izigame.me

For context, I really enjoy The Sims 4, coming off of being a The Sims 3 fan. All DLC I own has been bought on sale, save for a few stuff packs.
Truth be told, I did not expect much out of this game pack. Vamps in TS3 always felt kind of bare bones so I didn't expect much out of this, but bought it based off of recommendations. I gotta say, a little bit blown away.
I've thoroughly played through the pack's content and there's a lot of meat on these bones. Easily one of the best game packs for TS4, and I'd even venture to say it outclasses some of the expansion packs.
PROS:
- New life state, the vampire. Obviously.
- Vampires actually have a progression system that allows you to develop their powers and further customize and control their lives in unique ways (the ability to put others to sleep, reproduce, more efficient use of powers, can enter any house uninvited, super strength, super speed, bat transformation, sun resistance, etc.) This progression system is simple enough to be intuitive, and complex enough to fun and interesting across several sims.
- Weaknesses must be taken to progress through the vampire ranks, creating a nice balance between advantages and drawbacks so it's not a super obvious choice to make every sim a vamp (occasional hissing, feelings of guilt when feeding on someone, less efficient sleep, sun weakness, less efficient feeding, unable to eat normal food, can only sleep in coffins, etc.)
- LOADS of create-a-sim items that are extremely fitting for vampire, punk, and goth styles
- Even more build items that allow you to make a proper gothic home
- Build items genuinely affect gameplay and serve purposes outside of cosmetics (namely, a vampire will sleep better in a coffin)
- Vamps have "dark forms" they can transform into when using powers or feeding. These can be customized to some degree during create-a-sim and have their own outfits, teeth, ears, skin details, eye colors, and skin tones.
- Vampirism completely halts aging, allowing a favorite sim some extra time on the earth
- Vampirism can be hereditary
- New aspirations that play into what type of person your sim is as a vamp, allowing for deeper roleplay and story crafting
- Immersively learning lore on vampires in game, deepening your sim's knowledge and abilities via the Vampire Lore skill
- New plants, consumables, and recipes for vamps including plasma fruit, plasma juice, sun resistance potion, etc.
- New world--Forgotten Hollow--which has unique benefits for vamps.
- Easy curing of vampirism via a bar
- New sims, one of which is heavily based on the titular character from the 1922 horror classic, Nosferatu.
- New interactions based around vampirism and its various tropes both for regular sims (praise vampire lifestyle, confess fear of vampires, debate existence of vampires, ask to turn, etc.) and vampires (compare to long-lost love, declare eternal love, compliment neck, offer to turn, etc.)
- Immersive introduction of the mechanic. Vampires can invite you over and ask if you would like to be turned.
- extensively played, no bugs unique to this pack encountered personally
CONS:
- Somewhat poor communication regarding the affects and usefulness of some powers or weaknesses (taking sun weakness makes daytime travel basically impossible even at the lowest levels)
- Progression through the last ranks of vampirism takes much longer than expected and can easily make the game feel slow
- Vampirism has little to no affects on sims before becoming a teenager
- Force feeding on a sim automatically lowers relationships with all nearby sims, even if you put them to sleep prior to the forced feeding, and regardless of whether or not other sims in your household do the same. Preposterous.
Create-a-sim items are a bit niche, and have few applications outside of the obvious vampiric, gothic, and punk vibes
Overall an extremely solid pack with tons of gameplay potential. Obviously I never recommend giving EA more money then you can get away with, but a rare instance where $20 is a fair price. To me at least.