Okay, I've been playing Sims 4 since it came out and every time that someone complains about something someone else talks about how much better it was in Sims 2. I was one of the lucky people that got the whole Sims 2 bundle for free when they were giving it away before Sims 4 came out. I tried to play but just got confused. I was used to Sims 3. So tell me Sims 2 lovers what do you love about Sims 2 and why should I try it again? Also, I do a blog so I take a lot of screenshots and I could never figure out how to get the screenshots from Sims 2. Thanks!

I'm just off to bed over here, but I have to get a quick post in before this get's flooded.

The main reason I love sims 2 is its very much a sandbox where you can set your own vision. That and it has many small details and interactions the other games lack.

I don't have to sell you on anything nor does anyone else. No matter how many instances anyone gives you of what is great with this game in the end you're going to find that it doesn't suit your play style because it's more primitive then the other 2 installments. You have to decide whether the dated graphics and limited scope of this game can give you more enjoyment than the vast options presented in the other 2. No matter how many testimonials you'll get it's still personal at the end of the day and one persons personal attachment can't sell someone else to love something.

As for screenshots it's called print screen and a photo editing software as the regular camera options don't take the sizes that you'll want. Easiest way to go about it.

It probably has more to do with habits and game preferences than anything else.

I tried to get into TS3, but coming from TS2 I got confused when it came to CC and such. For gameplay I didn't find it a challenge, but I noticed that my preferred gameplay changed. From TS2 I'm used to being able to switch between neighborhoods and families, so I found that kind of gameplay very challenging when there was basically just one family I could use at any time, and since I couldn't even let relatives live in a house in the same neighborhood without doing some heavy modding. Despite the open neighborhood and all the fun new things, I guess my preferred method of playing just wasn't meant for TS3. I also had to learn a new method for posing. Plus, the game would get corrupted after 5-10 saves anyway, and latest completely stopped working when I installed the final EP. My TS2 game has never done that. I also got bored very easy with TS3, and it could go months between playing sessions. Plus, I never bothered to get the hang of CC creating, which is the thing I love the most with TS2.

I like TS2 because it's got nearly everything I need for my playstyle, ad there are various 'cheats' for the things I can't do. I've learned lots of handy tricks over the years, so I know the game very well.

It's like getting a new computer system at work or school. You could use the old one without too much trouble, even if there were some minor bugs and annoyances, and you could do a lot more than you could see at first glance. The new one is overwhelming at first, but with some patience you start getting the hang of it, even if you miss some of the handy functions the old system had, and struggle to get plugins to work. Then comes a new system, before you even start getting a hang of the previous, and at first it seems like a downgraded version of the first program, but soon you realize that even if half the funtions are gone, and even if it's more alike the previous system in how it's built up, it might not be the worst thing that has ever happened, after all. Even if you've technincally not yet tried it... (alright, so that was my view, but still).

I prefer TS2 because I'm used to it, and because I had at least 5-6 years to learn it's secrets and workarounds before TS3 came along. If you start out with TS3 or TS4, that one will probably become your favorite, unless you realize that one of the others have more of what you prefer. Also, it's not like you have to stick to that one game forever. I had both TS2 and TS3 installed on my computer, and would switch between them depending on which I wanted to play that day.

Took the words right out of my mouth Jo, haha. In Oz too and was thinking the same thing. Come tomorrow morning, I'll bet this thread has at least 2 pages. I just love the mass loyalty and die-hard admiration for this game despite it's age.

I think the main reason why I came back, after playing the Sims 3 for a short while, is that I love to play with an entire neighborhood, not just with one family. Like people say: it's indeed more based on preference than anything else. If people at the Sims 4 forum say the Sims 2 was so much better, I think they're talking out of nostalgia more than anything else - after all, if they really liked the Sims 2 better, wouldn't they be playing the Sims 2?

That being said, I do think the Sims 2 is worth getting into, if only to see if you like it or not. The best way to do that in my opinion is to just discover it yourself in-game. I remember, especially in the beginning, I was amazed whenever something new happened.

It has genetics, I mean the real sort, with recessive and dominant genes. It has two-sided relationships, in which one Sim may even be in love, while the other may be in deep negative at the same time. The Sims have histories, interests and fears, and their conversations make sense in that context. The Sims are lively, always up to something and very social. My com lots are used in their entirety, Sims rampaging through them happily, and it's a pleasure to visit them. At times, I just sit there and watch them do their thing - and they do their thing quite nicely and with a lot of sense.

It has OFB. I like the fact that OFB makes my hoods feel and act like integrated communities. Playing self-sustainable communities in rotations, with OFB - that's the best part.

