A Brutally Honest Review of The Sims 4 Realm of Magic 

When there’s *more gameplay* in a Gamepack than a full expansion pack. 👀

The build style is called Art Nouveau, its from 1890s to 1910s, its pretty but it doesnt scream "magic". Sims 1 spooky carnival vibe def fits better

The missing door never fails to make me laugh 🤣

I love these brutally honest reviews so much. They're so helpful when I'm trying to decide what pack to buy. I was so close to buying some really broken packs more then once lol

I honestly play with Realm of Magic a lot - I remade the Goths as evil spellcasters and created a rival good family - but there are some things I wish it had: - a degree in University - at least one career path - storage, like the the refrigerators or flower arranging table, where spellcasters could store their potion ingredients (they just have to carry them forever in their inventory) - ability to enter the greenhouse and shop buildings LOVE the art nouveau build stuff. Practical magic is so useful. Cats and dogs who are familiars can stop the Grim Reaper from taking your sim.

the greenhouse bothered me SO. MUCH when I was trying to harvest "magic" plants and there were so few...and with seasons half of the small variety of plants you CAN collect arent even in growth

i wish they had magical candles that affect moods and tarot cards that could trigger random events. i miss the chaos thst the older sims games had

What a coincidence because I actually just started ‘replaying’ realm of magic to give my teen sim striving for a career in biology some more ‘gameplay’ since she can make potions as a spell caster. The build mode is definitely the best part, the gameplay is subpar, you spend most of your time reading books to learn spells. But hey when you spend your whole bank account and mix this pack with other packs, you can get a decent storyline going.

i personally loved this pack🙂 i liked the area in the realm, but furthermore, i like how it has actual gameplay. it doesn't just add a spellcaster with a few interactions and call it gameplay. if y'all know where i was goin with that...

I think I've mentioned this on a previous video, but I *wish* they had gameplay for child spellcasters. Accidental magic, maybe a new childhood magic skill, a few of the less OP spells available for children. It could have even been an opportunity for imaginary friends, or the ability for children to make their toys come to life as playable sims. (Think the big stuffed animals) I think that would be hilariously fun! Especially on playthroughs with normie parents who have a magical child.

I do think the missing door is kinda *iconic.* I like to think of it as a *creative liberty.* If you can teleport, why having a door, right? Some with the missing toilets from get famous. After all, *famous people don’t poop,* right, right?!

Realm of Magic was one of the first packs I bought and I have to agree entirely with this review. The greenhouse was probably the biggest disappointment I've had with the Sims ☹️ but that's because I bought the pack before I started watching Sims RU-vidrs so I knew better than to spend money on my wedding stories lmao

So many missed opportunities in this pack it hurts.... And I couldn't agree more with trying to build a magic themed house. I've started to and abandoned the project soooo many times due to lack of objects, even when I go to debug and use items from that menu.

Even worse, the bar is made with basegame furniture. Uh, the magical bloodline thing is borked, it doesn't progress as its purported to do. I have a save file just waiting for them to fix it. Also this pack originally came with special eyes for spellcasters which apparently didn't work correctly so they removed them and spellcasters can just use the ones for mermaids and vampires.

Not gonna lie my heart broke on the CAS review because I adore it. In fact it was one of the selling points for me. The direction they went with seems weird but it’s actually a more niche aesthetic called whimsigoth which is my style irl

A black cat as a familiar would be AWESOME!

I wish there was some interactions with the familiars. Also there was a broom flying skill they can get better at flying and sometimes perform tricks. I have never used Glimmerbrook world.

This was the first pack i ever bought and i love it. I love the CAS and use it very often I love the build even tho i dont use it that often I love the magic system and game play to the point that in all my saves there is at least one spellcaster.

