Is The Sims 3 Actually Better Than The Sims 4?

Let's be honest - this is just about open world

You can have three different outfits in Sims 3!

I just started playing the sims 3 again for the first time since the Sims 4 came out. OMG...I forgot how much more I enjoyed the experience of Build Buy with the Create a Style tool. For me, it's so much more enjoyable to create something myself than to scroll through loads of items in BB in Sims 4. I only had base game in Sims 3, while I have a bunch of packs in Sims 4, but I don't feel like I actually have more enjoyable gameplay options or better worlds in the Sims 4, even with MUCH more money in the game. I do prefer the CAS and the overall aesthetic of the Sims 4. I also like the base game careers in Sims 4 more than the base game careers in Sims 3. (Never played with Sims 3 packs so I couldn't compare those.) Overall, I think Sims 3 is probably the better game if you place it in its era. But I also feel like they are just different game concepts almost. Sims 4 allows you to make characters that feel like superhumans, have careers that are dream careers, build homes that feel like your dream home, etc. Sims 3 feels much more like a realistic portrayal of life. Keeping up with needs in Sims 3 is much more tedious as needs decay faster. Early on in the game, you basically only have time to meet basic needs and go to work with a little bit of extra time on the weekends. So, while I think the open world and accompanying gameplay is much more immersive in the Sims 3, I don't find myself actually using it as often as I'd like and it feels like more of a grind early on. I also feel like most things actually looked more realistic in the Sims 3...not as pretty and cool...but more realistic. I'm going to be curious to see how different Life by You really is from the Sims 3. It kind of feels like it might be pretty similar.

I love all the points except ''Value for Money''. I'd say Sims 3 win in that as well. Because Sims 4 individual DLCs doesn't really add much at all, but cost so much in comparison.

I used to play the Sims 3 with multiple expansions on my NETBOOK ☠️ it would take ages to start and load the game but I was willing to wait for TS3, any performance issues with TS4 and i just want to turn it off

I also had nearly every pack, and my family’s office pc is God-awful, yet for whatever reason I never had any major issues with lag and whatnot. Some, yes, but nothing that made the game unplayable. So I guess I was lucky.

The fact that things like body hair, hair highlights, and better customization for build/buy objects where you can make it whatever pattern you want weren’t things that the sims 4 implemented is ridiculous. I miss those so much from the Sims 3. I also actually like how the pets look in 3, like fluffy dogs and cats actually look fluffy, the cats and dogs in Sims 4 look…smooth. The sims 3 was also really the first mainstream sims game I played so I definitely do have nostalgia bias from it, but still, so many good memories.

Yes

Like i love to play the sims 3 but what i do miss is the options in the cas mode to creat sims of different cultures like Asians or indians and all those things, in the sims 4 you have loads of clothes and build object of different cultures and everything

Sims 3 was a great game played for hours and hours loved being able to customise everything. The sims 4 in my opinion is rubbish I get really annoyed with the limitations of it I hardly ever play the sims now because of how bad it is

wdym by "sims 4 is a lot better in many ways" ? bugs, glitches, awful packs?

My pet peeve with ts3 is that all sims end up looking so similar and all potato face. It's a curse

my profile picture is my pet dog

Imo, ts3 apart from the performance it's the better game for sure. I even prefer the grafics (if you play on high quality).
I often feel like you have to get the expension packs in sims 4 to get at least some content into your game but everytime I get one I feel like it wasn't really worth it compared to what the sims 3 equivalent would have been. Sims 3 just was a great complete experience. It was fun having only one or two sims because you could get really investigated in their lives and what was happening around them. But you could also still manage a big household easily, the amount of rabbit holes was playing together with that system. Honestly, in the sims 3, my families are a wild mix from a few kids to a lot over many generations - my sims 4 saves usually end with a family of parents and 1, max 2 kids because the gameplay bores me, the sims are way to high maintenance and either just stand there doing nothing or not listening to you at all.
They should have improved sims 3. Better performance and some features they added now are great. I feel like sims 3 is an improvement of the previous games, sims 4 tries to be something completely new all though it isn't.

You can actually have 3 outfits for each type, you just have to plan them using the dresser not CAS.

I saw the title of this video and haven't watched it yet, but yes, Sims 3 is better... I have never played Sims 4 and really have no interest to.. I'm looking forward to Life by You

the gameplay in sims 3 in top tier but the thing that annoys me the MOST, as someone who plays w a lot of families, the ugly pregnancy outfits sims got!!! my fave feature in sims 4 is that the pregnant sim’s clothes stayed the same!!

I don't understand the attitude of "cars wouldn't work in Sims 4"

Remember what we had in Sims 2?
We could park a car on our lot (and work on them), the Sims would get in and drive down the street a bit into a loading screen.
The exact same way that they just run to the road or down to the edge of the neighborhood.
How is that any different?

