Okay, we all know that TS4 isn't the greatest, in fact, it's the worst Sims game yet. Sims one was good (so I hear, I never played it) and Sims 3 was great. Sims 4 is a Sims 2 wanna-be. Sims 2 is absolutely amazing.
LOVE the dining (no Sims 3 Store bistros, thank you).
LOVE the built-in posing.
LOVE the awesome clothing and hair styles. I can live without custom ones because of it.
LOVE the animations. A lot better than TS3.

Everything.

Where to begin!

I have the Sims 1 for both PC and Playstation. Sims, Bustin' Out for playstation, Sims 2 for PC and Playstation and Sims 3 (which I don't play, because I can't forgive my sims for being so ugly and the houses for needing 30 lamps in each room to light up and not make everything... blue). But, as you so perceptively pointed out, Sims 2 is and will probably always be my favorite!

I like that I can be in complete control of the world. I never did feel like I was in Sims 3, not even with free will off.

I like the appearence of the sims. Of course, it would be nice to be able to customize the body as well, but the wide variaty of customizing avaliable on the faces makes up for it.

I like everything that you said!

I like that my sims really do have a personal feel to them. I could make two sims completely identical (which I did. The sim in my DP is a twin I made). Identical personalities, appearences, interests and they will still have their little differences. As if there is some coding in there that can't be controlled, which is amazing. What kind of sucked, was that one of them was supposed to be in love with a specific sim, but then the other one went and fell for that sim instead... even though their turn on's and off's were the same. Gabriel (DP Sim) had hearts all about with the sim and Mikail (his identical twin) had... nothing. But that's how it goes. It's only a tiny example, built on random chance, but it comes to show that even identical sims are different in some ways!

I think children in Sims 2 are the most normal and "realistic"-looking in the Sims series.

I pretty much like everything about Sims 2 except the lack of an open world, which I've dreamed of since it first came out, but everything else more than makes up for that. Would be too long a post if I had to list everything Sims 2 contains that makes me enjoy it.

I guess that, even though I've played this game a few years I feel like there's still so much I can do with it. I've barely scratched the surface with businesses or supernaturals and I still need to take my Sims on vacation someday. Even if/when the Maxis content runs out, there's still a deep well of user-created content to plunge into. Not to mention the new items that come out at a pretty steady rate... and for free!

The other thing that keeps me coming back to the game is the opposite of the above, I suppose. A comfortable familiarity? I know how to run a Sim household smoothly without cheating. I know build mode well enough to make houses that suit me and I know where to find the items I want in buy mode. I know which sliders to tweak in CAS to get my Sim to look a certain way. I have all the mods in place so my game runs exactly how I like. A group of talented strangers may have made this game, but it feels mine in a way that other games I've played don't and aren't.

I dunno... I may have gotten off topic? Haha. I feel more direct comparisons to the other games in the series are objective. I love the way the Sims in 4 look and, from what I've read and seen from others, the Sims 3 is fun to play and the open worlds look beautiful. It's just I liked Sims 2 first, it still feels fresh to me, and I'm set in my ways.

I like how my home lot freezes and I can go out for a night of partying in the down town with my university sims and then return and have them get a full nights sleep before class. I wish I could have done that in my real life college years.

Basically I never get bored of this game and that's why I like it. My little sims are like a garden I tend to and grow.

I also like that because its an older game, there is and has been an extensive modding community that has worked to help the bugs, as well as loads of custom content so no one's game is the exact same in look or play.

For me the big pull of TS2 is how it's so customisable. I can make my own maps in SC4, I can put any size lot anywhere I want, I can build whatever I want. My hood can be a small little village or a huge sprawling town with different sub hoods. I can make my own world from scratch. TS3 and 4 always frustrated me in that sense. I don't want to play in EA's world, I want to create my own.

Its sandboxy-ness. It can be whatever I want it to be. I never played Sims 1 and have no interest in TS4, but for me the biggest turn-off with TS3 is that its gameplay is obviously more meant for people who like to focus on one single household in a neighborhood while story progression handles the rest of the neighborhood. But that's not what I enjoy. In fact, it's the very opposite of what I enjoy. I get bored with that style of playing very quickly. I much prefer shuffling through households throughout the neighborhood so that I never get bored of any particular one. TS2 lets me do that. In fact, it rather encourages me to do that, whereas TS3 actively discourages it. No likey. Sure, I could mod TS3 and turn off story progress and whatnot, but what would be the point of that when I can just play TS2?

That's a matter of opinion lol. To me Sims 3 was lacking in one huge area- the sims!