I spend a lot of time building, and we have a ton of amazing tools Mootilda made for building (she's missed dearly). I love starting and building new hoods and especially com lots. Inventing my own rules for each of them, some sort of a challenge in each, of my own devising and that of others. TS2 community is great, and there's a ton of tons of custom content for the game, even now.

I am trying really hard not to write: "I love it all". I hope I was helpful

I personally like S2 for a ton of reasons. I'll mention just a couple. Overall though, I really just love playing rotationally, which S2 easily provides. Even when I play S3, I have it modded to where I can play rotation without things happening to my sims that I don't want to happen.

I love how the sims in S2 are so sassy. If you have a lazy sim go clean something, they're going to look at you like me, really? If you have a playful sim go watch TV, they're going to drag their feet the whole way. I really like how the sims break the 4th wall like that. It provides more of a connection to the sims than what I got from S3 or S4.

I also really like how you can make the entire town connected in some way. What I mean to say is you can have your sims run the grocery store, the pet store, the furniture store, etc etc to the point where there aren't really any NPCs running anything. You know every sim who's running the stores, you know their stories and backgrounds. I'm not nearly at this point yet in my game because I only got OFB with the UC that came out. However, it is so much fun trying to figure out which of my sims, based on all of their stories and likes/wants etc would fit best in each type of store in order to provide the interconnectedness I'm looking for.

One final aspect I'll touch on is the chemistry system. I absolutely love this. Its something that I just can't find with the S3 version. Each sim has turn ons/offs that, along with some other things, show how many bolts of attraction a sim has toward another sim. 3 bolts would be the highest attraction. I really like this because it's like my sim chooses who they want to be with, not me. I can just go with the person that my sim has the highest chemistry with. I've had multiple instances where a sim who has 3 bolts with multiple sims, will roll a want to be engaged to a specific sim. I just think that's so cool, because sometimes it not at all who I was expecting.

The sims in S2 just feel like they know what they want and act with so much more personality. I'm playing more to help a sim get what they actually want as opposed to just playing out a story in my head, but that the sims themselves don't really contribute to for the other sims games if that makes any sense.

I've never played 3 or 4 so I can't compare. I find the Sims in 3/4 to be creepy. They are too human and too far from human at the same time. Close enough that the differences are disturbing. Sims 2 is more cartoonish, which I like.

The reason I still play this game after so many years is that there's still things to do. The possibilities are endless. Because the game is so open, I can make my own rules. It is as complicated or easy as I want it to be. I don't have to play in a specific way, or do things a certain way. If I don't like it, I can mod it out. But at the same time, the game enhances everything because it's so well made. There are quirks in animations and interactions that can surprise you, even after 10 years. You'll never be done finding things, there's always something new you hadn't seen before.

I'm not sure if you should try it again. If you didn't enjoy it, there's not really any point in persisting when you prefer later incarnations of the game.

However, I enjoy it because of the complexity of the sims, all the little actions and interactions they have, so many that even after ten years I still spot new things. I love the humour in the game, both the obvious, and the little easter eggs that are dotted about. I love the way all lots are open and usable. That I can use community lots to massively expand what the sims can do, and with mods create all sorts of locations they visit and enjoy. And the genetics, the way fourth or fifth generation sims will carry features from their grandparents and great grandparents - much as real people do.

Also, I've been playing for such a long time, my megahood is years old, I've invested a lot of effort in building it. I'm not sure if I'd want to go back and start again with another game, especially when I still get so much enjoyment out of this one.

ETA: "I find the Sims in 3/4 to be creepy. They are too human and too far from human at the same time. Close enough that the differences are disturbing. Sims 2 is more cartoonish, which I like."

I think S4 sims look okay, but agree S3 sims are straight from uncanny valley!

little details, and still today we are finding new features we didn't notice before, you can find just about anything custom content wise to add to your game. The scenaries, stories , and pictures created from it, plus the game is so established and so well-loved it still has a great community across multiple platforms and support system if you need help or have questions.

I don't think we need to tell you why it's so great, you can just see why we like it so much reading through these forums. True, there are pet peeves we can get but usually someone is quick to point out suggestions to fix it or put a new perspective on it.

Wow this got a lot of responses! So here's my problem and why I ask about Sims 2. I'm bored to death of Sims 4 and had wayyy too many problems with Sims 3 to go back, so I want to try Sims 2 again. BUT I don't know where to start. I'll make a sim and move them in a neighborhood and just sit there like duh what now? It's not that I don't like Sims 2 I just don't understand how to play it.

In that case I suggest you read around the forum. You'll get lots of ideas of what you can do and what kind of thing you can get your Sims up to.

I would highly suggest reading the 'Keeping the game interesting' thread for ideas on how or what to do with your sims. Great for inspiration!

