I’ve been revisiting anno 2205, infamously the ugly duckling of the Anno series of RTS games. I don’t mind so much the fact that it’s different, lacks customisation and random map generation - I’m bothered because the game is so slow to progress through on challenge settings, and it feels like a game designed just to artificially waste your time; in other anno games, you can always pull tricks to dig yourself out of economic crisis - selling off assets and surplus goods, completing quests for other parties, or taking loans. 2205 is very very confined in terms of what you can do to financially recover in the early game and forces you into a lot of military events.
I loved The Sims, especially with expansion packs like Makin’ Magic. I still think that was one of the best expansion packs in the entire franchise. I’m firmly a The Sims 2 gamer, though I haven’t played in years, because it’s too addictive. The Sims 3 always performed so poorly for me that I never played past 3 minutes on each install. I was looking forward to The Sims 4, so I was so disappointed and shocked they managed to fuck it up. How are the freedom and customization worse than any of the previous versions, like wtf?
I recently bought Paralives, but haven’t tried it yet. It might scratch an itch, however, probably not in the right way. All EA had to do was take the best of The Sims 2 and 3, improve performance and expand on customization. But I guess that would make them actually competent, and we can’t have that.