I am honestly a HUGE fan of how useful the gameplay is. The practical spells especially are so useful in daily gameplay and I adore the appearance of the world. (Yes, yes the buildings and stuff are horrible but I am not a builder)

I played as a spelcaster while doing the strangervile story, using spells to copy all the evidence quickly and enchanting military personnel to like him was very funny, never thought of combining the 2 packs but spellcaster can indeed 7sed for all kind of scenarios 🎉

tbf, regarding cross-pack integration. i think you can use the scrubberoo spell on pets, which is really handy. There was a glitch where you can't do it on toddlers, but i think Little Ms Sam fixed that one. I like your ideas about secret doors and other CAS items. Also I totally agree the world sucks. I think it's worse than the vampire one. At least there, they gave us a picnic location. I think there is a fishing spot.... that's about it.

I agree that this pack was pretty lack luster across the board on all categories. I would love a refresh on it!

Living for these reviews! It's helping narrow down what packs I wanna get! We appreciate you keeping it real ❤

Let’s be honest, everyone that has this pack and every other occult packs will use speed 3x all the time (including me). it’s a little sad because they are the coolest animations in the game, but that’s just what they are, only animations. In my opinion, the fantasy packs need more personality and gameplay, not animations. Imagine a spellcaster with an Evil trait or high in the mischief skill pulling a scheme to win a duel, or simply having any interaction in duels at all. Same goes for werewolves and vamps. Imagine a paranormal investigator, influencing the ghosts to make the haunting worse. Still my favorite pack though

I love the build mode items but yeah it’s pretty lite in items. I do really like that one dress in CAS. Mixed with paranormal stuff it kinda works.

I feel like in the worlds there are a lot of missed opportunities. To your point having a rivalry with other occults (which we got with vampires and werewolves recently). I’m doing a rotational occult legacy (short lifespan) game and I really wish they had the rivalry. For vampires, Forgotten Hollow has the little island in the middle of the water feature I’d love to know more about and also what looks like an abandoned mine which could have been an easy rabbit hole. Sulani is so beautiful but the mermaids were an afterthought. Wouldn’t an underwater kingdom have been cool? I just hope they go back to refreshing some packs and get to these. There is much potential.

I wish the occult packs didn't allow players to over-level their talent tree and restrict us to only certain perks, like having a spellcaster who's decently good at all magic but can't master everything or one who can put a focus on destruction magic but their spells from other trees will never be at their best for example

I love honest reviews, im looking for packs that are WORTH the money and not just trash. This really helps!

Thank you for doing this review!! I’ve been thinking about buying this pack for a while now

I love your reviews, youre never sugarcoating anything! I really considered buying this pack but after your vid I think i can get more for my money. Thanks :D

The furniture style is called art noveau, i think it match the theme of the pack.

The problem is that ts4 is SOOOO focused on aEsTheTiCs and not on actual interaction in-game so it always feels hollow somehow, no matter how much or how little they give you in a pack 😪

On my current game i made one sim and am having her play all the packs and do all the things. This may seem like an obvious thing to do but i had been stuck in a loop of always making families and having drama between multiple households and having fun that way but when you do that it can be hard to experience everything. And my current sim is on her own doing all the things and its great. I decided to start with realm of magic and it was the best decision ever. Because while she was digging in the jungle or preparing to fight the motherplant thing she had all these potions she made for filling needs and fixing moodlets. Starting her off as a spellcaster made everything go so much easier and faster.

Realm of Magic was when I switched to Sims 4. Bizarrely because it makes the game more realistic. How? With the Transportalate spell you can get from upstairs to the curb in five minutes instead of 45. With Delicioso spell you can make a sandwich in 5 minutes instead of 30. With Scrubberoo spell you can dry a puddle or clean the counter in 5 minutes instead of 30. Yes, there are spells and potions that are basically cheats; I use those if the game cheats first, but mostly I just use a handful of practical spells. But yeah, they could easily have made this into a full expansion pack with a lot more items and features. There are a few mods but most of them have their own theme, like Fairies vs Witches, it's a great mod but it tells its own story rather than expanding on the sense of awe we saw a glimpse of in the pack trailer.

1:29 you saying the build mode feels almost steampunk nearly killed me since art nouveau is the furthest style from steampunk there is 😭

I just checked your channel yesterday for a Relm of magic review! Woah!

