The Sims 4: Businesses & Hobbies Expansion Pack Review
When Businesses & Hobbies was first revealed, I was very excited at the prospect of live-in businesses – but especially an expansion to the hobbies your Sim could do! Maybe they’d add new things like drama club, or making a band. Not sure, but Business & Hobbies is by all means a Business pack. No hobbies to be spotted. Besides the addition of pottery and tattooing as skills, most “hobbies” in this pack would be… existing hobbies from other packs being turned into businesses. The name may be a bit misleading, but what Businesses (& no hobbies) sets out to do when it comes to the former part of its title, is mostly successful.
First and foremost, any Residential lot can now become a “Small Business Venue”, allowing you to open it as a new type of business. Small business venues allow you to separate rooms between 3 sections: Public, Employees Only & Residential. This allows you to make entire builds where Sims will adhere to certain rules per room, and never enter others based on what they are, customer, employee, boss, family member and so forth. An immensely handy feature for all sorts of builds! A Small Business can be anything you can basically imagine, and there is functionality that adds dynamics with lots of other existing expansion packs, should you own them. Setting up a business lets you select business activities based on what you’re running. A store? Set it so people are encouraged to browse and purchase items. A gym? You can set it so people use equipment and work out. A prison? Make people clean & fight! And a lot of activities and items that came with previous expansion packs also have functionality here. As an example, owners of the “Realm of Magic” pack are able to set it so customers that visit are urged to use their Spellcasting abilities! This gave me the idea to create a school of the Occult, for Spellcasters, Vampires, and so forth to learn about and tailor their abilities. The possibilities are endless.
You are able to set criteria as well. Between age, marital status, careers and even the type of occult that should be showing up to the lot, you can make it so you prefer a certain specification or it’s required. As an example, for the Spellcaster Academy I’m creating, Sims are required to be Spellcasters to be able to visit the business. Teens & young adults are the preferred age group, but not a requirement.
The best feature that came with this pack is a basagame feature added just before the pack launched. Mentoring allows your Sims to mentor other Sims in most skills which the mentor is level 5 or higher in. The higher the skill level, the quicker a mentored Sim will learn the skill. Learning skills has always been a hassle, and this allows you to make that process a lot quicker. Mentoring was added in a basegame update shortly before the release of Businesses & Hobbies, as the pack expands on it. Business & Hobbies lets you run skill classes with a new whiteboard item. Painting, cooking, acting classes. Any skill can be taught one on one through the basegame, or through a whole class of selected or random Sims on the lot through the new whiteboard coming with the pack. This lets you create entire schools as businesses, for specific skills or otherwise. Sims in the acting career from Get Famous can be required to come to your Acting School, and be mentored in acting one on one or as a whole class so they deliver a better performance. Mentoring is also a great way to make money, classes can be ran for free or paid by the hour depending on the skill level of the Mentored skill. The higher the skill level, the more you get paid per hour of mentoring.
Sims are also able to get “Skill Mastery” perks now. Once your Sim reaches level 10 in a certain skill and continues to perform it, there’s a random chance they may get a random Skill Mastery perk. These vary, from giving your sims a perk that automatically raises their friendship levels with people they perform to as a singer or actor, or a skill that lets your Sim cast an ethereal version of themselves that works on random skills and builds them up during their time sleeping. Skill Mastery perks add an interesting twist to your Sims’ lives.
Two new skills are part of this pack: tattooing & pottery. Tattoos have gotten an entire overhaul: there are far more designs, you’re able to place them on your Sim in a more detailed manner. You may layer tattoos, make custom tattoos with an entire new creator – and even share them in the gallery with other players! This opens up a whole host of options. Besides sharing designs, this new CAS feature lets you make small details on your Sim. Bruises, birthmarks, custom make-up and so forth – you’re now able to paint and design your Sim in a more detailed manner through the tattoo feature.
Pottery, meanwhile, lets you create all sorts of clay creations, from a cake stand to interesting wall designs. And of course, pots themselves. You can glaze pots, sell them or fix broken ones up for an extra touch to the design and a higher selling price. Besides these new skills, you’re also able to create Family Recipes now through a Family Recipe cookbook. This lets you make meals with an extra ingredient, which gives the meal an extra touch of your choosing. From putting your Sim in a certain mood to increasing their skill gains.