I never had performance issues with TS3 and I play on crusty dusty laptop. The only thing is CAS takes a little long to load but once I'm out of it it works just fine. Not on max settings but anyway. Actually it is as hard for my laptop to run TS4 as it is TS3.
My opinion on the fame is kinda controvercial, I guess. While I agree that TS3 has a lot more to do and explore, I hate the social aspect of it. I feel like TS3 sims are lifeless and boring. There is a lot of traits, but big portion of them is just to be better at skills. Artistic sims don't like painting and athletic sims don't like sports, they are just better at it. In TS4 romantic sims constantly flirt with everyone, active sims randomly exercize and goofballs pull pranks. Traits actually affect their mood and behavior regargless of what you do as a player. I actually like making friends in TS4, they seem more like real people.
I feel like TS3 is great if you want to be the best painter, or a cool firefighter, or run around and collect stuff etc. But if you want to have family and friend with complex relationships there are better games in the series.

It says a lot about the game when Sims 3 expansion packs are nearly as expensive as Sims 4 packs. EA know it's the better game...

Going to buy groceries was more fun than it looked. You could then walk down the street to the bookshop, pool, park etc and there were lots of other sims to meet. I always tried to meet everyone because they would throw parties sometimes and invite you sim if they knew them. I thought the parties were fun and always a bit of drama or indiscretion.

haven't watched the video, alreafy can say yes

I remember all I would do on sims 3 was make a pretty girl, by agitation and play till she was on level five then go to that bistro restaurant thing that has the outdoor area and play for tips. Yeah that’s it that’s what I’d do every time

The holy P i r a t e bay is your friend guys we always need more seed. And it helps spread the message we won't support their cash grab badly made games, if the devs wants to rob you you rob them.

If I had to choose between Sims 3 and 4, without a doubt, Sims 3 wins hands down. And most of the lag issues can be fixed with the super patch, fixing the graphics optimization, and NRaas suite of mods. While I chose not to buy all the Sims 4 occult packs, just from watching the gameplay, I can see very little depth and cross play options. While a couple Sim 4 occult offers more gameplay (vampires/werewolves, the rest are just meh, and the lack of fairies, plantsims, genies, zombies, etc., just seem to be a bit of foreshowdowing of what EA still might try to milk its consumers for, until Sims 5 launches.

I can understand your reasons for choosing Sims 4 over 3, because the building is your higher priority, but the fact that you cannot even edit or create your own worlds/neighborhoods, and each town is filled more with unchangeable set dressings, as well as some venues cannot be placed anywhere you like.

Also, you can vacation in all Sims 3 worlds, and with NRaas mods, you can even move the entire world (or just the Sims you want to remain together) along with you to any world.

Of course, if I had to choose from all Sims mainline games, Sims 2 wins hands down. And while I did own all Sims 2 content, I did lose some of my discs (as well as some got damaged), whenever I moved, I was able to obtain the Ultimate Collection for free, so even after investing in all of Sims 1, 2 and most of 3, I still find myself having the most fun in the Sims 2. Sims 4 just bores me after about 20 minutes of playing (even with mods installed), and a few packs (I keep watching all of my favorite sim content creators (yourself, included), to see if I am really missing out, but even though I find all the videos entertaining, when I play, I just grow bored too easily, as the Sims lack depth, the towns are mostly just set dressings, the gameplay is archaic, the moods are easily manipulated (and lack consequences), the Lore is absent and the charm and personality is just gone.

But I still love all your content❣

Just an fyi, you do not need a newspaper or computer to find a job. Even the work rabbitholes are located within the world, you can go directly to wherever you want to work and apply in person to get a job. Of course, you can use the newspaper/computer too, but if the job you want is not listed, no need to settle for something else, or wait until it appears, just go to the lot where your desired job is, and apply for a job.

About the songs the computer makes in TS3:
The Sims 3 is stopped in time, it doesn't know new graphics cards exist, it doesn't recognize my 970.
So it runs the game basically with just the Processor, that's why you'll hear it struggling, changing menus or pausing the game will actually make different buzzing sounds, almost like different music notes.
Good thing is you can force the game to recognize newer cards plus enable it to use more of your Memory as well.

I finished upgrading my old mac this morning, and I screamed when I realized I had access to Sims 3. I haven’t played in YEARS!
I’ll play Sims 4 when I get the urge to build, but Sims 3 is my go-to for storylines.

Yes it is, The Sims 4 is terrible.

Ngl, something about the appearance of the sims in TS3 really creeps me out, like they're approaching the uncanny valley a bit too much. 1, 2, & 4 are much better at staying away from that, and it's why I'll likely never play 3. Also the concept of open world stresses me out.

i heard that the sims 4 isn't open world because it wasn't designed originally to be the sims 4.

