My Brutally Honest Review Of The Sims 4 Cottage Living 

This was my absolute favorite expansion. I loved it. But I have to say, I never once saw dogs scare off foxes. EVER. And I'm a huge pet player.

I love that cottage living has actual gameplay, plus an amazing world, build buy and good cas. The gameplay has the errands, fairs, taking care of cows chickens llamas, foxes birds rabbits, conserving jam, gardening ad on, crossstiching, making treats for the animals etc. i just think they did a really good job and seems to have more gameplay than any other recent pack or maybe any other pack in general!

I'm very disappointed that there was not one iconic Satch laugh in this video. 😂 That's my favorite part.

it's kinda (probably unintentionally) realistic that sims just STILL eat dairy like there would be no consequences at all lmao i too think i'll be all good after a bowl of ice cream and then wonder why im having such bad migraines and feeling bloated as if it weren't my fault

I have two problems with this pack. First - almost all female clothes are "country queen" but male clothes are "country peasant" and i don't like it. Second - it doesn't matter that you put in Finchwick contest your best chicken, excellent pie or golden perfect egg and beside you there was only one (poor quality) entry. Still you can "win" third place or none, its completly random if you win or lose! I hate that! But still it's my favourite pack ever🙃 and am i only one who is absolutely pissed when i see toddler with long long looooong hair? Its riddiculous, toddler don't have so much hair!

This is by far my favorite pack, and the only back apart from the base game I paid full price for the day it became available. Birds and rabbits will help you in your garden if you befriend them and ask them to help. If you change a chicken to an evil chicken, it will chase away Death If you eat food that uses a golden chicken egg, it gives you the power to evolve all your plants to the highest level while the moodlet is active. The home delivery people do tend to stay in the house until you tip them. I think they aren't coded to end their delivery interaction until that point. The shops do sell special items during the fairs, it's a great way to get hard to find items. But they still do close at (I think?) 7pm just like a normal day. You just have to be sure to get there early enough. I very much agree the fair could use some work, there's no reason my cow should come in 3rd in a competition with 2 cows, and my excellent pie shouldn't lose to normal ones. You don't even get the results until around 11pm when the fair is supposed to be over at 9:30, so I do spend a large amount of time ready to go home, simply waiting on the results. I also wish they had added a better way to buy and sell. I tend to grow my crops through out the week and can them, and then sell them during the fair for a higher price. I hate having to click the button literally hundreds of times to sell everything I have at the stall.

Not having horses I get because players would want to ride them, but the fact that they didn't make pigs makes me so sad.They could've done it so easily. Otherwise I love the pack but I want piggies 🐷

This is one of my favorite packs. The world does seem empty, but it’s farmland, it’s supposed to be empty. It actually feels a lot fuller than the farmland I’m familiar with irl. It would have made more sense if the background was fields with crops. The fair drives me nuts, but I love the produce stands in town, but it’s a shame we can’t run one ourselves. All the new animals are definitely my favorite part but the build mode is a close second. I use it in most of my builds, even if it’s just a plant or clutter item. I’m not huge on clutter, but this pack has the best clutter imo.

i really wish the rabbits in the pack could be owned lol

Cottage Living my favorite pack and the only pack I play through and continue using it. I waited so long to get farms and I was so excited to have this pack, love it. I agree the world could have been much better but as we know they always miss an opportunity for more game play.

I love this pack. But some notes: 1. Foxes are extremely glitchy. That extreme lag you saw develops in any save where you play for a while on a lot with the fox challenge on. 2. I love the Simple Living lot challenge and play with it frequently, but they have a tendency to forget to add new foods to it. Plus cooking on campfires doesn’t work. And there’s no way to get orange juice if your Sim gets sick. 3. Werewolves introduced a bug where you can’t hatch chicks anymore (at least not without a bunch of work-arounds) because hatchable eggs spoil and your Sim will throw them out. 4. Cross stitch was released to console in black and white, and not only has this still not been fixed, now Growing Together’s puzzles are also black & white on console. 5. The birds can also help in the garden like the rabbits - I believe the rabbits eat weeds and the birds (and chickens) eat bugs. The birds might also improve plant quality by singing or something? 6. There actually is more of a point to the town errands - you can get special fertilizers as rewards that I’m not sure if you can get elsewhere. 7. Don’t turn the pub into a restaurant; doing so breaks the festivals.

Great review - I love cottage living. To get rid of the delivery person I discovered you have to tip them. Also sadly animals are still dying with aging off - EA keeps denying this is a thing but many keep reporting it. The Henford world bugs me too in the country areas mostly because there isn't enough foraging plants. You have an entire country side that is easy to get disorientated in and so very few mushrooms or brambleberries. I have downloaded mods to get the sugar and flour from wheat and sugarcane and I would have loved a butter churn but I don't think the recipes use butter. Missed opportunities for sure but still this pack is one I've never regretted and the only one I bought at full price (because of the bike and cute tree) Also this was back before kits and MWS when we thought maybe EA/Maxis had turned a corner - lol.

