This cover was made using Canva and Bitmoji. All the screenshots in this post were taken directly from the game by me
While the PC version has been stagnant for a couple of years (probably surviving on DLCs and vulgar microtransactions), if there's one area where Electronic Arts' biggest franchise is still surviving, it's on our smartphones, and while titles like The Sims Free To Play and LSM are far from providing such a complete experience, I find it interesting how they've adapted to the modern gaming market, even though this often means sacrificing what made The Sims a great franchise in the first place.
Something I always liked about Will Wright's creation compared to other video games of the time was that it had a broad enough premise so that each player's experience was different: although its first installment was far from having the playable options of its sequel, it was already evident that we could approach the title (and its numerous expansions) from any angle, we could focus on building houses without a budget limit, play "legally" and forge a family from scratch, or simply generate chaos in each available neighborhood.
Personally, I always enjoyed playing with a realistic approach, far from the cheat codes that made life easy and focusing on each of my avatars achieving economic prosperity cleanly, I enjoyed building relationships and saw each new acquisition in my house as a tremendous achievement.
Why do I mention all this? Because although LSM looks like traditional Sims, and, to a greater or lesser extent, offers the same as traditional sims, it has a fundamental problem that totally alters the experience: It lacks this freedom. It wouldn't be the first time that the franchise experiments with a more linear approach, in fact, several games in the franchise such as Castaways, MySims or The Sims Medieval have already used this concept to a greater or lesser extent, however, the problem with LSM compared to these other titles is that it pretends that this freedom still exists, even though everything is built so that we always make the same decisions.
It's unfortunate because although we tend to link the series almost perpetually to our computers, I feel that it's not impossible to adapt it to the free-to-play format without having to sacrifice many things in the process, relegating microtransactions to a more aesthetic and superfluous plane and without insisting on limiting our game possibilities to what feels like little more than an eternal tutorial.
LSM focuses on sticking missions in our way that, while not obligatory, end up being the only way to acquire certain types of currency without paying real money, it doesn't offer variety in professional careers to take (at least during our first hours of play) and it limits the number of characters we can play with at a given time. Beyond where you set up your shower or the color of your bed, there's little to customize, and the game's many varied items feel aesthetically unattainable.
Does this mean it's not fun? Depending on who you ask, LSM is a solid mobile game with nice visuals and a number of interesting options, but compared to its more traditional counterparts it falls short, and we know that modern phones are more than capable of running a much more complete and franchise-worthy game.
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