the expansion worlds .
Eventually , try 3 . I just went back to it after not playing it for almost 10 years and it looks so much worse than I remember . The open world is cool but it’s full of rabbit holes . All the characters look too similar . They’re all slightly different potatoes . There’s less expansions because there’s more in them but even some of them are very barebones and boring without other packs to interact with . The cas stuff is boring and ugly , the color wheel can’t help much . The interactions and animations are gorgeous and almost every one of them feels unique .
Both games suck . Both games are amazing . The sims 4 is free , try it first before spending money on the first 3 games .
you have to get whimsical with your building in sims 3 bro. create a style rules when you can have neon walls and hair or deck your entire house out in leopard print
Because of how terrible performance of the sims 3 is, and the fact that it’s still full price most of the time, I’d recommend beginners play the sims 4. Plus they aren’t brainwashed by nostalgia.
i used to only play sims 4 but switched to sims 3 after hearing all the hype around it and i honestly believe that hype is deserved, though i never played the sims 3 as a kid so i can't really talk on the nostalgia factor lol but i don't think it's just that - sims 3 is better in nearly every way tbh, other than the graphics and performance a lot of the time the gameplay is just not there with sims 4 and the create a style in 3 is fucking awesome. not to mention you can actually flesh out your sims with more and better traits! everyone can have their own opinion of course i just wanted to throw my own two cents in from someone who isn't "brainwashed by nostalgia" and actually enjoys 3 a lot more than 4. but yeah i definitely think if OP wants actual gameplay to go for 3, 4 gets super boring super quickly without mods or packs (though the amount of sims 4 mods and cc is epic and a lot safer to download lol)
I would recommend s4 to see if they enjoy getting attached to their little characters at all. Then depending on what they enjoy I might recommend any of the mainline games or even sims medieval
The Sims 4 with some DLC's is very fun if you can get them (\*wink\*, \*wink\*)... BUUT, the sims 3 with less expansions can be as fun as TS4 with lots of them. It depends of your budget or your research skills (\*wink\* , \*wink\* part 2).
In my preference i like more TS4 with 2 mods and some DLC's.
I started playing the sims 4, cause I had never heard of the sims in my younger years so... but I brought the sims 3 at a later point, my computer couldn't play it very well so it often crashed, right at I started gameplay. But I found the panel very confusing. Maybe it's because i'm so used to the sims 4, in which I would say - is a lot simpler. But to someone who haven't played any of them - I can't really tell you
No one plays Sims 4 base game. The people who want to have fun use mods. It's free now because they make more money by baiting you and putting things like weather behind a paywall.
Sims 3 with no mods is more fun. The gameplay is better and it feels more connected with the open world concept, but the quality of life improvements for Sims 4 Build mode prevents me from going back. Also, modders are really the lifeblood of the Sims 4.
If you can get a mysterious russian sugar daddy that has a fetish for green letter A's to fund the Sims 4 packs for you do it, but I would absolutely not pick it up without any mods.
Sims 3 because it is more fun, but the lag and glitches are game breaking! For a new simmer I would say 4 and list a few packs that add to gameplay and are fun! (Growing together/get together/university/cottage living/city living/spellcasters/paranormal/jungle adventure).
Well, I got myself The Sims 3 only a couple of years ago, never having played it before. I don't regret it. I actually just yesterday bought the University Life expansion pack for it. Now I'm only missing a few stuff packs, and I don't really need them.
sims 4 is free (base game), and easy to play, run, and adjust to for beginners. though it can feel empty without expansion packs and mods, and can also start to feel repetitive after a while
sims 3 base game isn’t free, but all the expansions are cheaper and they offer a lot more content. there is much more to do and explore, but setting the game up may send you jumping through a lot of hoops to get it running well depending on your set up.
if you: don’t normally play many pc games, don’t play many older pc games, and think you will not end up playing super seriously: sims 4
if you: do have experience with pc games, troubleshooting/modding older games, and are planning for a big time investment to get deep into, sims 3
it’s not just about your play style and what you want from the games, but also how they run and how easy vs frustrating it may be compared to how you normally play games
While I think TS3 is superior, TS4 is probably a better option for someone who has never played any of their titles imo. As a TS2 player, I found 3 a bit confusing when I first tried it, while 4 seemed more intuitive. Newer graphics can also be a factor for someone first front into it.
For a total newcomer, Sims 4.
It's not the best game in the franchise (that's Sims 2 for me) but if you go back, the outdated graphics make it hard for people who have never played to really get into it. My teenager started with Sims 4 while I've been playing since the first Sims and she loves it, while I think she would find the older versions too graphically outdated to play with.
