“But that’s not really possible unless you own a variety of packs” - Sims 4 in a nutshel.

I do like the fact that sims visibly tan when they are out in the sun and sunbathe

Gonna go against the grain and say this is my favourite pack. I absolutely agree that a refresh is in order (better mermaids, more to do, etc) but from the perspective of someone who is an aspiring marine biologist it was so nice to finally see a pack with wildlife. The dolphins are my fave 💙I think that the sims is seriously lacking in animals, and animals are all around us irl and island living did a great job of bringing the ocean to life!

Better mermaids exist in PC mods via Spinningplumbob's Expanded Mermaids mod. RIP console players once again. And that mod is at least on par with vampires and werewolves. Not to mention having THREE occults in one.

I agree. In my opinion, if we ever get another refresh from EA and the Sim's team. Island Living should be in top five or three to be considered for the refresh. I think, with a worth while refresh. Island Living could live up to it's promise of been a good expansion.

I really appreciate your brutally honest reviews so cheers for doing them. You’re one of the few SimsYT accounts where I’d listen to your opinion and actually want to hear it. Plus your vids are grand

This is one of my all time favorite packs, but only because it hits a lot of my gameplay boxes. It isn't going to be for everyone. I play a lot of living off the land survival type games, and this pack is just perfect for me. I love beach combing and showering in the waterfall. I love the volcano lot trait. I especially love all the build mode stuff with the open windows and doors. I've built many open, breezy builds that I just love. I have a community center over the water, several little survival huts, and my favorite might be a giant, open greenhouse build that still technically counts as a tiny home, since the only actual flooring I used was for the balcony areas and a raised bathtub area. With a mix of dark wood, large windows, and open wall areas, it just feels like you're living outdoors. But if that's not really your playstyle, I don't think there's really anything in this pack worth paying for.

one thing about mermaids you didn’t add is that they can drown other sims by pushing them under the current. i’m pretty sure to do this they have to hate the other sim but i can’t remember exactly

Sulani is my favorite world to play and live in lol, it's so gorgeous!!! But when you do compare it to TS3 it's very lackluster, the mermaids are a huge let-down and I hope EA will give them an overhaul, otherwise I'm gonna get SpinningPlumbobs "expanded mermaids" mod. Aliens also need a huge overhaul!!! They only serve as colorful humans at this point, they need their own tier system like vampires, werewolves and spellcasters. I *always* add a restaurant and a spa to Sulani because it's the perfect world to have those things lol. ♥

I straight up didnt realize there were festivals until years after buying this game. Hasnt changed my gameplay since learning about them tho lol

Still cheering for someone to mod the astronaut/spaceship thing into a submarine thing. Submarine travels would make the cutest addition! Island Living is really one of my favorite packs. As someone who grew up near beaches and in a subtropical climate with a lot of the tropical culture being a part of mine, it's a lot of fun to see this world in the game. I enjoy so much about it. But it's what the player brings to the game too, I think. Which is the same with the other packs, and a lot of the problem. If you can't relate to the worlds, it does give the same enjoyment.

It's gonna be a good day when satch uploads. AND, I'm getting seasons today!

satch.. wooohooing in the waterfall/beach water is not the same thing as woohooing in the shower. 😉 🤣

This is the first EP I got and still love it. Its my fav world. Sooo different and lush!

As someone who lives on an island, the JetSki and sail boat are pretty realistic. We only ever take our jet ski out to fuck around on, it’s never used as a mode of transport. Don’t compare this pack to the sims 3 version. Most people couldn’t even play it because it was laggy as fuck.