Let’s take a look at the new world coming with this expansion pack. Nordhaven absolutely blew me away when I first saw it. As a resident of Belgium, I saw a lot of familiar elements that made my heart flutter. Inspired by Scandinavian & Dutch cities, the city painted a beautiful and familiar picture of cities I was familiar with. A city like this was so familiar to me, and seemed to be portrayed really well in the Sims. Nordhaven is gorgeous… but that’s where its positives end.
Consisting of just two districts, an Industrial and Historical one, Nordhaven is a smaller world than what we’re accustomed to. A lot of the lots that come with this world are also left empty or with barely functional lots. The city comes with a few pre-built businesses and families that are quite lovely, like a coffee bar where Sims can gather to attend lectures and classes on the side. You’re able to disappear into an old church for a “Historical tour”, visit the old train station and sit next to a bench to go train watching, or fish old bike parts out of the canals to clean it up. But beyond that… Nordhaven is eerily empty and devoid of activities. Something feels off about this type of world.
Beyond its beauty and tiny activities, there is not much more to it. For a business centered pack it is a strange location for the pack to come to its right. If the “Hobbies” section of this pack were to have been expanded upon, the world could’ve been more lively. There are hobby meet-ups in Nordhaven that take place at certain days and times of the week, a fitness meet-up, a geeky meet-up and so forth. Fitness equipment will pop up at the meeting spot to let your Sims hang out and work out, but it is lacking and empty. Festivals from City Living were far more expansive than the small meet-ups this pack attempts to portray. Should the pack introduce new hobbies that the world could’ve been tailored around, this would’ve been an entirely different story. But the world fails to expand upon the business or hobby aspect of this expansion.
Lastly, when it comes to Create a Sim & Build Mode items, Businesses & Hobbies is a bit lacking. Starting with Build mode, most of the new items are sleek, Scandinavian, Ikea style designs in wood. Simple and modern. Not quite my taste with the wood being used for everything possible. Despite the many colour swatches available, most of the items will still look similar regardless. There are a few unique, handy items like the whiteboard or the two items you can use to put things up for sale in your business that follow this design trend, and thus don’t really fit into most builds with a different style of furniture. The pack is lacking when it comes to build mode variety or the items it brings.
Create a Sim is slightly better, bringing new tops, pants, lots of tattoos and so forth. But the niche it fills in has been filled in better by previous packs. Hairstyles are disappointing and all over the place. While other packs are almost worth the price of admission alone with their beautiful sets of clothes, hairs and build items, businesses and hobbies don’t manage to have it’s catalogue stand on its own.
Final Thoughts?
Businesses & Hobbies is a pack that is by all means, mostly focused and mostly succeeds around running a Business.
When it comes to running a Retail business, the pack does a worse job on its own than the very first Sims 4 expansion pack – Get to Work. Get to Work came with a retail future that allowed you to sell practically anything that can be displayed – anywhere. Businesses & Hobbies limits anything you can retail, to anything you can place on a specific wall or floor display. Should you own Get to Work, however, its retail features have some functionality on a Small Business Venue.
When it comes to the pack’s best feature, Mentoring, this feature is available in the base game. You’re able to train people one on one and get their skills up a lot faster and let your Sims skip the hassle of having to learn things themselves at a slow pace. You can have your Sim’s mother teach their daughter all about painting from a young age, so you don’t have to go through it all again. Businesses & Hobbies expands on this, letting you earn money or teach a class to multiple Sims at once, but the pack’s most useful feature is one that’s available for free in a basegame update.
Businesses & Hobbies does bring a lot of creative ideas for buildable lots, but the execution of these businesses can be middling, similar to a lot of things in the Sims 4 you’ll have to use your imagination to get the results you want. It feels like the Small Business feature is a mile wide but only an inch deep on what it sets to tackle, unfortunately.
With its lacklustre execution of its world and other parts of the pack, I cannot recommend picking it up on its own. If you own other packs and truly want to run a Small Business Venue, especially combined with a Residential Lot, I think the pack is worth picking up. Being able to run acting classes, gather Spellcasters into a single location for school – and more.. has been a lot of fun. But Businesses & Hobbies adds nothing when it comes to the latter part of its title, and has a so-so execution when it comes to the former. An unfortunate follow-up to the excellent Life & Death Expansion Pack from last year.
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