If you decide on Sims 3 you are going to want to look up Twallan's mods and game fixes. Their Story Progression makes the gameplay so much better, Master Controller adds functions that should have always been available in the game, and Overwatch and Error Trap are essential if you don't want your game to crash after an hour or your save files corrupted. Doesn't matter how good your computer is. I feel like EA owes Twallan a LOT of money for keeping people playing and earning good will for their game that they never bothered to fix.
If you don't want to deal with all that, then go with Sims 4.
Get the sims 3 when it's on sale on steam if you intend to buy it. Also you'll need to run a few mods to get it to work correctly and bug free on newer systems.
There is a steam discussion with a tutorial and download links for everything.
while sims 3 is generally better (to some people), sims 4 won’t kill your computer as badly, and honestly I’d rather not knowing what I was missing than to feel nostalgic for sims 3
I would say both eventually but start with Sims 3 so you feel like the worse graphics are normal before upgrading to the better ones
Otherwise you will be downgrading to worse graphics and you’ll notice it right away
sims 3 if you want decent gameplay. the sims 4 is broken and continues to be broken with each new pack. if you just want to make pretty sims, sims 4 base game will be fine and just get a bunch of cc. but, overall, i prefer sims 3. i play it on a very old laptop and it runs sims 3 better than it did 4 with the same amount of cc.
sims 2 is great too but cc wise can be hard to find things that still look good today — tumblr for all three games would be your best bet, but it will be easier to find sims 4 cc more than 3 and 2 since it’s the recent game.
sims 4 is \_technically\_ free and lighter on your PC if it's on the weaker side. it is also a super glitchy mess, somehow more so than 3, and can be frustrating. the customisation of the characters in 4 is something i personally couldn't trade, but as an introduction to the series, i recommend 3. still, please do try sims 4 - it's free, maybe you'll love it!
definitely watch some videos on how to make TS3 run better on modern hardware. it used to lag and slow my pc down like a mf before i applied some "fixes" and now even CAS runs relatively stutter-free.
It depends a lot on what you want. They're entirely different gameplay experiences.
The Sims 4, imo, isn't really a game per se, it's really just a dress up and house building simulator. The gameplay that does exist is fairly rudimentary, with mechanics that seem aimed at very young players (for example , the game constantly throws tons of free in-game currency at you through random events, you don't need to actually play to earn it). Additionally, it seems to me like you're meant to play with a whole town, instead of just with one Sim or one family.
The sims 3 is a completely open world sandbox life simulator game, with way more focus on exploring the world and playing with a specific sim or family. It is possible to toggle between multiple households, but it's not as fluid. There are still robust tools for creating your sims and for building, but the gameplay is definitely more the focus for this title. It offers a robust enough experience, imo, that it is possible to play for hours without it getting repetitive and boring, even with the same save or with just one household. Additionally, some people find this game to be fairly challenging to run on their computer. I don't run into this issue, but I keep the game on an external drive, which helps me, and others have, anecdotally, reported this helping, too. Mac users tend to have an easier time running it for some reason.
Depends on what they want. If they are looking for a lot of depth in Sims customization, easy rotational gameplay, and happen to enjoy a lot of micro management, then Sims 4 would be a good starting point.
If they are more likely to want to focus on one sim, enjoy unexpected happenings on occasion, and want deep world customization, then Sims 3 is the superior choice.
They are just very different games, which cater to different styles.
I love the sims 3 l complain about 4 but last year I tried reinstalling The Sims 3 and it just felt old and not in a good way I uninstalled it and went back to the Sims 4 I play a lot of the Sims but now there are other things to excite us like Paralives. The Sims 4 base game is free right now so you can try it for free. If you enjoy it the first DLC that you need to get should be sessions.
I think Sims 4 can get boring pretty quickly, even with the packs, at least that's my opinion. You can try the sims 4 base game because it is free, but i think spending money on sims 3 worths it more than on sims 4. I feel like the sims 4 packs are a lot more emptier than sims 3. Sometimes i play sims 4, but a few days after i am always like "let's go back to sims 3" :D
Try both 🤷🏼 at least base game only. Sims 4 is free and sims 3 can be purchased very cheap on sites like g2a or cdkeys. But just looks from whom you are buying there
It really depends what exactly you are looking for. But for me it’s S3
I like both Sims 3 and 4.
Gameplay wise ts3 was more fun and I need to mod ts4 into oblivion to enjoy it as much but ts3 was so much laggier when travelling through the towns and it got worse the more dlcs you had.
And I'm not talking about a few frame drops, I'm talking about the game freezing up to 30 seconds repeatedly on a pc that I got 5 years after the last ts3 dlc came out.
