The Sims 4: Cottage Living Review - Unrealistic but fun!

Do you have a cottage fantasy? The new expansion for EA's The Sims 4 allows players to live out their ultimate Cottage dreams. Whether it is hens, a Llama companion or the ability to commune with wild foxes and birds there is a lot of great interactions to be had here! It finally looks like Maxis appear to be listening to the fans and have incorporated a lot of ideas from popular community mods.

In Cottage Living, you can either farm animals or chat with wild ones. Be sure to befriend the birds because they will help out in your garden and not eat everything that falls into its territory! But if talking isn't really what matters most then go ahead an adopt one of these friendly creatures; their milk/wheat provide much-needed nutrients for humans while giving us something fun to drink at home on those warm summer days (I'm looking forward to strawberries!).

With the new Simple Living lot trait, where you need to physically have food ingredients for cooking with them. It means that there is now an incentive in growing and producing stuff at home! This is also fun - don't believe us? Try it out yourself!--you'll be surprised how easy planting a few seeds can turn into an exciting game of hide n' seek as they grow up towards adulthood over time (or maybe just sit back while someone else does all hard work).

Cottage Living seems to have taken the old-school element of The Sims, with its signature sense of humor and potential for petty cruelty. You can make your hens lay pink eggs or your cow produce pumpkin spice milk; you could even dress up a rabbit in clothes made out an animal's skin! With the Animal Enthusiast trait you can play guitar for your llama. And there's another new addition: Lactose Intolerance which means these Sims will feel great if they avoid dairy products; however they will become sick and bloated when eating anything containing dairy ingredients.

With these additions, you can now live your Cottage life in The Sims. Build Mode has a bit of almost everything added and even the pre-built rooms are pretty cute with its massive white block kitchen sink that looks like it came from an elegant farmhouse Airbnb listing! There's also some nice clutter for those who love to create their own environments as well.

With the new Create A Sim clothes and looks, some are cute but others feel a bit twinset for my taste. There's also an assortment that reminds me of what we got in Tiny Living--though they do have some different swatches to play with as well (and this may be due solely because Henford-on Bagley has forest neighborhoods while other areas feature farms or quaint villages).

While the game has its flaws, I found that they were minor. New content like this and an update in December which added better skin tones made me feel as though developers were paying more attention to what players wanted from them. There are also many wallpaper/floor swatch options available.

Verdict

I always thought of myself as a bit more sophisticated than the average game player (you don't raise your pinky on the mouse while playing?), but there are times where all we really need is some good old fashioned creativity; something satisfyingly creative like making our homes into little worlds full...of happiness and Cottage Living has that in spades.