PC User Reviews

For a game pack Realm of Magic adds a lot to the game and is quite an interesting and enjoyable pack. This may not be for everyone as some may argue the sims should start giving people what they want, but this is a lot of content for a Game Pack.

20$+ for: 1. A set of spells your character will get with NO effort, 2. Some clothes (nothing truly special) and 3. A lot of bugs which will pop up at random, ruining the gameplay? Like dying to overcharge after having immunity-to-overcharge perk learned, having unplayable character after drinking potion of immortality (because the game will still attempt to make him die to old age - effectively purging actions queue once a minute), getting Curse while having curse immunity, etc, etc... Cost/content proportion is incredibly low here...

Really? All this lore about magic in popular culture, and all you can do is a fake Art-Nouveau house with three "spellcaster" gurus? Apparently the developers are just bored with their jobs.

This is a new low for the series, and EA's DLC practice in general. You already have the functionality of this "game pack" in your game, it's called *The Cheat Console* and can be accessed by pressing ALT+SHIFT+C. Of course it comes without the gnarly wooden furniture that has been ported from the Sims-3-store, but as usual you can already get that and more as a mod. Just type "testingcheats true", and you will be able to magically alter your surroundings, just without the one and only animation that is supposed to show your sim casting a spell. They even added the "set as head"-cheat as a "spell" (after the aforementioned "testingcheats", shift+click on any item to get that effect). Potions have fantastic effects like "maxmotives", or use the script from "get to work" that let's random people have fights with each other when you patrol the neighborhood as a policeman. What you don't have when you use cheats is the plethora of new bugs and glitches, useless huge additions to the UI that are just in the way, and a new neighborhood with 5 lots, containing three of the most lazy and unfinished buildings I have ever seen since this series started out in 1998. The "Realm of magic", as interesting as it may look in a trailer, can be renamed into "the realm of empty", because there is nothing that you can't find somewhere else or do in any other place without having to travel the whole distance. There are *two* new harvestables that are barely used, in a magic pack with alchemy: TWO. Of course the AI hasn't been adapted in the slightest, especially when it comes to the NPCs that should somehow react - you have seen that kind of non-response in the vampire-pack already, so whatever immersion you are looking for, it won't be coming from there. The level-system is a contrived assembly of mostly useless abilities that take out the last bit of consequences or challenge. As a matter of fact you can just outright stop playing the game since you are only cheating anyway. Thankfully the game now crashes on a regular basis on top of everything else, so you won't even have to *stop* playing on your own. Calling this product an insult would still be far too generous. An insult needs at least a bare minimum of effort.