Yay! Glad these are back! I love watching them even though I have 88% of the packs 😂

Can't wait to watch Satch's review on My First Horse Ranch game pack. 😂

I cant help but saying this but - This pack is my favourite pack

I'm currently playing with a Spellcaster sim, and I've never actually gone through the full aspirations or gotten even 30% of the spellbook complete. Now that I've almost got it full, it's pretty op

This is one of my favourite packs for the sims, I got it a few days ago and it was amazing! 😃

I love the cauldron mac and cheese 😂😂😂

Thanks for this review!

I was about to go to bed but then I noticed you posted a new video so, gotta get my priorities straight.

I actually adore CAS and build mode in this one (I love Art Nouveau and Art Deco in general so I'm grateful for it). I never properly played it till the end but this made me want to finally. :)

I have all the packs from the base game to realm of magic included. Recently decided to role-play a young woman in search of immortality. Got to say, making her a spellcaster was the funnest thing of all the other options. Highly recommend it

THEY need to make it so that potion-making is a skill which can be learned by everyone (but faster for spellcasters) and you slowly learn recipes by leveling up and practicing on the cauldron and doing other interactions with it. You can also look in the library for a specific potion recipe. Would be way better, as I want my sim to make a specific potion for a specific use of the story but I don't want to turn them into a spellcaster, why cant humans grab ingredients and stir the pot?

You can collect crystals and different types of wands/brooms/familiars if you check the shops every day. Eventually the wands and brooms will just be color variants on what you already have, but I have liked hanging all of them on my walls. They totally dropped the ball on this though, I was so disappointed once I realized the shop area was 90% useless. We didn't even get magical pets like in other sims games, and we can't even "fly" on the brooms, it basically just teleports us. I do absolutely adore the items it comes with and i use them all the time. Especially the windows and bed that can be customized

I thought you liked this pack before when you reviewed it? It's an alright pack. Funner than some of the other Sims 4 packs. I like it with Paranormal. I feed the ghost the mac n cheese from the Cauldron lol. But this pack definitely isn't Sims 3 Supernatural.

I love the game breaking gameplay of this pack. Like get a kid with the ancient blood line trait, make the game soooo chaotic. I also love combining it with get to work to make a magic shop.

Thinking of grabbing this during the summer sales, thank you for this review! If anyone has this and tried a cottage witch storyline with cottage living, let me know if it's worth it :)

I build primarily basegame houses to upload to the gallery, so I really miss being able to use the rugs from this pack. I like them quite a bit.

I've definitely used witches the most of all the supernaturals. --- as well as the magic realm as my most visited secret lot. Even so, I still definitely feel like it lacks in almost all aspects. I've played all sims games. Magic is a staple in all the sims games, there was much more depth to it every time until now.

Almost every time I try to have a magical duel, whether in the dueling ground or not, the other sim randomly breaks the encounter and walks away or doesn’t show up at the grounds. I like some of the clothes, but there is a top that doesn’t have a matching bottom that drives me nuts.

The thing about magical dueling is that using the Build Charge magical self-interaction or just having a medium or so magical charge is helpful for duels as well as the duelist spellcaster perks. Unless a spellcaster is a sage... or perhaps a spellcaster who spawned at the Realm of Magic or is currently at the Realm of Magic (I'm just guessing here), having a fair bit of magical charge should sway duels in your favor if you don't have duelist perks.

I loved the art nouveau style of the furniture in this pack but didn't care for the gameplay or CAS

I actually love this pack for 3 reasons. Its style, its storytelling potential and its modding potential.

If they add fairies to the sims 4 i want them to be able to use the greenhouse in some way

Although i love fantasy and magic, I was not really interested in this pack, but you made it sounds so much fun. Yes, a witch/wizard living in normal worlds sounds like a fun story. I like the build mode too, such pretty furnitures, doors, windows, etc. And now there is discount too in steam (summer sale). Oh why you do this to me Satch XD. By the way, this is a game pack, isn't it.

Your reviews always crack me up🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Ok listen, I love that there's multiple styles for clothes because there are many paths of witchcraft. I use soooo many of the objects though I adore them... I don't really do much gameplay I just like cute items so I'm never the person to suggest packs, but honestly build items imo 10/10 can't build without.

This is a realistic score for this game pack.