I want to play sims, I don't want to play the scenery, no matter how pretty it is. While I enjoy nice scenery and fun elements those things don't make for a long lasting game. I want a sims game that focuses on the sims, How they look, what they do and how they react to each other. I also want as many life stages with their own uniqueness as possible. I want to run a integrated hood so that John down the road owns the grocery store and Sandra can go in and have a chat to him, and everyone knows that Julie bakes the best bread. I want my sims to be able to go out to eat and recognize that the waiter is Mary's son Philip who decided to spend his young adulthood gaining some work experience. I don't want to play one family or disconnected families. I don't want to see kids leave home after being best friends with their parents and reject the gift saying "I don't know you well enough". (To this day that is what I remember most about my tried and failed sims 3 legacy) I don't want object babies who jump out of ugly cribs into school aged kids and I really don't want kids who look like sullen blobs.

I love that I've been playing this game for eight years now and something about always keeps drawing me back.

I love how my sims can still make me aww and smile. I love how I still laugh when I take the time to read the descriptions of objects in the catalog. I love how I'm still finding new things to do, ways to play, worlds to create even after playing this game for nearly half my life.

I love how I can build any hood I can imagine without fighting the game every step of the way. I love being able to switch out a folder, fire up the game and go from playing a sprawling medieval city to a fledgling BACC. I love how rather than punishing you for building things yourself sims 2 allows you to take your time. You just need a lot and a sim to start a new world. In sims 3 you needed everything already in place IMO. I love how sims 2 feels old and familiar and quirky, how it doesn't force things down your throat. I love moments like when my very proper prince to my medieval kingdom was abducted by aliens and gave birth to an alien daughter, moments that you didn't force, didn't expect yet they still happened and turned your game around. I love how Adrien and Lucy Walker tried so many times for a baby that they'd almost given up and then she had two consecutive sets of twins the week before her elder birthday. I love how my trailer park challenge family has both triplets and quads to juggle. I love how in my test of time hood I'm waiting for a certain sim to try to assasinate the emperor and looking forward to seeing how it turns out. I love how my sims seem vibrant and nearly alive. I love how in a way I don't write their stories, they do. I love the simplicity of building and the limitations of trying to make a house pretty, affordable and functional without CAST. I love how I never really know what's going to happen next with my sims.

For me it's the ability to tell stories which is the primary attraction but it is helped by all sorts of things like the moddability of the game and the richness of the sim interactions and how I can fart about to my heart's content with various settings.

For me, the one thing that TS3 offered that I would want was the open neighbourhood but that is not enough to compensate for what is lost to me. I can see why some people also love CAS though it's not something I'm too bothered about personally. But what TS3 and TS4 do not offer me is that rich story-telling facet and that's why I still play and create for TS2.

I think after all this years we still are in love with Sims 2. The best for me.
I hope creaters never give up to create things for Sims 2. We must thank them very very much

My gawd, I feel old...

Peni, you took my answer.

So, ditto what she said.

I also agree with @Peni - Everything

I tried making a list but the computer exploaded because the list was too long

Quite surprising, I love the University part. It has to be my favourite expansion in the series. I think it might be because of the challenge of making your Sims be the best they can be and enjoying student life (Plus the fact i love decorating my Sims' dorms :3)

and one thing in every other game i cannot live without? Custom Content. All my mods, clothing, objects, everything else. Love it, can't live without it.

I shouldn't put EVERYTHING i like because i may as well be saying what Peni said... Obviously everything!

I am actually on the opposite end. I don't really like how that works in the vanilla game. That is the magic of modding. There is a mod out there for pretty much anything that players can think of.

I love that the modding community is so huge; that there are so many mod and custom content creators out there still delivering quality modifications and other content to us is amazing!

I am continually amazed at how, no matter what, TS2 keeps pulling me back in. The first thing I did after getting my new laptop for school was download the UC. Even though there are times where it gets boring for me, I still find myself coming back to it later on, when I've had time to recharge.

I love the fact that TS2 doesn't take a really powerful computer to run well on all high settings. I remember when I could run the game on all high settings on an AMD Sempron processor and a Nvidia GeForce FX5200 graphics card. Can't do that now with all the expansions, but it still doesn't take a thousand dollar machine to run the game well. I'm pretty sure that the UC doesn't even push my laptop to operate at half capacity with how smoothly the game seems to run. Sure I had to force the game to run on my dedicated graphics card, but it didn't seem to have an issue using the integrated card either even though it did load the game at a slower rate because using the dedicated chip forces the turbo boost for my processor.