Have you done to totorials yet for they will give you the basics.
After doing the totorials you should go play one of the starting hoods like Pleasantview and do there stories this will give you a great feel for the game.

"I would highly suggest reading the 'Keeping the game interesting' thread for ideas on how or what to do with your sims. Great for inspiration! "

Another vote for the keep the game interesting thread, there are some great ideas there. Or try one of the challenges. I've only ever played the zombie apocalypse one to the end, but I've adapted others to give me new ways to play. Or take inspiration from films, television, literature, I often get ideas when I'm reading or watching something. In fact, my game owes a great deal to Stephen King, Martin Scorsese and Agatha Christie.

I prefer TS2 to TS3 is partly because my gameplay style is omnipotent overlord and the thought of the sims I'm not controlling leading lives without my say-so is abhorrent to me. It would be like loading my game and discovering someone had been playing it. I want to see what's happening and I want to control it. The other reason is because I just don't like the way the actual sims look.
TS4, I have it and sort of kind of like it sometimes, but it's biggest problem right now is that a lot was cut out and it shows. I play multiple families, so actual family-related gameplay is important to me and TS4 right now just doesn't have enough of it. It doesn't have enough of anything. If/when toddlers come back and teens can be easily identified from adults and elders, I might give it another chance.

I can't find the tutorials that marka93 is talking about. The Keeping the game interesting thread is very helpful though.

The really basic things that I like to do when starting a family are:

- get the Sim a job
- get a couple Cooking points so you don't kill yourself when you try to make a meal, and then start earning the skills you need for your job
- start meeting other Sims (greet the "Welcome Wagon" - the 3 Sims who come to your house to welcome you to the neighbhorhood, greet the Sims who walk by your house, or head to a community lot); the purpose of this to start making friends and hopefully find a romantic interest
- start meeting the Sim's needs (keeping them in the green) and fulfilling their Wants

My favorite thing about the Sims 2 is the lifecycle - I love getting Sims married, having them have kids, and watching what happens as the kids grow up and start lives of their own. I also love the genetics and seeing how it plays out in my families.

I just prefer the gameplay of Sims 2. It's quite... sandboxy, and I know that the modding community is so good that I can literally do anything I feel like doing with my game. Plus the age-range of this community is a lot older and wiser than the Sims 3 and Sims 4. I'm really not a fan of people my own age... or younger than me, and I know that with this community if I break my game, people help me fix it within a day and then I'm ready to play again. Plus the whole game feels a lot more personal to me, whereas in Sims 3 (and I think sims 4) sims do what they want without you. Although I have mods like ACR installed so my Sims have quite a lot of freedom, I do really like to interfere.

if you're new to it, maybe it might be good just to start off with a small 1 or 2 sim family. Maybe someone and their pet? and then slowly getting into it because it is a lot different to Sims 3 and 4 and I'd say it is a lot harder keeping track of sims needs all the time. That being said, one of the first families I made on Sims 2 when I was 9 was a family of 1 adult and 7 toddlers... totally a bad idea, but somehow I still loved the game. I guess the best advise is to just not give up when things get hard, and if you find something you don't like - mod it. I don't tend to mod a lot of my game in terms of sims behaviours, but god I hate it when my sims are running a business and people complain over everything... so I modded that out, but that being said - I use to play the game for years without any custom content at all.

What's so great about sims2? It's a complete game that is fully paid for, no more buyin EP's/SP's ... lol

I agree with what everyone said above. Here are a few more thoughts and reasons for me:

I found the original Sims game sort of by accident. I loved playing Roller Coaster Tycoon, Railroad Tycoon, and such. Bein that I liked those when I stumbled upon a packaged deal for Sim Town, Sim Ant, Sim Tunes .. and I think it had a few more, I grabbed it. The games were a bit basic and childlike, but were still sorta fun. From there I moved onto the original sims. I got all the EP's, not exactly when they came out,out as I thought $20 was a lot of money for an add-on. I really liked Sims and liked it even better when I found I could add in custom content and I could do some of my own custom content. However even with all of that, it still lacked somethin so that eventually my attention and interest in the game waned somewhat. My cousin showed me the Sims 2 he had on his laptop, which iirc he had base and Uni. I instantly realized what it was about the original that was missing, well not missing so much I guess as Sims 2 had taken the next step and progressed. In the Sim Town set I had it was very childlike. The Original Sims seemed like a step up from that. So, in the same aspect Sims 2 was the next step up from the Original.