I used to spend my summers working in tourist party resorts and love beach life. So, for me it is enough just to be able to have my Sims live on the beach. I don't play any of the careers or mermaids. My games also have beach bars and clubs, so Sulani is my favourite spot for night life.

i never knew there was events in island living , thanks

I totaly agree with your review... it's underwhelming for an expansion pack. Although I do find myself playing in Sulani a lot... I use the rental lots for vacation/honeymoons and it's fun to be there for a day or two. Also, I enjoy rags to riches, living of the land, survival type gameplay so if you have eco lifestyle that adds quite a bit to the off the grid gameplay features

I have all the expansion packs, and this is the one I regret buying the most. It was so underwhelming and not worth the money. I wish I knew about watching reviews back when this came out. The only replayability I get out of it is by placing down a vacation home. Sometimes I use the Odd Jobs feature, but I hate that half the jobs are about going to the beach. It really breaks the immersion when my sim in Brindleton Bay picks up an odd job that requires them to visit a tropical island. They could have included a lot of cross-pack compatibility in the odd jobs feature alone. Also the main thing that keeps me from playing with occults more often are their annoying quirks in CAS that happen every 3 seconds. Do the mermaids squeak in CAS? I can't remember, but that sound still haunts me from the one mermaid I played with 4 years ago

Agree they shortchanged the mermaids by a lot...but it is the pack I keep going back to. I love living on Salani...

Island living has been one of my favorite places to live since I got it months ago and I had no clue that they were festivals. 🤦🏻‍♀️

The thoroughness! I have no choice but to stan 🙌🏾

Yess, one of my all time favourite EP's ever!!. Honestly, the all aspects of it are pretty okay, but my most favourite feature thing to play myself is of course the mermaids one because i really thaught they were really pretty as it is in TS3! ❤️❤️

I was obsessed with the island pack in sims 3. I already know I would compare sims 4 version too much and be disappointed so i don't plan on adding island paradise unless its on a ridiculously great sale some day. Glad to know I'm not missing much

Honestly, you rated this much more highly than I expected!

I ❤❤❤ your laugh 😊 it brings me so much joy

I’m actually surprised that this pack along with cats and dogs are my most played packs. I dunno with seasons it’s just little added features and I don’t really do the holidays much as such but just having weather makes my game so much better. I love island living because there’s just so much to do that you don’t realise you can do and I use Sulani so much for vacation lots :)

Wonderful review of this pack thank you!

I play almost exclusively in Sulani but I do agree that the world is a bit samey - I sometimes lose my bearings for where exactly the diving buoy is and usually spinning at least once completely before realising I was facing the right direction in the first place. Lol. Also I never know when the events are on and didn't even know they were a thing for a lot of time. (Likewise being able to prank sunbathers with sunscreen patterns via mischief) I like living off the grid and the weather in Sulani but unfortunately I think it does take a few extra packs to make this worthwhile. I use the eco lifestyle solar panels/water collection, simple living trait from Cottage living as well as the chickens and also Get together club system for both mermaid hang outs and also conservation effort. (where I also use MCC to make clubs bigger - 15) There is a better mermaid mod that has that Spinning plumbobs had made (although I've not tried it) and it certainly showed what mermaids could have been with a skill tree. Especially the more generic ideas like turning into a mermaid when exposed to water (showers, sprinklers, puddles) and mermaid specific items. Also basking with a tail out! I'd love a refresh with a skill tree and dedicated mermaid baby cradle but I don't have any hopes for it.

I was literally about to breakdown waiting for your update for the day

This pack has my absolute favorite male hair, the island Mohawk, i love this pack

I think if they were to make the mermaids more in depth like they have with some of the other occults it would have needed to be it’s own pack. Same for aliens. Also you can interact with the seagulls in the area with the volcano. I do wish they would go in and create a patch that told us when the events were happening. I think the only event you’ll eventually get told about is the turtle one When the volcano area become sparkling clean.

