Live out your simple, farming life with this expansion pack. Read more to find out is The Sims 4: Cottage Living Worth It?
Usually I never pre-purchase a sims 4 expansion pack, as I typically wait for them to drop in price or wait for LGR to give us his verdict. However, with The Sims 4: Cottage Living, I was instantly drawn in by the trailer that it actually convinced me to drop a whole £39.99 down for a pre-order. Not only did the gameplay look promising but by pre-ordering you were rewarded three bonus items- supposedly, more on that fiasco shortly.
New Aspirations and Traits
Along with a new countryside themed town to explore and plenty of outfits to try on, The Sims 4: Cottage Living introduces a new aspiration known as ‘Country Caretaker’, which explores the sims wants to befriend all the critters, such as foxes and rabbits and live the countryman’s lifestyle in Henford-On-Bagley.
As for traits, The Sims 4: Cottage Living has given us two more, ‘Animal Enthusiasts’ and ‘Lactose Intolerant’. Sims who have the ‘Animal Enthusiast’ trait will have an easier time looking after farm animals and critters, while those who have the ‘Lactose Intolerant’ trait will fall ill if they eat anything that contains dairy.
New Lot Challenges
The Sims 4: Cottage Living also introduces two new lot challenges which really fits the problems that can occur with living in the countryside.
Simple Living Lot Challenge- This makes cooking cheaper, however this also means that recipes will depend entirely on the food in your inventory. Meaning that you have to forage for mushrooms and berries, grow crops and redeem produce, such as milk and eggs, from your livestock.
Wild Foxes Lot Challenge- This allows for more frequent visits from foxes to your lot. Although I love foxes in real life, in game, they are a nuisance. They can often be seen lurking around, trying to steal eggs from your chickens or even attack them.
Henford-on-Bagley
The Sims 4: Cottage Living brings players to the new world of Henford-on-Bagley. It’s modelled on the idyllic English countryside and as someone who never had that luxury of living or even visiting these types of locations often, I must say that I highly approve. It’s visually stunning and is what I picture the countryside to look like.
You are surrounded by plenty of luscious woodlands and quaint Tudor homes, with the main community lot being Fenwick, which I found to be a bit of a disappointment. The trailers had me believe that this lot would be a thriving countryside lot with plenty to do, but you don’t. Everything is so boring and watered down.
Sure, you get to compete in competitions such as the ‘best cow’ or ‘best crop’, however, it’s The Sims 4, it’s very disorganised and not as eventful.
Live Off The Land
The Sims 4: Cottage Living truly allows for players to live out their farming fantasy. Expanding on the gardening trait that’s readily available in the base game, this pack gives us more crops to grow, such as pumpkins and mushrooms.
The main feature of this game, however, is the opportunity to have your own livestock, introducing Llamas, Cows and Chickens for sims to befriend and harvest produce from. Although I loved the many challenges and rewards that came with farming, I did find it to be tedious and boring in the end, mainly because I wasn’t really living off of the produce that I was accumulating.
The Sims 4 Cottage Living Recipes
Considering that The Sims 4: Cottage Living is inspired by the English countryside, it makes sense that there would be some new recipes added too. You sims can now indulge in plenty of English comfort foods including; Bangers and Mash, Beef Wellington, Yorkshire Pudding, Crumpets, Pie, Jars of Jam, Milk Bread, Pastries and even Canned Food too!
Are There Any New Skills In The Sims 4: Cottage Living?
This expansion pack sees the inclusion of a fun, new skill in the form of cross-stitch, an activity that seemingly boomed in popularity over covid and somewhat fits in with the whole cottage core aesthetics. Anyone from kids, all the way up to elders can start learning the new cross-stitch skill, and produce unique pieces of work eo either sell or display.
Is Cottage Living Worth It?
Overall I did rather enjoy Cottage Living for its visual appeal. Henford-On-Bagley is such a picturesque town that it’s nice to explore and even live in, however the content itself is very underwhelming compared to other expansion packs.
With that said, Is The Sims 4: Cottage Living Worth it? I would say yes, but with a discount. I don’t think that it’s an awful expansion pack, but I feel like this should be considered a £17.99 Game Pack like Jungle Living or Outdoor Retreat, not a full blown expansion like it’s currently advertised. Enjoy The Sims 4: Cottage Living, but enjoy it at a hefty discount. Don’t pay full price.
Is The Sims 4: Cottage Living On PS4?
Yes, The Sims 4: Cottage Living is available on the PS4. It’s also available on PC, Xbox One, Xbox X/S and PS5.
I will note that I reviewed the version on PS4 and it didn’t run smoothly. In fact, this was the last expansion pack I downloaded on this console as I encountered so many performance issues since downloading The Sims 4: Cottage Living, that my save file actually became unplayable.
My game would lag frequently and become unresponsive. Sims wouldn’t be able to progress their skills further past a certain point. They would stand there for hours, not fulfilling their lists of action to a point that my sims would piss themselves and complain that they were starving. Now as this was the PS4 version I wasn’t running mods or cheats, so I couldn’t understand why my save file was struggling so much since I downloaded this expansion pack.
Oh, and that pre-order bonus I briefly mentioned earlier, yeah I didn’t get it. One of the major issues many people had when The Sims 4: Cottage Living experienced was not getting their pre-order items. When I contacted EA support about the issue I was having on the PS4 version, they didn’t really bother to help, instead their helpful response was to ‘redownload the game’, and after that, they couldn’t assist any further. So I guess that soured my mood towards this expansion pack.
How Much Does The Sims 4: Cottage Living Cost?
The Sims 4: Cottage Living usually costs £34.99 ($39.99) full price, however when on sale, it retails for £17.49, which is the price I recommend paying for this expansion pack.
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