House Flipper: Pets Review (rgjester)
So first, let's get the good out of the way: it's clear a lot of careful thought has been given to the various animal furnishings and how animals are best taken care of. A little *too* much thought... more on this in a bit. And for the most part, the way the animals implemented in game interact with those furnishings seems reasonably realistic. For example, sometimes dogs will lay on beds, sometimes they'll lay on the floor in the middle of the room for no apparent reason. :-D
Everything else in this DLC rates a giant "meh" from me, and I'm very much a House Flipper fan. While careful thought has been given to the animals and the furnishings, less thought has been given as to how these elements interact with the game itself. It's cute that you can take a dog with you on jobs. It is less cute that the dog's hit box is enormous and you will be constantly, constantly trying to get him out of the way so you can actually do the thing you're playing the game to do. Much of the furnishings also don't interact well with the items intended for use with the furnishings. For instance, there's a rabbit enclosure. There are rabbit toys. Do the latter fit in the former? For the most part, they do not.
And while I applaud the thought that's been put into the various enclosures, virtually all of them are *enormous*, no doubt done that way so that there is no chance that Frozen District will be subject to criticism regarding the "treatment" of the animals. The bird enclosure, just to use one example, will absolutely dominate any room that it is placed in and it doesn't matter very much how big you make that room. There is no bird cage. There is no goldfish bowl or even a 120 gallon aquarium. Nope, you get XXXL or you get nothing. This also means that there is one choice for a bird enclosure, one choice for aquarium, etc. For some reason, only rabbits earn a choice, between two possibilities.
Anything not directly related to the animals was very much low-effort. There are a dozen or so new missions, and if you guessed that they do not interact with any of the previous DLCs, you are 97% right. One mission asks you to place four items outside one of the houses. The rest of the missions are very much in the vein of "Redecorate my kitchen and my bathroom, and oh by the way throw a cat food bowl and a cat toy in the upper bedroom." or even worse "I've decided to get a fish. Fit this 500 gallon aquarium into this space that is no way adequate for it." until you get to the very last mission, which someone actually sat down and put some care into designing. It's a nice finish but too little, too late.
All in all, it's a very adorable cash grab and you should probably skip it.