I like this pack but I do like most of the packs, kits are ok. I do have everything even though I’m on PS5 it’s better play than the PS4. Hope you are doing good! I’m newer to your channel. So excited for the infants and Growing Together coming soon!

the pool bar in TH3 is AMAIZING! I didn't know it was a thing

My favourite part about the pack is becoming a mermaid its honestly so fun and I see you called your sim chantelle that's also my name hehe

I should have known better when I bought this one. I got so excited because Sims 3 Island Paradise was one of my favs. But I was so disappointed. I played through all of it in under an hour and then that was it. I haven't touched it since. Kind of like Strangerville. No replayability.

cleaning up trash can sort of affect the isalnd as when the island is cleaned up well, you can watch the baby sea turtles going to the water! although its just baby sea turtles in a loop going into the water and that it.

To me it's my favorite pack, all my sims live there. I just love polynesian aesthethics 🥺 in fact I was surprised when you said mermaids were the selling point of the pack, like, wasnt the whole hawain vibe its main selling point? anyways good video, obviously my opinion here is subjective

You need to be level 5 fishing skill to successfully use the fishing trap, the dolphins will go and find stuff for you when your relationship reaches a certain point, including mermaid kelp which changes you to a mermaid

I originally heard Island Living and thought of Sims 2 Island. I didn't get to experience Sims 3 but it got me extremely excited.

Love how they showed tanning in the trailer but its not available in game😍😍😍😍😍😍

Agree with you completely. I LOVED the resort management in the Sims 3. It was one of my favorite things to do. So disappointed by this pack. Very pretty but no gameplay.

This is my favourite world..I moved all my sims here until there's no land anymore! 😂

wow i never even knew there were events in this pack

It doesn't matter how many times I replay it, I always hear you say: Salami instead of Sulani 😂😂

I guess they'll make diving and resorts having their own packs. One with Carribean/Atlantic Ocean theme, the other one Indian Ocean.

A resort system would have been awesome! The original sims Vacation pack was SO MUCH FUN. You could pick a hotel room even. I miss that feature so much! Surely they could figure it out for a modern game, if they were doing it 20+ years ago.

I really want to see a refresh for this pack. Id want it to hace vetter mermaids with more mermaid CAS, deep sea diving like in the sims 3 even if its just a few smaller sized underwater lots, at least 1 underwater mermaid groto lot, and poolside bars. Hitels are also a want but id want the after all that just vecause vacation homes work fine for me (that doesnt mean i dont want hotels though cause it would ve verry fun to own and operate a hotel) and if theyre feeling extra generous beach volly ball would be nice

There are so many skipped opportunities for cross pack compatability 😢

I love that you are honest with your reviews bc then people dont buy a bunch of shit.

Love your videos

I love this pack, but I pretty much agree with what you said. I don't care about the conservation stuff, it feels like "we have to put conservation stuff in a pack about the islands! How do we do it?" and I really don't care about it. Yes, mermaids need a skill tree like the other occults, but didn't they come out before vampires? If so, they just hadn't developed the skill tree yet... which makes this prime for a pack update. (Like we'll ever see one of those again.) Yeah, it needed hotels, I don't see how they can update it to squeeze those in. I find it more playable than you do, but probably because I see a new pack as "it's a setting I can put sims into, and it has cool CAS stuff, and any game play it offers is a bonus."

Island living was disappointing especially since sims 3 island paradise was my favourite pack

My issues with this pack is that the mermaids aren’t a real occult. They don’t have a skill tree, even a small one with a few powers would have been fun. They don’t even have an animation for changing to a mermaid and back, and that was just lazy, imo. But overall I love this pack and it’s a lot of fun. I hate seagulls irl so I think it’s hilarious you can chase them away. I haven’t finished any of the careers but beach living and building is a lot of fun. The odd jobs are also a nice addition to the overall game and I use them a lot. And the lots are very nice and creative compared to some other worlds.

Can you please make the next review nifty knitting because I don't know if I should get the pack and your reviews help me out a lot?