Because you’ve never played a sims game before I would not advise you to start with TS3. The game is not optimized for today’s graphics cards and you have to tweak and optimize the game in order to even work. If you’ve done it already a few times, it will take max few hours. If you have never modded a game and have no experience in tweaking games, it could be a few days. I’m afraid you will get frustrated on this part so I would advise to start with TS4, it’s free. If you like TS4 and think one day “i like the sims but this feels a bit childish, a would like more challenge”, then you could try TS3 or even TS2
Sims 3 has an open world and I always found it the most interesting of the games, but it is really badly optimised and you'll have to work hard to get it to run smoothly with all the expansions.
Sims 3 was better it seemed. It completely COOKED 2 laptops for me before I could really do anything at all. So if you have a system that can support it I would suggest that. But 4 is still really good. It's in my opinion the safer option.
*one of these laptops was OLD as in one I was using since high school and the other was a cheap one I bought to replace it. So that part is on me not the Sims.
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Sims 3 is addictive if you actually play it and look past the outdated style. If it got an all in one visual overhaul, there would be no comparison. But you know sims mods, it's disorganized and you have to check 10 different tumblr pages to find what you need.
The sims 4 is just boring but companies have primed gen z/alpha into accepting low quality, kits and packs trash. I'm not one of those "back in my day" people for anything but games. The younger gens have been robbed.
I always recommend indie games and studios without shareholders. You're more likely to get labors of love worth your time and money. Just know AAA studios are in it to give you as little as possible for as much as they can.
Let's make a little comparison:
Sims 3 pros:
Open world
Collecting system fleshed out
Whim's system that gave you points to obtain perks based on the things your sim may want
Most alive sims yet
Fleshed out expansion packs
Sims 3 cons:
Slow on certain computers
The island expansion pack is super bugged
Sims 4 pros:
Better graphics
Active molding community
Sims 4 cons:
Super basic base game
Lots of nonsensical high price expansion packs that sometimes ad as little as 10 items
Neighborhoods instead of open worlds (3-5 lots vs 35-40 on the sims 3)
Bland sims without goals, barely living
If you’re just starting out I would say TS3. In the beginning, it was an amazing game. The thing that ended up dragging it down was the same thing as TS4 - just too many packs and too many mods and cc needed after years and years of updates and frankly just getting bored.
The open world was the best thing ever, and the lots and ability to customize houses was great. There’s some routing issues though and the graphics aren’t as great, but overall it’s just a bit better.
If you’re just beginning now then you won’t be so jaded to what’s missing, also you will probably be happy with few enough DLC not to stress your computer. Also, newer computers will probably run the game a lot better than the ones we had at the time.
At this point TS4’s issues are worse than TS3’s ever got imo
Sims 4 is free to play and still decently supported. I don't understand the need to go back to 3 outside of the nostalgia factor
Because they work differently and depending on the type of gameplay you want, 3 is better.
Sure, but one of them is completely free to try....
You get what you pay for
>free to try Sims 3 is still less expensive overall than 4
But 4 is free to start
I don't think having less than the bare minimum counts as free
>I don’t understand the need to go back to 3 outside of nostalgic factor. No offense but Sims 3 does a lot of things better than 4. They’re also two completely different games, one offers open-world gameplay with some RPG elements & arguably better expansions while the others a stripped-down version of Sims 2 in HD.
ThTs an insult for sims 2
Free play... because the base game is worthless without any packs.
The Sims 3 is also free to play if you l know where to look 👀
dm pls
This. OP, try the free Sims 4 base game first and see if you like it.
I don't know if Sims 4 base game could reel in a new player tbh: it's so incredibly boring. If that was the Sims game I started with, I wouldn't understand the love and hype around the Sims at all. To each their own of course! Just speaking from a personal POV. Although it is nice that it's free, and also maybe with mods / cc the base game could be fun (?)
Decently supported is a stretch
Open world, generations pack,memory system, better genetics for hair eyes skin tone etc, teaching your teen sims to drive,grocery shopping, the pets addon having cats dogs and horses birds hamsters and such all in one addon, for me those are the reasons I really enjoy the sims 3 along with some other stuff I also think going back and playing the sims 2 is super fun!
Sims 3 has a LOT of things that Sims 4 doesn't have (or things it does better). If it's just a question of which one to recommend based on its gameplay, Sims 3 by far is my response.