I like the cas- had alternative and boho styles. i rarely like ea cas, but this one is one I use. I love the windows if you change the swatch on one it has the most needed double hung window needed for many builds, before the high schools years came out with a normal double hung window. The houses in the world are the horrid and could be so nice. I always say I am going to sit down and play this game pack's gameplay, but then I forget, and get caught up in my other sims soap operas.

Because of the way it changes the gameplay, I consider this to be an "almost essential" game pack. But I still hate it because it reuses assets, mainly from the Scientist career. And in doing so, it took away just about everything unique Get To Work still had. And using this pack really does feel like cheating. Your sim has needs to look after? Potion of Plentiful Needs will fix you right up, you just need one apple to make four potions. Death got you down? Focus on learning spells and before long you too can bring back the dead. It's EASY! No money? Find something valuable and a little copypasto will leave you wealthy. As for learning the spells, why bother with books? You've got three mentors all ready and waiting to teach you all the spells in the game. Just make friends and ask. It might take a few in-game days, but you can master everything from Realms of Magic without touching a single book. Once you learn Decursify (spell and/or potion) you can just duel for knowledge if you want to. The most junior spellcaster can teach you the most advanced spells that way.

I quite like Realm of Magic, but what really bugs me in CAS, is that the very first sim you create can't be a spellcaster. You'd have to create another sim with the occult trait and then delete the first sim. It's a little roundabout and tedious.

Have you tried debug for RoM? It has potions with swirly colors!!! I also like to pair RoM with Paranormal for some reason 😅

Can’t wait for the brutally honest review of horse ranch so you can tear it apart.

You can use the cleaning spell on cows etc. as well as on other animals ans sims

Personally I like the chaos of the clothes. You can make your magic theme your own and I really like that. If they went full out on it and had put that to build mode it could be a perfect pack for me but that’s alright. Plus the thing about changing weather, having toddlers wreak havoc with magic and way more chaos I think personally. What about the kids being able to make a car fly at full power? Would’ve been so funny.

I wish the other stores in the realm would unlock with packs. Like vampire pack? We have a lore store. Werewolf pack? We have a lore store. Paranormal pack? You won't believe this. Our stores are ran by literal ghosts. I mean doesn't the realm almost always end up being in charge of all these things

Never stop your honest reviews!

I think the direction was fantastic beasts

Sim’s team: let’s stick “magic candle” as the name item, but it will be a normal candle.

Sims 1 had it's own world with ridable rollercoasters & Sims 3 alchemy for witches REALLY looked the part. Sims 2 was okay, but I will always enjoy riding the rollercoasters in Sims 1 with Bob Newbie (the starter sim).

To be honest for me it is the most fun pack to play it. There are no interesting stories in the pack [like in most other packs], but I like wizard mechanics and the cas and build and buy is cute. I use them in almost every sim and every build. Yes, it is OP, but this OPness is fun for me. Recently I made a wizard that was ugly and untalented, but he made a beautiful vampire actress fall in love with him and become his wife and he was able to get his dream girl with potions. He also made a ton of money by stealing everything from Charms' house, using the stealing spell. I absolutely love this pack!

My problem with the pack is that it feels incomplete and poorly executed in many aspects, for example and not counting the constructions that are horrible, since there are three superior wizards they could have created three magic houses inside the school where they change the type of magic the sims do depending on which one you choose, also, that they could have created a story that we must complete to "Revive" the other magic world, for example that after completing a part of the mission the abandoned place becomes a greenhouse and a functional plot where you can plant/find special flowers with which you can unlock more magic positions, that there really are magic contests like a potion contest or broom races to win wands, brooms, familiars or material to make positions and depending on the position you end up in is the ones you win or just look for or place some more activity in the hidden plot other than going to become a wizard, buy some stuff and never come back, they could have even created a story where there were 4 great wizards but one of them was banished for doing black magic, creating another type of magic that the sims can learn only if they look for this magician and ask him to teach them, although this would make the other magicians turn against your sim, I don't know, there were so many things to take advantage of this pack and I feel that it is so wasted and empty...

