Last week we brought you part one of this two-part series to give you an overview of how someone might go about tackling the latest Maxis expansion pack before really getting into the nuts and bolts of content. This week we wrap it up taking full advantage of this generous opportunity spending countless hours enjoying hands-on game-play so we can conclude our The Sims 4: Discover University review.
Lessons Not Learned
Starting Discover University with four characters I introduced last week, was overly ambitious since I wanted to experience our review game-play without using any cheats or mods. It wasn’t too long before juggling classes, sleep patterns and everything else got out of hand. Unlike The Sims 4: Seasons or The Sims 4 Get Famous expansion packs Discover University is more of an interactive experience than a building, environmental or public image experience. That being said, it was disappointing to discover that the university lifestyle encounters I really wanted to experience I could not such as attending sports events or class itself (etc) are what is referred to as being in a “rabbit-hole” state – where your sim walks into its own instant content attending to that objective without you physically getting to partake in it.
So I untangle the cords in my brain I was tripping over and reduce the number of sims I’m juggling to get a better experience deciding also to only use the base game and The Sims 4: Discover University.
How to Remove Packs From Your Sims 4 Experience
The Sims 4 content can be removed from your game temporarily manually copying the text string of each pack by right-clicking on The Sims 4 game at your Origin platform then going to > ‘Game Properties’ > ‘ Advanced Launch Options’ and enter it into the ‘Command line arguments’ text box.
To make things even easier you can also go to the site of The Sims 4 vet and Game Changer James Turner who has generously provided a super fast method to copy-paste each pack.
Double Trouble
Playing two sims I got to enjoy the dorm life with one and the living on-campus experience with the other. I had to swap around who lived whereas one of my sims has the “loner” trait so living in a dorm was too much for her often. Yes, I also had to renovate any home my sim moves into. The Sims 4: Discover University does an excellent job of encouraging you to build your own world on any of their maps. So I have renovated 3 homes for these two sims over the past few days.
Building aside, using just the base game and the Discover University pack is an enjoyable challenge especially if you own all the DLC content of The Sims 4.
The Sims 4: Discover University as content is a lot of fun however I am not confident I know everything useful. Maxis have gone the “secret keeping” route on this pack! Actually getting to graduate and pass classes is also a lot of dedication on your own behalf. Yes, there are “cheats” out there already for you to copy-paste but I have had a blast playing without using any of them. On a graduate level, though I bombed getting one of my sims kicked out of school, her revenge is going to be really sweet. The Sims 4: Discover University would be even more enjoyable with more in-game guidance provided ensuring all players have the right information.
The dorm rooms, living and eating on campus is so realistic. I really appreciate the new feature of permissions on computers and hope this feature can also be applied to other items. In this version of The Sims 4: Discover University I look forward to door locking/assigning working properly and find myself curious as to why you are unable to build as you normally might on university grounds because it’s a great inconvenience not being able to but otherwise the addition of bicycles is fantastic, juice pong is entertaining and a lot of minor details for on-campus life finds me immersed easily.
Back to school though it is difficult to tell if studying and earning grades is working as intended because meeting objectives still found me achieving a D, right back at the enrollment phase I feel the game would play a lot smoother with more in-game prompts and perhaps even an intake event explaining the process so you choose the right classes and electives accomplishing grades more successfully.
Best Packs to Bundle With
I loved starting this review with City Living and Island Living also turned on but if I were looking to buy The Sims 4: Discover University as a bundle and didn’t own any of the other packs yet I would highly recommend bundling it with Realm of Magic Game Pack to add all those Hogwarts vibes or just to see how a witch might do at college along with Moschino Stuff Pack for all those extra fashionable touches and photography.
The Sims 4: Discover University offers that real on-campus experience if you are patient enough to live up to it and I look forward to discovering all of it along with the NPC’s that came with this expansion in the coming weeks. Enjoy heading back to school and happy building simmers!
Note: Our review was done on PC with a code provided by the developer.
Catherine Daro
The Sims is my guilty pleasure. Whenever I’m stressed or kind of tired/bored of the games I’ve been playing recently, I would boot The Sims and spend a few days chillin’.
The last expac I bought was Cats & Dogs and I’ve been kind of out of the loop on the game lately, so thank you Kelley for your deep dive into the various expacs and their pros & cons 🙂
Kelley
Aww thanks for saying and its my not-so-guilty-anymore pleasure also, sits on my second screen 24/7 as my go to brain “un-muddler.” There is so much to these worlds we get given to then create our own.
Cheers Catherine!