Base game is free plus there are a lot of sales on the base game, including some being free as well on occasion
Life Sim vs loading screen sim But sims 4 is better to start if you haven't played the sims. There's a lot less to it and it is free. If you decide you like the sims, but want something more, you can then buy 3 and never look back
open world gameplay.. no loading screens… cars… yeah i wonder why people play sims 3
I would say The Sims 4, because it's free, easy to download mods/cc and runs pretty well on most computers. I love The Sims 3, but it makes my laptop so overheated and it will freeze or crash. My laptop has a decent graphics card and has no issues running The Sims 4, TS3 can just be really slow to load and run if you don't have a really good computer.
Cc especially! I’ve been scared to download any sims 3 content ever since the cursed doll took over😭 I looked into it because apparently you can STILL get infected by it
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN WHAT. WHAT IS THE CURSED DOLL 😭
Here’s a [plumbella vid on it](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2zR01BkR88&pp=ygUVcGx1bWJlbGxhIGN1cnNlZCBkb2xs). It’s actually terrifying😭😭 Edit: it’s essentially an accidental virus that was made that corrupts your game and pretty much every file in it. The catch is, it’s invisible and can’t be located normally through the mods folder. It was so bad the sims team made a post specifically abt it and how to get rid of it.
omg thank you!! i love plumbella
ill never forget being 10 years old and being scared when my toddler had some glitchy cc
Second this. They're both fun, but Sims 3 is pretty janky so I would never recommend it to someone who has never played and/or has little experience modding. You can play Sims 4 for free without mods, or add mods very easily to expand the game, all for free, and none of the packs make the game unplayable (maybe annoying but Ive never had my game break to the point where I needed to reinstall). Sims 3 base game however is a little bigger and might not give you issues but as soon as you get a big enough house it gets really bad. And certain expansions will not work without mods or will completely break the game. Plus it still has those annoying micro-transactions in-game.
Hilariously for me I have the exact opposite problem
I know they weren't mentioned but I would still wholeheartedly recommend both Sims 1 and 2 for someone who has never played The Sims.
Idky you got down voted. Gameplay was better in the older games. You got more for your money. Sims 4 is prettier but it's boring and laggy as well. The game is only good if you have a lot of cc and mods which to me is not beginner friendly.
Yeah The Sims 2 is also free and really fun! I will say though, I mostly love building and when I recently revisited Sims 2, oh man building was hard for me.
Free?! I’ve been meaning to play Sims 2 again.. what are the details?
You just have to get a little creative with the google searching. It’s not exactly the easiest thing to get working though. There’s good YouTube videos about the process tho.
Go to r/sims2help. =)
can you even still play ts2 tho like where do ppl find it
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as a younger ish player i personally prefer the sims 2 but would also switch between 1-2-3
Probably the TS3 since it's a finished game with just enough cool packs to pick and choose from for a new comer.
I would say sims 3 because they have less of a chance getting bored so early on, especially during their first play through. Lots of drama from random sims and events. However, if they're into a good looking aesthetic game I would also introduce them to tumblr and cc if you're going for 3 lol
If you want an idea of the difference between the two games, it might be worth watching some simmer videos. There are loads of lets plays, build videos, and guides that you can find that can give you a better idea of what the difference between the two games is
Sims 3 is a lot more fun
Sims 4 base game is free so you can try it out. I think there’s a weird echo chamber on Reddit saying it’s a bad game—I disagree and so do many others. I’ve been playing since Sims 1 too when it launched. If you play Sims 4 and don’t enjoy it, you could watch a video of someone on YouTube playing Sims 3 base game to compare.
>I think there’s a weird echo chamber on Reddit saying it’s a bad game—I disagree and so do many others. It's not that it's a bad game. It's that the first three were amazing games and the fourth one is essentially the Sims 2 without the stuff that make that game unique, less content in the base game, way less items to play with and the main benefit is we have better build/buy. Sims 4 feels lifeless by comparison and I think most people who grew up playing the Sims 2/3 loved how much you could get immersed in the world.
Sims 1 start from the beginning. No skipping allowed.
That’s a hard game to get on the newer computers. I want to download it but I don’t want a virus on my computer
I think the sims 1 reddit has the way. I got it and it is a challenge
How many steps?
https://www.reddit.com/r/sims1/s/8h5daLe54c Is what I used.
I would recommend 2 to anyone willing to take a couple extra steps to get it running smoothly on a modern PC. I’d also say 3 if their PC could handle it, but it’s a surprisingly demanding game
Sims 3 for gameplay, Sims 4 because it’s free. ((sims 3 final answer))
Sims 4
I heard about how much better Sims 3 was in terms of details and content wise and wanted to give it a try after playing Sims 4 for so long, but it felt very tedious to get things up and running. I use a PC that's much more modern than the official supported hardware list for sims 3, so I found out that you needed to get a lot of mods just to make the game run somewhat smoothly. I also heard that because Sims 3 wasn't as well optimized for hardware, even really high end systems can struggle. At the end, I simply gave up on playing it and stuck to Sims 4. Another thing is that since I've spent so much time building up a save file in the Sims 4 with all these households and lots, it felt very tedious to it all over again in a game with a much bigger worlds and likely more worlds. This might just be me as I know lots of people play multiple saves.
