I absolutely love this game and I highly favor it over Sims 4. While its sequel has certainly improved in quality in recent years, I don't think that it'll ever hit the same notes that this game did.

The open world, the Create A Style tool, and the townie's story progression, all are leaps and bounds over both Sims 2 and 4 in what they add to the gameplay experience. This game brought so much to the table that it to this day holds up as the standard Life Simulation game.

The game, however, isn't without its faults. My biggest qualm with this game is the numerous technical issues that come with running a 12-year-old game running on modern hardware. Simply put, it hasn't aged well. While there are a plethora of community-made fixes/game patches that claim to solve these issues, such as the nRaas mods and LazyDuchess' recently released Smooth Patch, not even these two combined are enough to make Sims 3 run as smoothly as desired. Regardless, you shouldn't have to install a whole bunch of fan-made patches just to PLAY the damn thing. Maxis was being somewhat truthful when they said that the game's open world and create-a-style tools were taken away in Sims 4 to allow for better performance, but I still can't help but feel like a lot of the problems faced while playing come as a result of a lack of future-proofing on their part.

If you're willing to look past the poor optimization and bugs, though, you'll find what is truly a worthwhile gaming experience that few other life sim games have ever or will ever achieve, and that is what earns this game a positive review.