Cottage Living has reignited my love for The Sims 4

Presented by EA gamechangers. The footage shown in the videos I captured is from software that is not final and is subject to change before release.

After my Snowy Escape post last year I never thought I would say this. I honestly didn’t think any pack could ‘fix’ The Sims 4 or make it perform any better. The Sims 4 Cottage Living expansion pack has proved me wrong!

This pack injects life into the game and brings back that spontaneity and surprise that The Sims 4 lacked in comparison to its predecessors.

Cows, llamas, chickens, rabbits, birds, and foxes each add a new level of gameplay, not to mention cross stitching and the many other things you can do and discover with this pack.

There is so much to love about Cottage Living. You can feel the effort and care that has gone into developing it as you play and the delicate decisions that have been made on how to present the animals (and which animals are in the pack!). Putting farm animals in the pack without the need for butchering them is a beautiful and calming way to present them in a game. You can still tell that story if you want to (you can sell your cow for meat!) but you don’t have to, and that’s the magic of the pack. Choices. Lots of carefully defined, well-rounded, beautifully presented choices.

The soul of The Sims 4 has been restored. It’s been so long I forget if it had one to begin with. Regardless, it has one now thanks to Cottage Living.

Thank you to EA for giving me early access to this pack and for making The Sims 4 playable again for me!

I have made a ton of gameplay videos (and a review). Feel free to check them out if you’d like to see the pack in action. I’ll also be doing a premiere of my first playthrough part on YouTube at 8pm UK time which is the same time as when this post goes live (see below), I hope you can join me, I’ll be answering questions about the pack whilst watching along with you guys.

If you want to avoid spoilers, save yourself for the pack but I think you could watch every single gamechangers’ video(s) and read every blog post at this point and still be surprised when you play. It really is chock full of stuff!