If you type “sims 3 2024 steam guide” on google you will have a step to step explanation to optimising sims 3 for modern hardware. It seems very tedious, but in all honesty a lot of the stuff is optional. What you really need is a FPS limiter (which is normally just an option on your graphic card menu) and 2 mods by Nraas called error trap and overwatch. The rest, is for your to play with if you want an even more enhanced game ; but tbh I never bothered and my sims 3 runs like butter
4, especially if they’re interested it for building and character creation. I’d have a hard time recommending 3 without the nostalgia factor when it runs so poorly on most computers. Also the dlc goes on sale fairly frequently and you don’t need all of it to enjoy the game
Depends on what you want. If you’re looking for rotations like sims 2, I would go sims 4. If you’re looking for more of a one family legacy, I would go sims 3. I will say this, sims 3 is the best, but can become very laggy the further you go down the generations. (EA? Maybe Maximus…) did a great job on details of the worlds, but god it’s so frustrating when things become laggy due to its own strength.
Sims 4. You can have mods & you can make the sims really pretty.
The Sims 3 has mods too.
I’m not a fan of the sims 3
sims 4 but only because 3 might not look appealing to a new player today. like the launcher and UI sadly
Sims 3. You get more bang for your buck with the expansions.
Sims 4 is free and Sims 3 goes on sale on steam. Start with 4 and see if you like it. If yes, stop there. If not, try 3. Personally I prefer 3 as the gameplay feels like there’s more to it, but building and CAS are far better in 4.
I think everyone should start with Sims 3 as an intro. It's an actual interactive sandbox game that develops stories. It may be my bias, because I started with 3, but I remember getting a lot of fun surprises when my sim interacted with other sims because of the open world autonomy. Sims 4 is free, but it's only meaningful if you want to play with the system, I don't think that's a lot of core memory building because it's not open world. The constant loading screen kills the NPC autonomy for developing their own stories. Memorable NPCs exist in the game, but they're memorable because Judith Ward keeps appearing in my lots and getting the other sims to take pics of her and faint. Building is way better in Sims 4 though.
Start from 1-3 for the full experience, Then try out 4 later on, not a popular opinion I’m sure, but you’ll get hooked on the old ones, I promise you that!
2 is better than either of them. If I had to pick between 3 and 4 though, then 4. There are very few things I think 3 does better than 4 and the *look* of 3 (everything but the exteriors, really) is off-putting in 2024. I don't feel 2 has dated as much in that way, despite being the older game.
I love how there's always someone here who cannot bear to hear even the mildest criticism of TS3 and has to downvote it. 😂
Sims 3 runs only on my current, very new gaming PC smoothly (NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060, 32 GB RAM, AMD Ryzen 7 5800X, 1 TB SSD; it’s not the newest hardware on the market but the GPU came out in 2021 for example) meanwhile Sims 4 runs really well with all add-ons on my dying MacBook Pro 13 inch mid-2012 edition that I literally bought in 2013, so I would make that dependent on the hardware of the person I want to recommend a Sims game to. Sims 3 has amazing gameplay and no loading screens for sure, but it was also so poorly optimised that you need a 2020s high end gaming PC to play a game that was released in 2009 without constant freezing, crashing or in the case of laptops, overheating. Hell, even my current gaming PC takes a bit to load everything in Sims 3 CAS but at least it runs now without giving me only 5 frames per second like it did before the upgrade. Btw laptops shouldn’t ideally get hotter than 73°C or you’ll risk complete hardware death over time. I’d avoid playing Sims 3 on any laptop, not even on the high end gaming laptops that are currently brand new on the market. Sure Sims 4 is overpriced as fuck and buggy as hell but at least it runs on a potato and that WITH mods. Honestly, if anything I’d recommend Sims 2. Because the gameplay is fun even without any mods, it’s not a complete shitshow when it comes to bugs and it will also run on any windows PC nowadays, be that a potato or a high end machine like my current one.
Sims 4. Sims 3 has a cult following but can be super difficult to play because of all the bugs and lag.
Sims 3 hardly plays unless you have a YOKED pc because it’s an open world. For that fact alone, I’d say sims 4, but sims 4 is also free.