I was amazed at how long a Sim can last without player intervention. I played a bunch of EAxis families to their deaths to get rid of them (I didn't know how to make a new hood without the EAxis families in the Sim Bin) and create a graveyard and I'm sure the only reason they died was 1: they couldn't order food on their own to refill the fridge and 2: They can't pay their bills on their own so the repo man came.

I love the freedom TS2 gives me to play the game the way I want to - especially because of all the awesome modders there are. My game is damned near prefect for the way I like to play it.
No other game, even in the TS series, has satisfied my play style the way that TS2 has.

Everything. Sims 2 is better than Sims 3 in all areas.

I loved to learned that EA gave the Ultimate Collection away.
Even though I will never installed it, because I already have everything, including the Sims 2 Store Edition, it felt great to see EA act in a way I would never have thought possible...Going back to The sims 2.
This is how I felt. Without any "real" expectations for anything more from them, that is.
Sims 2 lovers were considered, still, and that was great news.

That when you open a household to play, it was exactly the way you left it when you closed down the game.

Nobody got married, abducted or born while you were away. Entire families are still where you left them.

No open world? Not that big an issue.

First of all, re Rosebine's comment ... it constantly amazes me that this series appeals to such a wide age group. A thirteen-year-old can enjoy it as much as a 60-year-old, and we all can exchange advice, stories and comments here. (Actually, in one very old thread, I thought I read the oldest person playing it at the time ... 2007/2008 maybe? .... was considerably older than 60.)

This game is not without its flaws, so I can't write "everything", unfortunately. Whoever came up with the brilliant thought that Happy Holidays should not have an uninstall feature should have been smacked with a Crumplebottom purse for the next three years. And oh .... an uninstall feature should have been provided to players for free. The way you can corrupt hoods and the game without even knowing you did ... egads. EA's introduction and handling of Suckurom was the beginning of the sharp decline of its credibility among many, many players. That was truly a dreadful decision to use it; particularly the early versions (other versions aren't so nasty). And this game can test your computer's abilities. But still, I believe that Sims 2 was the closest EA ever came to getting the Sims series right. And despite its flaws, it's the game I still play after eight years. (Another eight-year player!)

I like the independence of this game. I can play my families the way I want to, I have a wide variety of places where I can put houses and decor in my hoods, I can add ten entirely different custom hoods if I so desire (provided my computer could handle that), or stick with the Maxis ones. I can even get rid of the Maxis ones altogether. There is a wide range of building tools and cheats from which I can choose. I can use the game's suggested story guidelines, or thumb my nose at them. The game has so many small moments that make me chuckle. I like how people can mod and mesh and truly take this game into different directions. The game has never become stale because of so much talent. Just when I think I know everything about this game, and that it's gone as far as it can go, someone comes up with new designs and mods.


There are some Sims 3 features I would have liked to have seen. Story progression .... not so much. Not unless it was 100% optional from the get-go. But more body silders might have been great, and a limited open world might have been interesting. I don't find those features severely detract from Sims 2, however. It's still the series that stands out over the others to me.

Love the lighting, the sim creation, the customisability of objects, the little touches of quirky humour, the abscence of "bro"ism and such (I do need a mod though to take that "BFF" wording out and rename it to "childhood friend" or something, considering I have never heard anybody over the age of 15 use it in real life) the age stages - every one was perfect, especially the "new" ones - real babies, toddlers, teenagers.

The animations and the small details are great - I remember reading a review of OFB and the reviewer hadn't played a Sims game before and was blown away that the detail right down to handing over individual simoleons was there. A lot of the ideas that were new to TS2 were just brilliant. I like the way that the pets look and behave - you can tell that the animators looked at real people, kids, toddlers, and of course animals.

Gee, really "what is there not to like" I love everything about the Sims 2 starting with:

1. The townies - Goopy all the townies good, bad and ugly faces.
2. I love how the Sims look at the players directly in their computer screen when they "do not' want to really take our orders.
3. How we can build lots.
4. Have a "custom" neighborhood and name it whatever we want.
5 Love some of the family that is already in the game.
6. The different EPs and stuffs and neighborhoods that are added to the Sims.
7.Love "Body Shop" we can create our own Sims to add to the game.
8. I love all the Sims "animations" ( Love to see them get slap and fight like cats and dogs.)
9. Love the baby and toddlers, teen, and young adult stage.

It just comes down to the fact that I LOVE the Sims game, need I say more.

The variety of CC and mods and the control.