Despite my nervous energy and reservations, I decided to buy the Legacy Collection of The Sims 1 and 2. I don’t know why I’ve had such a visceral reaction to the re-release—but it seems odd when something you’ve loved so dearly for years, and so quietly, becomes a loud re-release. Yet, there was a part of me that wished that EA would release the games so that more audiences could come to love what I still believe are two of the best – and most important pieces of gaming history – sims games.
I have tried my best to be as unbiased as possible in this review. As a Sims lover, this is incredibly hard.
As somebody who first started playing sims in 2003, it’s been a strange world to see this re-release. I am trying to give EA some grace on this release since the modding community has known for over a decade that the direct x issues, pink soup, etc, are problems. EA is new to this game—though, I do wish they had done more research before releasing. My main hope is that the Sims 1 won’t have dogs as cat icons (this was my biggest grudge with attaining it through other means). I’ve been playing Sims 2 with or without EA for decades, so most of my testing comes from a place of curiosity more than necessity… so here we go.
I booted the game up for the first time without any mods. Things were running smoothly. I will say, that’s something considering the “abandonware version” would not start smoothly upon install. However, this could be because I’ve already downloaded every direct x under the sun modding older games. I booted up Riverblossom Hills because Pleasantview would just make me miss my on-going saga and story.
The loading music still makes me as happy as it did in 2005. The piano melody is second only to the New Oreleans style commercial music in Sims 1. So far, no thoughts. Things are loading. The game is already set to a resolution appropriate for my screen. I have a 27 monitor, however. As expected the first time neighborhood load is painfully slow, but this isn’t a complaint. This is how it was back in the day. I remember getting home from school, booting up my computer (that my mother had to update to 20gb hard drive to even play it!), then going and doing homework, eating supper, and various chores until the game was ready to play. God forbid one had another loading screen to contend with…e3
Honestly, so far, the game has been running exactly as I would expect. If you are having issues my main suggestion would be to look into getting direct x 9 directly to see if that solves it: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8109.
With the highest settings, the game looks pretty good! I am a bit shocked at how good it looks without any mods, actually.
To be honest with you, even in 2005, I wasn’t playing without CC, and I’ve pretty much never played with vanilla sims content. My Sims resource account was created in April 2004. With that said, I am not seeing anything unexpected with an upscale to my resolution in a vanilla Sims 2. The CAS default camera sucks though. Man I miss my mods. I’ll be installing them very soon. It might end in catastrophe as I plan to just dump them all in and hope for the best!
I made twins Jessica and Isabela Sanders. Mostly because my settings were too low with Isabela, so I made another sim to test higher settings—and man, they were an improvement.
AND… it crashed. No mods. Nothing. So much for smooth sailing…
For some reason it isn’t REMEMBERING my graphics settings being all the way up. So, that’s annoying… but anyways. I bought a little house for the girls and I’m going to play for a bit. Low-res because I used the in-game camera.
I had seen people talk about how the game was crashing for them going to or back home from vacations. I am happy to report that the Sanders girls had a lovely tropical trip mid-winter, and there were no bugs, errors, or crashes. I was actually surprised with how smooth the game is running—and to be honest, things are looking great… and that’s coming from mod-hungry, skeptical me. One bug to report is the cursor shadow over the snow is showing grass. This often happened in all versions, however. Annoying, but not an uncommon occurrence. At this point I’m wondering if it’s intended to see papers and such under the snow? Who knows.
The girls got jobs in the Oceanography and medical careers. I wanted to see if jobs were working. I also wanted to test businesses so we took out a 50k “LOAN” (motherlode). Anyways, after some fun ctrl shift c (boolprop testingcheatsenabled true MUST be entered BEFORE you go into a lot), we’ve got the cash.
This is pretty much my last test before I throw mods in and see what happens. I still can’t put my finger on what exactly is wrong with it, but something still feels REALLY off with the camera, especially when dragging/turning items and moving the screen. It’s finicky. While my store did not make a SINGLE sale (probably because I set the price as high as it went), the game was running smoothly. Time for the mods. Time to burn it all down. I’m actually pleasantly surprised with how well this has all gone. I expected way worse. Especially as somebody who has been tinkering with the game for over a decade, and playing for 20 years… yeah, this is in my opinion worth what EA charged even if there are a few snags here and there.
Here are some screenshots of the unmodded game:
My downloads folder currently sits at a very modest 9.35gb.
I moved over cameras (I have mods for that), neighborhoods, sc4terrains, and downloads. This should get me the basics… and may just set fire to the entire computer. Luckily I have 64gb ram and the tolerance for fixing games.