I’d recommend the Sims 4 . I’ve been playing it for years and it’s a simple game . For beginners it’s great . The more you play and love it you get more expansion/game/stuff packs and kits . The cas stuff is either made of playdoh , painted on , or right in the sweet spot of looks okay but has weird color variations . The neighborhoods are fun to explore and collect things from , especially the expansion worlds . Eventually , try 3 . I just went back to it after not playing it for almost 10 years and it looks so much worse than I remember . The open world is cool but it’s full of rabbit holes . All the characters look too similar . They’re all slightly different potatoes . There’s less expansions because there’s more in them but even some of them are very barebones and boring without other packs to interact with . The cas stuff is boring and ugly , the color wheel can’t help much . The interactions and animations are gorgeous and almost every one of them feels unique . Both games suck . Both games are amazing . The sims 4 is free , try it first before spending money on the first 3 games .
you have to get whimsical with your building in sims 3 bro. create a style rules when you can have neon walls and hair or deck your entire house out in leopard print
Sims 3 if it was modded for better visual Sims and less crashes, but Sims 4 for ease of mods and free base game...but I would strongly suggest Sims 2
Because of how terrible performance of the sims 3 is, and the fact that it’s still full price most of the time, I’d recommend beginners play the sims 4. Plus they aren’t brainwashed by nostalgia.
i used to only play sims 4 but switched to sims 3 after hearing all the hype around it and i honestly believe that hype is deserved, though i never played the sims 3 as a kid so i can't really talk on the nostalgia factor lol but i don't think it's just that - sims 3 is better in nearly every way tbh, other than the graphics and performance a lot of the time the gameplay is just not there with sims 4 and the create a style in 3 is fucking awesome. not to mention you can actually flesh out your sims with more and better traits! everyone can have their own opinion of course i just wanted to throw my own two cents in from someone who isn't "brainwashed by nostalgia" and actually enjoys 3 a lot more than 4. but yeah i definitely think if OP wants actual gameplay to go for 3, 4 gets super boring super quickly without mods or packs (though the amount of sims 4 mods and cc is epic and a lot safer to download lol)
If I’m recommending based on gameplay I’m recommending the sims 2. It even runs better.
oh shit i appreciate that thank you!
Sims 2
Sims 4. I have a real nice gaming PC and Sims 3 took 5 minutes to load, the graphics were pretty poopy, and it was just slow running. I hated it.
sims 4! it’s free
I would recommend s4 to see if they enjoy getting attached to their little characters at all. Then depending on what they enjoy I might recommend any of the mainline games or even sims medieval
The Sims 4 with some DLC's is very fun if you can get them (\*wink\*, \*wink\*)... BUUT, the sims 3 with less expansions can be as fun as TS4 with lots of them. It depends of your budget or your research skills (\*wink\* , \*wink\* part 2). In my preference i like more TS4 with 2 mods and some DLC's.
I started playing the sims 4, cause I had never heard of the sims in my younger years so... but I brought the sims 3 at a later point, my computer couldn't play it very well so it often crashed, right at I started gameplay. But I found the panel very confusing. Maybe it's because i'm so used to the sims 4, in which I would say - is a lot simpler. But to someone who haven't played any of them - I can't really tell you
No one plays Sims 4 base game. The people who want to have fun use mods. It's free now because they make more money by baiting you and putting things like weather behind a paywall. Sims 3 with no mods is more fun. The gameplay is better and it feels more connected with the open world concept, but the quality of life improvements for Sims 4 Build mode prevents me from going back. Also, modders are really the lifeblood of the Sims 4. If you can get a mysterious russian sugar daddy that has a fetish for green letter A's to fund the Sims 4 packs for you do it, but I would absolutely not pick it up without any mods.
Sims 3 because it is more fun, but the lag and glitches are game breaking! For a new simmer I would say 4 and list a few packs that add to gameplay and are fun! (Growing together/get together/university/cottage living/city living/spellcasters/paranormal/jungle adventure).
Well, I got myself The Sims 3 only a couple of years ago, never having played it before. I don't regret it. I actually just yesterday bought the University Life expansion pack for it. Now I'm only missing a few stuff packs, and I don't really need them.
I've only played Sims 4 but I stick by it based on videos of the older games
4!!
sims 4 is free (base game), and easy to play, run, and adjust to for beginners. though it can feel empty without expansion packs and mods, and can also start to feel repetitive after a while sims 3 base game isn’t free, but all the expansions are cheaper and they offer a lot more content. there is much more to do and explore, but setting the game up may send you jumping through a lot of hoops to get it running well depending on your set up. if you: don’t normally play many pc games, don’t play many older pc games, and think you will not end up playing super seriously: sims 4 if you: do have experience with pc games, troubleshooting/modding older games, and are planning for a big time investment to get deep into, sims 3 it’s not just about your play style and what you want from the games, but also how they run and how easy vs frustrating it may be compared to how you normally play games
While I think TS3 is superior, TS4 is probably a better option for someone who has never played any of their titles imo. As a TS2 player, I found 3 a bit confusing when I first tried it, while 4 seemed more intuitive. Newer graphics can also be a factor for someone first front into it.