As someone who loves Cottage Life I kinda hoped you rant about this pack 😅. Why can I not make grow herbs & make tinctures out of them? Why would a Britain inspired cottage life have a Alpaca instead of horses, sheep or donkey? I want a whole barn and bigger property for having a real ranch. I want sooo much more 😢

You can tell the asked simmers to build in this pack and since they've been doing it, builds that came with the packs are sooo cool and good I guess it's what happens when people who care about the game works in it

I wish the sims would add in dual use lots with shops, café , computer repair shops your sims could open and live above them. In the style of village up to the city worlds with big restaurants or food shops. I wish like the sims 2 you needed to visit cloths shops, maybe again introduce the need for shops and furniture shops not available in build mode, hell even kitchen and bathroom shops, Internet cafes and arcades your teens could hang out at. And imagine car repair shops where your sims can run it or go get cars. If only they had imagination over at EA!

One of my favourite series. Love the brutal honesty. Solid pack reviews. ❤

Cottage living is my favorite expansion pack i do enjoy the growing together also. If not for Cottage living i probably wouldn't have gotten back into the sims 4 i had a hard time playing for a good while

I don’t know why, but Henford-upon-Shagley caught me so off guard that I actually burst out laughing 😂 thanks for that, I was having a really rough day and that absurdly made me snap out of it 😂

I love this pack. Can't play without it, I think it's the best expansion pack they've ever made. I wish we had more packs like cottage living.

I love your channel so much Satch you put so much hard work into your content and it is such a clutch for me 🥺 I watch you literally every day! Thank you for posting this video

Another great review Satch ❤ it's one of my favourite packs.

Cottage living is probably one of my favorite packs that I’ve purchased. I love farming/ranch gameplay, so it definitely fits my aesthetic. My only complaint is that the animals are objects. I was hoping we could purchase animals from other farmers, or even breed them. Overall I do love the pack and use it frequently.

I think one of the cross-pack feature basically allows you to run a market stall. With City Living, you can use the table to sell items. I always sell them on the square for a bit of realism.

In every pack, I find that toddlers and children always get left out. Same as male sims. It is one of my favourites because as someone who lives in a rural area, I can relate to it.

At the end of reviewing all dlc, it would be interesting to see you review the base game in its current form since it’s such a different game from when it originally came out.

Cottage Living is by far my favorite expansion. It's so tempting to turn all of my Sims into cross-stitchers and farmers, especially since Plopsy accepts cross-stitch projects and buyers pay so much more for them than they're worth. It is annoying that Sims can't "reach" the cross stitch kit when it's on a coffee table, but I did discover that placing them on accent tables, like those that look like a nightstand, seems OK. Not sure if it'll glitch out with the long accent tables.

Love you you’re amazing! And Cottage Living is my favourite!!!

as someone who used to live in the lake district in the uk as a child (and now lives in australia lol) this pack is my fav purely cos the whole vibe is so nostalgic to me (especially the pub lot)

I just bought Cottage Living and I quite like it. Interested to hear this Brutally Honest Review b/c the grocery store and Crumplebottom's stand is hella glitchy. [Edit: I agree with everything Satch says]

i feel like the sims 4 is one of the only places where men are an afterthought

The only reason the builds are so good is cus EA didn't build them 😂 they should continue to have content creators create the builds from now on (plus more imo)

The red telephone box should have worked as a real phone. I remember being so annoyed it wasn't usuable. If The Sim had to spend a Simolean or two to use it, that would have made it more realistic too.

Love, love this pack! It is a must have for me. 👍💕

I was not hyped about cottage living when it came out, I barely played with it but now! I'm getting back into the sims 4 and trying to stay interested by doing challenges and cottage living plus decades challenge ❤❤❤

The secret hut in the forest was such a huge let down. I was hoping you could enter and it’d have its own unique gameplay/object, but it’s literally just a shell to give you clues/a tutorial. This is my most used pack tho as i love the simple living challenge and having farm animals. Also finally getting a form of grocery shopping. I got it on sale for half off so for me it was a good deal considering how much I use it compared to other packs!

Satch, the setting to turn off animal ageing for cottage living is currently broken, actually and literally does nothing. It's been this way since a few months after launch and they've not bothered to even address it. I'm not sure how this info would change the review score. but, it is most definitely not currently a functional game-play option.