I'm sad that the boats are so very useless, cuz they look great. It would have been neat if it was a rabbit-hole activity like Rocket Ships, where your Sim could go deep-sea fishing or something. At least then there would be a point in having one outside of just _that looks nice on my lawn_

I just miss the time where i spend hours exploring the underwatterworlds or trying to find all the secret islands (i never managed to do so)

I think it could been better if they made a way for the mermaid sims to go under water like they did in sims 3 and see under the ocean or beac near the sims home or maybe have an under water treasur hunt for the mermaid sims? Just a thought. I do however, like when the mermaid sims play with the dolphins or go on thier sail Boats. There is SOME game play for island liveing but also NOT to much. I just felt that pack could have been BETTER in some ways. Just an opinion. Like Maybe some kind of an under water world and the mermaid sims could have some kind of an adventure. Again, sorta like the things EA did with Sims 3 island Paradise. Again just a thought. But that pack was pretty cool for its time and kinda still is today. Anyone agree? or disagree? I thought that pack at leaste had some NOT to bad of game play in it too. But i digress. Ty for posting. ✌👍

I got this pack with the bundle of the Sims 4 base game which on Xbox I did a quite a bit with it I made Ariel and everything it was okay in my opinion I do like the new plants for garden all of my save I have one sim gardening I just wish their was a bit more gameplay.

The expanded mermaids mod is really well done. It just sucks that a fan had to do this and it’s unaccessible to console players.

Island living should have been a game pack. The price would only be justifiable if it had a hotel system. And no the argument that it isn't ethical to put in a native island scenario isn't valid. That's literally what real islands live off.

They need to let actual simmers build these worlds! I only got sims 4 about 2 years ago, I always played the old games and was Sooo looking forward to S4. But God was I disappointed. Don't get me wrong, I love building (although on console it costs a lot to get nice build items without ability for mods/cc) The main thing I noticed is how empty the world feels 😔 and how some places only have like 3 buildable lots! Whaaa?! I love the game I just wish they'd flesh out the world's

Sometimes with Sims4 packs I get a gut feeling that the devs just brainstorm "what could we put in the trailer to make it look kinda fun" and they add just that to the pack.

“The pack needs resorts and better mermaids” But…that’s not what the pack is about? That’s like saying Get to Work has no gameplay because it doesn’t have anything for kids to do and the aliens are boring. Sure, people want Generations and Resorts, and you really shouldn’t buy GtW for the aliens nor IL for the mermaids, but I love that this pack sets up a unique culture with a different welcome wagon and your neighbors coming to help with fires instead of the firefighters and people dropping by randomly with food. I like the lot traits & challenges. I love the conservationist career - with actual relevant and non-instant work from home tasks, it essentially is an active career. I generally build a public ranger station lot by the volcano and any of my sims that are conservationists choose “work from home” and go there. Then you can survey wildlife, take water samples, yell at polluters, and clean trash all day and I’m frequently not done before the kids get home from school…

It annoys me because the world is SO beautiful, it’s just too much set dressing.

i really want island living because the world is amazing and because i really wanna get an occult but im not really sure if its the right one

The thing in the water - buoy - is pronounced 'boo-eee'. And yes, 'woohoo' in a shower really isn't worth it. Too small of a space, and water is actually the worst lube to use! That said, this pack really is like the sad cousin of TS3's Island Living...and that pack was HELLA buggy, lmao!

It sucks that this pack didn't add swimming everywhere. Like this is the only world you can swim freely in the ocean (besides moonlight mills but that's just a pond)

I understand aliens because is the first occult who ever exist, but mermaids at least could have a skill tree

Diving : the Sims 2 Castaway on DS experience

I highly recommend the Home Regions mod by Kuttoe. It stops sims from specific regions popping up in other regions so you won’t have the high school pack girl in Sulani. It’s very customisable too.

I watched the ads from start to end, does it help in any way? Like, do you receive money for that?