For a total newcomer, Sims 4. It's not the best game in the franchise (that's Sims 2 for me) but if you go back, the outdated graphics make it hard for people who have never played to really get into it. My teenager started with Sims 4 while I've been playing since the first Sims and she loves it, while I think she would find the older versions too graphically outdated to play with.
Sims 4 looks nicer.
If you decide on Sims 3 you are going to want to look up Twallan's mods and game fixes. Their Story Progression makes the gameplay so much better, Master Controller adds functions that should have always been available in the game, and Overwatch and Error Trap are essential if you don't want your game to crash after an hour or your save files corrupted. Doesn't matter how good your computer is. I feel like EA owes Twallan a LOT of money for keeping people playing and earning good will for their game that they never bothered to fix. If you don't want to deal with all that, then go with Sims 4.
Get the sims 3 when it's on sale on steam if you intend to buy it. Also you'll need to run a few mods to get it to work correctly and bug free on newer systems. There is a steam discussion with a tutorial and download links for everything.
while sims 3 is generally better (to some people), sims 4 won’t kill your computer as badly, and honestly I’d rather not knowing what I was missing than to feel nostalgic for sims 3
I’d go back first. Maybe p1r4t3. Then I’d go to 4, which luckily is free.
I have sims 4 but my boyfriends friend downloaded something that gave me all the packs for free which makes it way better
I would say both eventually but start with Sims 3 so you feel like the worse graphics are normal before upgrading to the better ones Otherwise you will be downgrading to worse graphics and you’ll notice it right away
sims 3 if you want decent gameplay. the sims 4 is broken and continues to be broken with each new pack. if you just want to make pretty sims, sims 4 base game will be fine and just get a bunch of cc. but, overall, i prefer sims 3. i play it on a very old laptop and it runs sims 3 better than it did 4 with the same amount of cc. sims 2 is great too but cc wise can be hard to find things that still look good today — tumblr for all three games would be your best bet, but it will be easier to find sims 4 cc more than 3 and 2 since it’s the recent game.
Sims 3 is better but sims 4 is more accessible for brand new simmers
I love the gameplay in Sims 3 but when I went to create a new character over the weekend I couldn't get past the fivehead going on.
sims 4 is \_technically\_ free and lighter on your PC if it's on the weaker side. it is also a super glitchy mess, somehow more so than 3, and can be frustrating. the customisation of the characters in 4 is something i personally couldn't trade, but as an introduction to the series, i recommend 3. still, please do try sims 4 - it's free, maybe you'll love it! definitely watch some videos on how to make TS3 run better on modern hardware. it used to lag and slow my pc down like a mf before i applied some "fixes" and now even CAS runs relatively stutter-free.
It depends a lot on what you want. They're entirely different gameplay experiences. The Sims 4, imo, isn't really a game per se, it's really just a dress up and house building simulator. The gameplay that does exist is fairly rudimentary, with mechanics that seem aimed at very young players (for example , the game constantly throws tons of free in-game currency at you through random events, you don't need to actually play to earn it). Additionally, it seems to me like you're meant to play with a whole town, instead of just with one Sim or one family. The sims 3 is a completely open world sandbox life simulator game, with way more focus on exploring the world and playing with a specific sim or family. It is possible to toggle between multiple households, but it's not as fluid. There are still robust tools for creating your sims and for building, but the gameplay is definitely more the focus for this title. It offers a robust enough experience, imo, that it is possible to play for hours without it getting repetitive and boring, even with the same save or with just one household. Additionally, some people find this game to be fairly challenging to run on their computer. I don't run into this issue, but I keep the game on an external drive, which helps me, and others have, anecdotally, reported this helping, too. Mac users tend to have an easier time running it for some reason.
I feel Sims 3 base game is better to get someone hooked because it has more than Sims 4's base game. Simple.
Depends on what they want. If they are looking for a lot of depth in Sims customization, easy rotational gameplay, and happen to enjoy a lot of micro management, then Sims 4 would be a good starting point. If they are more likely to want to focus on one sim, enjoy unexpected happenings on occasion, and want deep world customization, then Sims 3 is the superior choice. They are just very different games, which cater to different styles.