3:26 not "henford upon bagley" 😂

This world proves that it is possible to place lots around rabbit holes like markets and clothing stores. The central square is a wonderful example of what The Sims 4 could have been and what it isn't. The expansion is OK, nothing special. The lazy design of the chickens and cows annoys me... But that's my only complaint.

i was waiting for this one so much 🤭

I use Simple Living almost always. I really love this pack. One of my faves.

Cottage Living is by far my favorite pack and the best overall pack EA has come out with in a long time, in my opinion. I feel like there is a lot of gameplay if only it worked properly. The fairs are one of the main highlights of the pack, yet they rarely work. Coming in third when there were only two entries, a perfect dragon fruit losing to a normal daisy, animals and plants submitted just disappearing when the fair ends and not appearing in any inventories, and receiving a notification of one of your entries placement but not your other entry (or sometimes not finding out anything about how your entries did). It makes it almost impossible to complete the aspiration that came with the pack. The errand system is useful for Rags to Riches gameplay, plus you can unlock recipes for animal treats by fulfilling them, and most importantly, they are the only non-cheat way to obtain animal shed upgrade parts if you want to make your animal homes auto-feed or scare foxes away. Other problems I have with the pack are--even when you turn off animal aging in pack options, your chickens, cows and llamas will age and die, and they should have fixed the issue with plants reverting to dirt piles before releasing a pack that focuses so much on gardening, living off harvestables, and canning. Even when you have the auto feed upgrade installed on sheds, you'll get notifications that your chickens, cow or llama are starving to death. So many bugs that, if fixed, would make this a great pack. By the way, the birds are more than just social play. They eat the bugs from your garden so you don't have to spend the ridiculously long time it takes to spray for bugs.

Love this pack but I wish they were missing two things: Butter Churning and a Spinning wheel (to turn the llama wool into yarn)

😂 Before I started watching I was thinking to myself, "This could've been included in Seasons" 0:02

I love this pack it's defo my fave. I desperately want more farm animals though. I can't believe the first animal they thought for wool was a frickin llama!! I want and expected sheep and pigs

4/10 for the world?? It’s one of my favorites 😭

My animals always still died even if I switched on anti-aging for them. Broke my heart the first time it happened!

I recently got it 50% off and I’ve been having a great time with it

I own all expansion packs, and have to say Cottage Living is still my favorite! The only criticism I have is that my ‘animal aging off’ feature no longer works in my game (only worked briefly when the pack first came out). This is a huge disappointment for me, because I hate it when the animals die (especially the rabbits for some reason, lol). Other than that, I love the pack and I play in this world more often than any other one.

I turned off the animal death and the chickens still die. I hate that there's one cow or lama per shed, and I hate, hate, hate, that you need to brush the cow or shear the lama every stinking day! And if that's not annoying enough, you have to socialize with your chickens, cow, and lama to keep them happy. Why does EA always take a great concept and ruin it? Infants are annoying, kids in general are a PITA. What with phases, needing advice, getting calls from school, their mood swings, etc. I can't wait for real competition. If EA allowed the player to truly customize the game by turning off the crap you don't want in your game I'd be happy, but they don't. So many other games today do.

Yes! New video ❤️

Actually….my sister is lactose intolerant and that bug does sound like an over site tbh because I’m constantly telling her “take your medicine” any time my dad or grandma make Alfredo and she’s always like “it’s fine” and skip to 45 minutes later she’s racing to the bathroom. Like?? I don’t get it but she avoids her medicine more than diary

This is a great pack. It's a whole gameplay. Income, lots of activities - foxes, rabbits, cows, llamas, chickens, and plants. One option is to cook only from the foods you grow or fish. You cen get into the Town activites, or focus on your family. I'm a big animal person, so I have Cats & Dogs as well as Cottage Living.

I think the downtown store fronts should have worked like the store fronts in the magic realm, and the stands should have been done away with or only sold produce and gardening supplies, not bread, eggs, milk, animal treats etc. Running errands for residents does enhance game play in that it's the only way to collect the animal upgrade parts and the rarest animal treats without cheats.

i love this expansion ♥ i got overwhelmet when i try like to do all the stuff caw, chickens, llama, harvesting, simple live, foxes... so yeah that means is good. Im lactose intolerant myself andi have a new way of torture... like... uhhh that cheese looks yummy ♥

I'm not sure why the stitch box doesn't work on a table for you. It's always worked perfectly for me on a table and iirc also works when placed on the top of a fireplace. That's an odd glitch. I'd suggest maybe repairing the pack in your EA App or something to see if it fixes that, because I didn't buy CL when it first came out. It might have been a glitch that was fixed or something sometime after release?