I just wish that time in realm of magic does not affect regular world or atleast time move slower. In sims 2 I would nornally brew potions and create stuff in magic world and then use the magic chair to keep the needs up, complete my potions and learn all spells collection there before going back to my lot atleast that way I could do other stuff in the regular world.

as an OG sims player the Making Magic pack was my life, the baby dragon is my literally favorite thing in the sims franchise. This one is awful its not even fun to play as spell caster the only thing worth it is build mode.

I love this pack.

I got this pack on sale and I was still a little disappointed. I love the CAS, build and concept but it feels like something is missing? I think it would have benefit from more gameplay depth. Eg. The greenhouse, why is it not useable? Smh

I love simmers like you in the community

I have to be honest out of all game packs I think this is the funnest one to me. I did enjoy this game pack. I bet this is a better game pack than Horse Ranch Expansion Pack. Lol. I would almost bet there’s more to do in this realm of magic game pack then their is to to do with the new Horse Ranch expansion pack. Realm of magic felt more like an expansion pack to me. And the paranormal stuff pack felt like a game pack. Paranormal stuff was by the far the richest stuff pack. But realm of magic actually has its own vibe to it, which I appreciate. Even though the new town is extremely small it still has a “Feeling” to it, versus just another sunny neighborhood. Also like forgotten hollow in vampires that is different too. It’s not necessarily that supernatural themes are my favorite but it’s what the sims 4 actually does good on if anything. They seem to take their time on a lot of it. I feel more passion from them with supernatural themes in the sims 4 than I do for other themes in the game.

My biggest dissapointments about this pack (there are more but these are the biggest ones) are: 1. They advertised so much lore about the magic realm yet none of it is part of the game. 2. How exploitative it is. Like yes wizards will be OP thats in the name but give us limitations, dangers and drawbacks so every OP spell cast can also come with side effects that might make me reconsider using the powers. Its so easy to avoid the current drawbacks its insane.

hey satch, Please make more old sims expansion pack videos, for the sims 1 and 2

Satch!!! Please do a let's place on the sims 2 PSP, (can get on emulator) a sequel in lore/time line to sims 2 it's so good!

Get a Spotify playlist so I can binge listen to your videos while cleaning 😂❤

There actually is a mod that allows magic for kids it’s called “talented kids”

ask for ascension get the dragon balls practice till max and duel. that's all nothing you can do in that expansion pack

My biggest complaints in the pack were: 1) it was way too easy to max out spellcaster levels, but once you’re maxed out you haven’t earned enough points to complete the skill tree. So now you’re practicing magic to get points (which take forever and only give you one per bar full) but have nothing to aspire towards. I didn’t find any of the unlockables that compelling once I had maxed out. And I feel like once I completed the rankings I was kind of done with my gameplay. Something about an occult sim with nothing left to achieve is way more boring than a regular sim who never had any goals in the first place. 2) familiars do nothing. I was hoping for a least a friendship bar and a few basic interactions (like the scarecrow from seasons or animals from cottage living. Not even pet level complexity). Nope. All you can do is summon, name, and dismiss them

What are you talking about?? The cas is awesome! I don't even have the pack but I'm seriously considering buying it now!!

Hey.. I like a lot of stuff I'm cas from this pack and use it a lot mixed with vampire stuff 😅 I have a bad taste 😮

I never played very much with the pack, but its very intersting the second magic world!!!!!Thanks for telling about it!!

That "swirly" style is called art nouveau ;)

There's no way you completed the pack in two hours. You can't learn all the spells and potions AND get all the perks in that short a time.

Can you do city living, I'm thinking of getting it , and I don't want to waste my money😂😂😂

ive struggled so much with learning my spellcaster spells even by using cheats to give them all the tomes because i DIDNT KNOW PERKS EXISTED KFKRKFKRNFNFBFKCOOGKRBRBVGJGKC

Can you do eco lifestyle next (unless I can’t find the video)

werewolves comes with 2 wands for witches to find :)

I actually like the men's shirts a lot and use them regularly. The houses are terrible though, like you said.

9:55 They really said ,” Harry vs Voldemort” 😂😂😂😂😂😂