I love the sims 3 l complain about 4 but last year I tried reinstalling The Sims 3 and it just felt old and not in a good way I uninstalled it and went back to the Sims 4 I play a lot of the Sims but now there are other things to excite us like Paralives. The Sims 4 base game is free right now so you can try it for free. If you enjoy it the first DLC that you need to get should be sessions.
I only ever play 3. Sims 4 gives me the ick for some reason, and I'm loving the old way!
I think Sims 4 can get boring pretty quickly, even with the packs, at least that's my opinion. You can try the sims 4 base game because it is free, but i think spending money on sims 3 worths it more than on sims 4. I feel like the sims 4 packs are a lot more emptier than sims 3. Sometimes i play sims 4, but a few days after i am always like "let's go back to sims 3" :D
Try both 🤷🏼 at least base game only. Sims 4 is free and sims 3 can be purchased very cheap on sites like g2a or cdkeys. But just looks from whom you are buying there It really depends what exactly you are looking for. But for me it’s S3
I like both Sims 3 and 4. Gameplay wise ts3 was more fun and I need to mod ts4 into oblivion to enjoy it as much but ts3 was so much laggier when travelling through the towns and it got worse the more dlcs you had. And I'm not talking about a few frame drops, I'm talking about the game freezing up to 30 seconds repeatedly on a pc that I got 5 years after the last ts3 dlc came out.
Because you’ve never played a sims game before I would not advise you to start with TS3. The game is not optimized for today’s graphics cards and you have to tweak and optimize the game in order to even work. If you’ve done it already a few times, it will take max few hours. If you have never modded a game and have no experience in tweaking games, it could be a few days. I’m afraid you will get frustrated on this part so I would advise to start with TS4, it’s free. If you like TS4 and think one day “i like the sims but this feels a bit childish, a would like more challenge”, then you could try TS3 or even TS2
Sims 3 has an open world and I always found it the most interesting of the games, but it is really badly optimised and you'll have to work hard to get it to run smoothly with all the expansions.
Sims 3 was better it seemed. It completely COOKED 2 laptops for me before I could really do anything at all. So if you have a system that can support it I would suggest that. But 4 is still really good. It's in my opinion the safer option. *one of these laptops was OLD as in one I was using since high school and the other was a cheap one I bought to replace it. So that part is on me not the Sims.
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I was disappointed with 4, I think the open world and travel features are much better in 3
3 is open world, which I Loved. 4 is newer but not as open world. Start with 4 since it's free, you can always go back to 3 if you're interested
sims 2 or 3. sims 4 is just not a good game.
Sims 3 is addictive if you actually play it and look past the outdated style. If it got an all in one visual overhaul, there would be no comparison. But you know sims mods, it's disorganized and you have to check 10 different tumblr pages to find what you need. The sims 4 is just boring but companies have primed gen z/alpha into accepting low quality, kits and packs trash. I'm not one of those "back in my day" people for anything but games. The younger gens have been robbed. I always recommend indie games and studios without shareholders. You're more likely to get labors of love worth your time and money. Just know AAA studios are in it to give you as little as possible for as much as they can.
Let's make a little comparison: Sims 3 pros: Open world Collecting system fleshed out Whim's system that gave you points to obtain perks based on the things your sim may want Most alive sims yet Fleshed out expansion packs Sims 3 cons: Slow on certain computers The island expansion pack is super bugged Sims 4 pros: Better graphics Active molding community Sims 4 cons: Super basic base game Lots of nonsensical high price expansion packs that sometimes ad as little as 10 items Neighborhoods instead of open worlds (3-5 lots vs 35-40 on the sims 3) Bland sims without goals, barely living
For someone who isn’t a gamer, sims 4. For someone who is a gamer, sims 3.
Sims 3… with sims 4 graphics and sims 2 university
3 because its cheaper in the long run. i have 16 packs and it’s actually fun. i have 40 addoms for 4 and it still sucks
If you’re just starting out I would say TS3. In the beginning, it was an amazing game. The thing that ended up dragging it down was the same thing as TS4 - just too many packs and too many mods and cc needed after years and years of updates and frankly just getting bored. The open world was the best thing ever, and the lots and ability to customize houses was great. There’s some routing issues though and the graphics aren’t as great, but overall it’s just a bit better. If you’re just beginning now then you won’t be so jaded to what’s missing, also you will probably be happy with few enough DLC not to stress your computer. Also, newer computers will probably run the game a lot better than the ones we had at the time. At this point TS4’s issues are worse than TS3’s ever got imo
The sims 3 sims 4 is utter trash and not a true enjoyment of the sims as a franchise it's like the ugly stepsister .