If you’re going to do this delete the caches created by the game.
Here is a list of my defaults (no particular order):
http://littlemissgamer.com/sims-2-defaults-i-use/
The worst part of this is my lack of patience and waiting for the files to transfer. I am glad that EA created its own file for Legacy Collection in documents so there’s no need to worry about your old files—the two games can coexist peacefully. Maybe you’re like me and you’ll use that to have alternate universes. Maybe you’re normal and that setting is of no use to you.
NOW… I have clicked the game open with my zillion mods.
Here are some highlights of the mods I use. You can also find my defaults here. While this is not all my mods, it is the bulk of the ones that makes major game changes.
Right off the bat, that did not load. Not that this is surprising since I did absolutely nothing to search through CC or prevent this. Now, I decided to wait a bit because I have a lot of mods and it’s going to need to rebuild those caches. After about 60 seconds (which is incredibly fast in sims land), the game started to load. I’ve heard that RPC doesn’t work with this version, but to be honest, most of what RPC did was apply patches that EA seems to have anyways (reflections, graphic upscaling, 4gb, etc). I’m not really an RPC-loyalist, so this isn’t a ride or die for me. In-fact, I usually just applied these patches manually rather than use another program.
In general a lot of the things I’m seeing go wrong are things I would expect to have to fix on any fresh install, so I’m not really annoyed… yet… at least.
So, the first things I’m noticing are:
- Some of my save states are missing (ie. Dina was married living elsewhere and she’s back with Nina; nevermind that was just the household image… she is in fact not living here)
- There’s some purple soup on my restaurant
- I HAVE BEEN ALT TABBING TO THIS DOCUMENT CONSTANTLY. IT HAS NOT CRASHED. THAT’S AMAZING.
- The water is deathly black (caused by my pond mod, will be an easy fix and probably the thing I was most expecting. if there’s a water issue for me, it’s always pondWater.package from https://modthesims.info/d/587597/pond-amp-sea-water-overhaul. I think I’ll live without it for now and toy later.
- Mailbox and trash can blinking blue. Likely from a mod. I know I replaced their look (obsessive, right?) I do believe this error was caused by some of my mods not being copied and pasted (I have like 4 different folder options of Sims configs). Once I added the correct mods this got better.
- My cosmetic mods are pretty much all working and actually look AMAZING in Legacy edition.
Tips
If you’re going to play Legacy Collection, do-so with a fresh start. Many mods are working for me, including ones that change the gameplay. I have actually not had any major issues. I’d like to point out that most modern games crash too.
- Several bugs have been reported, and should be considered when playing. The prevalence is not yet known.
- It’s much easier to start new with new custom objects, hair, clothes, etc, than it is to fix an old save.
- If you already have the game installed with access there is no incentive to buy/play this
- On the other hand – Legacy Collect runs SMOOTH (for me) and is generally well-done. I honestly am very impressed by how good the graphics look even without mods. With them? Oh my.
- Your preference/enjoyment will vary—I personally think that Legacy Collection will be great for the community to revive the game.
Here’s my sim with a witch. Very timely considering Wicked. Oh, this makes me happy. I went in to do a little tweaking and get my water back. If you’re wondering, I have skyline mods as well as numerous mods.
Here is a gallery of the modded game.
HERE IS A LIST OF PROBLEMS PEOPLE HAVE REPORTED:
Sims 2 Legacy Collection Support Thread, FAQ and Megathread of Errors/Bugs
byu/IronicStar insims2
So, the main question – do I think Legacy Collection (of Sims 2) was a cash grab?
Honestly—no. There was a great deal of effort put it and my spine got a little chill seeing 2004-2025. The game is running smooth and while some cc doesn’t work, much of it does, and even without it the game is shipped in a state that many modern games do not. I think this is a net positive to bring Sims 2 to more people. Now, does that mean I think those of us who have been playing this entire time should ditch our saves and jump ship? Probably not. Yet, at least the two don’t conflict… so why not both? If I had to rate this—I’d give it a 6/10. It’s basically the same game they released originally, but with added fixes. The promise of on-going support is also a big one, and this is a step up for EA. The 4 points missing are for the various little glitches many have had—and what I suspect to be oversights with Direct X (I have every direct x you can imagine installed so had a smooth sailing). I also feel like there should have been more care before the release. Modders have fixed a lot of problems so not researching these fixes is kind of on EA. Special shout out to LazyDuchess who has already created a patch for windowed borderless and a few other things!