Imagine under water building lots for a mermaid city/village

I bought this years ago. Not a fan, I want to delete it but I do use a little bit of the CAS and build mode and I have two Sims that are at the top of the conservation career lol

I am looking at this review now and I am thinking that Horse Ranch will be another Island Living, pretty without much substances. If it ends up being nor working like the main features just not responding, than Ill call it another MWS... which I truly wish its not gonna be like... that would be such a disaster.

i think theres a mermaid mod to make them more advanced

ok I'm conflicted: I absolutely love the cas and build buy in this pack l, but at the same time I also don't think I'd actually play it as much as I do my other packs 😭 I'm still debating which EP I should get next because it's between this, City Living, and Get To Work

Hey, i know you just uploaded this and I'm not trying to rush you or anything, I'm just curious on if you had any idea of when you are doing the strangerville vid? I'm on the fence about buying it and need to know if it's SULTRY enough for my monies. 😩

since its 50% off rn = 19.99 and whats the tax added to the 19.99 please tell me

Island Living needs Kitchen Items and a Game Pack rating with more interesting mermaids.

Sims3 has so much jammed in to their pack that it can take MONTHS to discover everything in a pack and provide you even longer to create gameplay around it all. That's the problem with Sims4 - it's a few hours of play and then you're bored.

I couldn't imagine, uh, woo-hooing in a shower tbh?? It seems terrifying! What if we slip? I feel like I would just slip and crack my head open...

Idk about this review, this is one of my favorite expansion packs 😭

SULANI HAS EVENTS????? I have had this back since 2019 and I had no idea...

I always say that this pack os basically a $40 stuff pack. The best things about the pack for me is the cas and build buy. I have yet to play with the mermaids and maybe I'll enjoy playing as a siren, but not much game play, nothing game changing about this pack. 🤷🏾‍♀️

Ever heard of Sulani Festivals? Yeah me neither

I often find myself defending Sims 4 against mistrust about Sims 3 providing "everything Sims 4 did and more" but Island Living not only provides less than Island Paradise but goes nowhere into depth either. I appreciate the defense of not utilising the resort theme from previous iterations (after all this is Island Living) but this barely gives you anything to allow you to learn about the Island and exist outside the lots. An EP with a lot of potential but barely hits anything. Definately needs a refresh!

This needs a refresh

I want this pack for the world but i don’t want to deal with mermaids. I hate how they did the legs on mermaids… like I don’t a sim walking around with colorful scale legs.

giving my mermaid the lgbt slay fin to compliment the lgbt slay dress

So did most sims players want to be marine biologists when they were young? Ive seen like so many ppl in the comments saying so

I've found that the mermaids and werewolves are not compatible. I had a cute gay werewolf x merman couple, but as I played on the save it started to have issues... My merman sim has fury affects and werewolf interactions now. Idk how. I had a mod to decrease the fury gain but even after removing it my merman will not stop gaining fury faster then his husband, its actually so annoying. He started glowing red, growling, and running on all fours and I have to cheat to put his fury to 0 because it gets stuck at max since he can't shift into a werewolf, its legit busted. Sims 4 is completely stable and cross compatible with all of of its expansions/game packs /s

Can you do city living

your sim look like me when i wake up

I feel like Island living would’ve been better if there was hotels. For me idc about mermaids since I don’t play with occults. So going to Sulani for vacation is impossible ._.

bought the pack and only played it once

Coming from the Sims 3 Island Paradise, this one is just a flop really. Houseboats were left out, no resorts or hotels, no active diving skill, no active lifeguard job ... honestly, this pack is so underwhelming. I could live without houseboats and active diving lots but no hotels/resorts is an absolute fail in my opinion. I personally only use the world as a vacation location filled with rental homes so a hotel/resort aspect would have been a gamechanger.

I see this pack as another wasted opportunity. No renting lots or hotels. No real diving as in Sims 3 (going underwater and the interactions while doing it were great)

no bc why is Molly Prescott at the beach in her uniform? 😭

also if you have city living there's a little mini aspiration of being a beach tourist I believe