Since the very beginning, The Sims 4 has been a rollercoaster of highs and lows for fans. When the game launched in 2014, for example, it included what’s widely considered the best Build and Buy and Create a Sim modes in the franchise, but said modes didn’t include pools — one of the most iconic Sim death locations — or toddlers. This would be the first of many “we’re so back, it’s so over” swings for fans of the series, but 2025 was arguably the game’s best year yet when it comes to new content and fixes.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t first address the elephant in the room: the recent EA buyout by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners, and Silverlake. With it being such a recent event, it’s currently unclear just how much it will affect The Sims 4 itself, if it at all.
The Sims team previously released a statement saying that, “The Sims will always be a place where you can express your authentic self,” and later shared a Gelphie-shipping Wicked post to seemingly reiterate their continued LGBTQ+ support, but only time will tell. However, this retrospective isn’t about the parent company, but rather the banner year of content brought to players over the course of 2025.
Looking back at past years, DLC has been an extremely mixed bag. 2024 gave us Life and Death, perhaps my favorite Expansion Pack ever. However, it also brought For Rent, which tried to introduce meaningful rental property mechanics, but in a way that felt mind-numbingly tedious, and Lovestruck, which had one of the laziest world designs of any DLC and felt incredibly scant as a whole. And don’t even get me started on 2023’s Horse Ranch, which was just a glorified Game Pack sold as a full Expansion. Thankfully, things finally turned around in 2025.
Every player has something different they’re looking for in a piece of Sims DLC, but to me, some of the most worthwhile Expansion Packs have been those that have introduced overarching mechanics with highly customizable frameworks, like the club system of Get Together. These are prime fodder for player creativity, allowing for hyper-specific storytelling. This year we got two of these, small businesses and getaways, as parts of the Businesses and Hobbies and Adventure Awaits Expansion Packs respectively.
Honestly, I didn’t love Businesses and Hobbies — its world was a bit of a letdown, and for a release with “hobbies” in the name, it sure didn’t include many. Of the three Packs released in 2025 (alongside Enchanted by Nature and Adventure Awaits), it’s my least favorite, but the small business system bumps it way up in my overall internal ranking. I have been able to create so many variations of small businesses: I made more normal ones that went along with narratives, like a retired musician Sim who gave piano lessons out of their living room, alongside absurd ideas like a daycare run by a ghost who hates children.
It’s an incredibly malleable mechanic that also has a lot of cross-pack compatibility — I’ve been meaning to open a blood plasma cafe for vampires, for example. It’s the perfect blank slate for players to be as realistic or ridiculous as they want, and the same is true of the getaway framework introduced in Adventure Awaits. Whether you want to run a summer camp or a Love Island-esque competition or anything in between, you can make it happen.
This Expansion is particularly great for players that enjoy some amount of autonomy in-game, letting you watch scenarios play out within certain parameters. Essentially, the DLC allows you to create lots with schedules that dictate the type of activities Sims will do throughout the day, and they can be as broad or specific as you’d like. You can also set Sims to be certain roles, which is how I made a summer camp where the Grim Reaper works as a counselor.
The combination of copious customization options and Sim autonomy during the getaways themselves creates this delightful dichotomy of control. In one save, I decided that I was going to send my recently-divorced Sim to a wellness retreat to find herself. It was designed just for her, but once she got there, I simply observed as she went spinning, drank protein shakes, and rebounded with an absolute himbo. You can still step in as an omnipotent god whenever you want to steer a Sim’s fate, or just sit back and watch — the storytelling possibilities are endless either way.
The world included with Adventure Awaits, Gibbi Point, is also the most gorgeous world we’ve seen since, well, the Expansion released right before it this year, Enchanted by Nature and its world of Innisgreen. Excluding Businesses and Hobbies, we were truly blessed with the Sim world offerings of 2025. Both Innisgreen and Gibbi Point feel like a lot more love was poured into them than many worlds released over the past several years. They have some gorgeous natural scenery, and are also filled with eccentric lore about old hermits and the history of fairies.
Enchanted by Nature was largely all about fairies, the newest supernatural to join the Sims 4 roster alongside creatures like vampires and werewolves (both of which have canon beef with fairies, for the record). Supernatural Sims are a divisive topic — players tend to either hate them or love them. I fall into the latter category, and as an occult appreciator, it’s my verdict that fairies absolutely kick ass. They’re arguably the most powerful supernatural to date while also being full of whimsy, letting Sims shrink down to play inside objects, bring gnomes to life, or Woohoo in the sky.
Though not quite the same as the foundational new systems introduced by the other two Expansions, Enchanted by Nature adding a new occult is still a fresh gameplay mechanic that players can utilize in a myriad of ways. I’ve only made various evil fairy storylines so far, but I could just as easily craft one about a peaceful fairy living in harmony with nature (especially since the DLC also introduced the ability to live outside).
Since its release, bugs have constantly plagued The Sims 4 — whenever some get patched, new ones are always around the corner. From the absolutely unusable My Wedding Stories Game Pack where Sims wouldn’t even walk down the aisle, to a glitch that made Sims get crushes on their own family members, players have basically had to begrudgingly accept that the game is just always going to be a little bit broken.
Recently, though, the team has taken to more elaborate Laundry Lists, a long-standing community update series where bug fixes would be announced. They’ve gone from addressing a handful of glitches at a time to over 150 this past November that were voted on by the community, and have shared future plans to continue investigating issues raised by players. The reaction to this has largely been positive, and the direct outreach to the community has made fans feel much more heard.
At its core, The Sims franchise is all about letting players take their own ideas and run with them, and the more outlets given to them to do so, the better. Compared to the release line-ups of past years, it’s hard to find one that can hold a candle to 2025 for The Sims 4. On top of that, the game has become decidedly more usable overall. While The Sims 4 is still by no means perfect (as I write this, there’s a new autonomous flirting trend ravaging Sim relationships), this was the game’s best year yet.