While there was a marked difference in Sims Original and Sims 2 due to the change in graphics, I still feel that are are close enough in looks that the switch from one to the other wasn't a big change. When Sims 3 came out I will admit that the looks of the sims was high on my list of dislikes and a major turn off for me gettin the game. Add to that (as I stated above) I had all the SP's and EP's for sims 2 and there were not anymore comin out which was good in two ways 1) it was fully up to date with all upgrades and 2) it was finished for modding out all the idiocy that EAxis insisted on putting in/ not fixing by some really great community modders who are longer around. I really didn't want to go through that again either forkin out a whole lotta money, waitin on all the updates, and then waitin patiently while the kind-hearted modders fixed EAxis screw ups.

I do not know how the game play is for Sims 3 as I have never played it. I won't say that I'm never goin to get it or try it, but the chances of it happenin are really close to my chances of winning the lotto. (I don't buy lotto tickets.) Sims 3 may be the finished product now still the cost of buyin all the EP's and SP's would still put a heafty dent in anyone's pocketbook. Then same as with Sims 2 I would need to go locate all the idiocy fixin mods.

The reasons for Sim 4 are very similar to those for Sims 3. I love all aspects of Sims 2 from the sandbox play to the quirky personalities to the openness of game play style. In fact, Sims 4 actually has a drawback in that it is MISSING an important life stage. Instead of listenin to us, the players and adding in one or two more life stages, they took one out. Seriously! What were you thinkin EAxis?

In this day and age of technology we live in it seems that a lot of people always want what's around the next corner w/o even really knowing, using, seeing, understanding, what is right there on their own street. I see no reason to get rid of something just because the next new and supposedly better thing came along. I am not all that old (I am 44 years young), but I recall life before every day in house computers. I recall life before cable, before cell phones. Don't get me wrong, I like all these things, and I know this is about what is so good about Sims 2, and this is it in a nutshell. Here we are 10 years later and it is a game that is STILL going strong. I don't need to see what is around the corner as I do like, love, what I have right here on my own street.

I love Sims 2 and I have no plans at this time of changing, no plans of lookin around that corner.

Well, this is just me but I like Sims 2 because of the way it pulls you in. Don't get me wrong, I play TS3 and TS4 too and I love them, but the way Sims 2 works is unique. In TS3, you can just ignore entire households if you want and they keep aging and growing without you. In TS2, that doesn't happen; you need to be actively involved with a household or it will stand frozen in time forever. Also, in TS2, I was really interested in the possible stories that could be played with the premades while in TS3, I felt no such compulsion until much later. It just feels more control, makes me want to get more involved and I probably spend much more time world-building and such for TS2 than I do for TS3

In TS2, you're able to do almost everything. I like building new custom neighborhoods. I have many neighborhoods in my game. TS3 and TS4 don't have this feature. Well, there's a tool to build neighborhoods in TS3 but it's not user-friendly. TS4 is really limited when it comes to lots and neighborhoods. That's one of the main reasons why I like TS2.

Thus, everyone in the neighborhood ages in TS3 and TS4. I once had a single sim. She was a YA. I didn't do much. She started a career, that's all. I planned to play her more but I created another family in which I've played. I loved the new family so much that I forgot her so I went back and do you know what happened? She was an elder and had 3 romantic interests (all of them were useless... two of them were already married and the other one was just too young for her...) and she was still on Lvl 1 in her career track! I didn't want her to age that fast...
In TS2, the other sims don't age so this doesn't happen...

I don't like being told how to play my games.

I love being able to take my sims clothing shopping and watching them rummage through the clothing rack. Or to the grocery store and seeing them looking through the foodstuffeths as if they're choosing what foods to buy. Heck! I love watching them rummage through the garbage sometimes! Stuffing their face from the ice box, primping, playing fetch with their critter, the way Toddlers crawl, the way infants' eyes get big when they first take their bottle, how much fun infants and toddlers have while being bathed - I could spend weeks saying what all I love and why I love...Every!...Little!... Detail!... that sims2 has in it!!

I've yet to play any creature (I did play a few Plantsims for a bit) other than Aliens (my very favorite!!) as of yet...and I've been playing this game since day one! In fact, I use the VC to keep all of them away from my game, for now. Just not ready to play with them, atm, but maybe someday down the road I'll choose to do so.

I love creating my neighborhoods and having them look like the theme I'm going for with my houses! love being able to create my houses and the lands they're on, to look and play like however I choose them. I can have cabins in the woods, where my sims are mostly hermits keeping themselves alive by fishing, gardening are rummaging the garbage.
Making apt. type lots that are residential and so have up to 6 different families living in it at the same time.
Creating farms that, not only provide for your family, but can also support the neighbors as well.

Just every little detail that the sims2 has! It gives me the choice to play it my way. It's the thing that I love the very most about ts2!

ETA - "They're" vs "Their"...I drive myself nuts, sometimes! :D