I like sims three because I like the expansion Pack into the future where 2 males or 2 females can actually have a child with just a piece of millions. And you can customate your child, and you can get a robot. You don't also get everything else. I think The Sims 3 is better, M Sims 4.

I didn't really understand the part where you talked about the fantasy packs. You said the sims 4 has a new world, new skill trees and such that sims 3 doesn't yet sims 3 has all of them ( new world, new skill trees and other I think as well) and in my opinion it is better executed since the gameplay can take longer for sims 3 than sims 4.

The sims 3 just has so much more chaos, especially once you get a bigger family. Because you can spread them out across the world it becomes really impossible to micromanage them. Like in Sims 4, you're all just in the home lot together and if you leave sims alone they'll look at their phone, get 75 glasses of water and then starve to death. With my legacy family in Sims 3, I'm trying to get the parents to build up some skills, meanwhile one of the kids is picking a fight with an old woman at the park, the teen has snuck out to TP the school and the dog is getting the entire neighbourhood's pet population pregnant. It's just so much more alive!

Alright i choose Sims 4 over Sims 3 why? Sims 4 is so much fun than Sims 3... Everytime i play Sims 3 i feel sick (Dizzy) and Sims 4 more fun to make something scenario and mods... And in in the Sims 4 you can go to anywhere like Isla Paradiso or city something while in Sims 3 you can't you just can make new save file...

It’s embarrassing how much the sims 3 had in the base game that the sims 4 didn’t. And the expansions… even sims 2 expansions had more content than the sims 4 does.

You can have up to three outfits per category, but you create and save them at a dresser, you can’t do it at character creation. I learned this by accident.

If it is then go play the Sims 3 problem solved.

Oh also, random but if you dont want the chimney in Sims 3 i think you can just delete it 🤷🏼‍♀️

I think you hit the nail on the head with the main problem with the sims 4 - its all aesthetics. It looks good, the cas and buy is lovely. Building is good and fun but the gameplay is so terrible. So repetitive and boring. I don't even know why! I just cannot get as into my familys with sims 4, they're too samey, there's not enough small interactions etc that make them stand out, all they have is how they look different. How you dress them and the house they live in, its all so surface level. If you only have time to dress your dolls and decorate the house, go sims 4, if you want a legacy, personalities and actually caring about individual sims, go with 3.

Yes and that’s it.

Died each time you said TS4 could never 🤣 and they still can't 10 months after this video!
Thank you so much for sharing, you just made my day heaps better. Considering going back to TS3, the throwback is just... Sims4 could never. 🙌

I played the Sims 3 at a friends house and it was fun. I wasn't aware of the attraction system and got annoyed because I was trying to flirt with a sim and he kept rejecting me. But in the Sims 4 that doesn't exist it's so easy in the Sims 4 to date someone.

As far as I remember, it wasn't until Sims 3: Generations that you're able to set another sim as a fiancée or boyfriend/girlfriend. Also, for example tattoos weren't a thing until an update that was released alongside Ambitions. Your points are valid, but don't forget you're comparing a finished game to another one that's still being updated regularly.
There is a very noticable trend though that the developers allow themselves to be sloppy, because they're able to fix errors later on by patches anyway. They couldn't do that in the TS2 days.

You can actually have multiple set of clothing in TS3. You just can't make them in the CAS menu, you have to go to a wardrobe and click "plan outfit" and then you can add multiple outfits.
Sim3 also had a TON more actual useful in build/buy. It came with SO many more version of the same thing, like more fridges, counters, ovens, kitchen tools, counter rubbish bins. Bathroom stuff with a ton of different toilet, baths and showers, multiple different jacuzzi's, a ton of beds, curtains and just so much more than TS4 could ever have. For gods sake TS4 don't even have proper bins...
I love the Create A Style, and I wish that Sims 4 had something similar, or at least colour wheels so you could make things match.
Also, Sims3 had a LOT more things to do, and a ton of stuff you could collect like rocks, and plant etc.
And build/buy mode had actual friezes, though you had to activate them through cheats, this build tool made the world of difference. In my mind, TS3 will always be far superior to TS4, though I do like some aspects of TS4, mainly in build mode, the like-to-like ratio in comparison, TS3 takes the crown by far.

It’s funny that you gave a point to the Sims4 for build/buy mode because this is probably what I miss most about Sims3. I miss the level of customization of everything. I just want to put any color bedding on my beds; is that so difficult?! 😂

You can just go to the lot and get a job. Much easier

DOWLOADING SIMS3 RN AFTER WATCHING THIS VIDEO LOL

For me and my purposes, The Sims 4 is better, but I understand why people prefer The Sims 3.

Fun fact. When u buy the sims 3 now, u get the late night expansion pack and the high-end loft stuff pack with it FOR FREE