the red stones in sims 4 drives me nuts in build mode flooring. stones? not grey they are red. bricks? red or black no other colors AND it makes everything industrial. gag me with a spoon

its my absolute favourite pack, it was a first pack i bought

I like cottage living. I think my one thing that gets on my nerves is the one animal per barn. I don’t want 5 barns just to have an actual farm 😭

sooo i was a ts3 player & when i first tried out ts4 i bought pets & cottage living. i was FLOORED when i found out the grocery system, crops, & ability to own farm animals were tied to the pack. i thought it was all basegame for so long. the birds, bunnies, everything i thought it was basegame. it wasnt until i was like "wait wtf does this pack even do" that i realized it was all the most basic life simulation shit ever that shouldve never been paywalled. i shouldve looked into the game more before putting money into it but they also shouldnt make EPs that feel basegame 👍

honestly, this world has a lot more gameplay than usual because of all the wild animals, so because of that i really think this world is a lot stronger than the others (and it's extremely beautiful too)

I'd say the world is a 2/10. It disappointed me a lot the fact my sim went on holidays for 1 week and there was not much to do. Except for what you said: waiting on saturdays for the fair and walking to the big snail. I had to make my sim going every night to the bar... but not much different to what I can do in base game lol.

This pack is like sims 4 pets part2. Thats the major addition. Every other thing is just food related or minor

I would’ve been kinda cool if the pack had a turf oven and such. But either way this is probably my favourite pack

My fave EP :D

when it comes to mens hair, i feel like the amount of styles men in the sims have compared to women is actually realistic. There really isnt many styles of hair men use, compared to the wild stuff girls come up with. also if you befriend the rabbits/birds and then get them on your lot, you can have them help with gardening, the rabbits will eat the weeds and the birds will eat the bugs.

I was so excited about Cottage Living that I gave the entire game another chance. Cue broken animations and my sim trying to ride her bike inside the house. I gave up.

i found out that after your groceries get delivered you need to tip them to leave right away

9:41 I was waiting for you to call it that 💀

one major issue i have with the pack is that the chickens coop ends up glitching out and i very rarely get eggs no matter how many times i reset / buy a new coop but i use cottage living CAS a lot

What would be good men's hairstyles for cottage living?

Who does it work with the basic game. Like is it like a spacial button?

it might be a too ambitious wish of mine but i find it weird how when you set up a picnic you can't put jam, bread or cheese and stuff on other items, it's just weird how sims are eating a plate with a big block of cheese on it and then an entire jar of jam like i get that it's the sims 4 but come on 😭 plus, when i got the game it was full of bugs and kept glitching, locking my sim in a loop of not being able to go home from the festival, reloading the map again and again, maybe they've fixed it since but it was weird how it only happened in henford-on-bagley (?)

As a lactose intolerant person that actually just sounds realistic. I will also just eat cheese

I agree that it's one of the best to actually recommend to others - but there's no denying that it's the Farmville for Sims 4.

They could have added a cross pack feature where cats can make friends with foxs and sometimes they might run away to live with the foxs but you can turn this feature on and off. That would be fun, especially if you could have a search party and put posters up and some sims might complain about the litter that the posters make and you could get fined. But sims isn’t an ambitious game

Henford upon shagley? Huh? 😂😂😭

You need to do errands to be able to upgrade the animal houses

true

lol one time my sim was dating the mayors son and at the festival she voted for me right away lol (idk if it was because I had a relationship with her son or it was just a coincidence)

ONE of my disappointment of this packs is.. I can only have 1 cow or llama on 1 animal shed.. which is bad. I was kinda expecting to have more than 1 large animals like Harvest Moon gameplay.. but having only 1 is abit meh in farms terms

why didnt i get any of the errands when the cottage living townies are all dead and replaced by new generations? or did i miss something?

In this pack Female sims have a ton of hair styles and clothes the end

cross pack that is missing is vampires draining rabbits

omg the toddler Shanice looks *absolutely traumatizing* 😂

I find that giving the delivery guy a tip makes them leave.

This is the ONLY expansion pack I've bought besides Seasons.

Cottage Living has the best debug

Henford upon SHAGLEY ?! 😭💀

I hate that the mill isn’t part of build/buy

another honest review

snowy escape ?

I love the gender flipped version of Shanice Shanice to model male cas. Shane Ian Shane Ian??

The wild foxes seem challenging until you realize if you have your a animals in a gated fence fence you can lock them out by choosing family members only 😑😑😑 That really takes away the immersion

Just get it on sale if you what to save money

❤

In my country we are not allowed to buy from the internet/online lol so I was so happy trying the base game and the sims jungle adventure for free, pray for me guys so I can try the other games before I die hahahhah 😂.

Personally, I find the mini-animals to be buggy and annoying. I don't like using them. The ranch hand should be a good addition, but again the bugs stop the character from being all that useful. I like the game world and there's an actual attempt at storytelling, which is nice. Overall, I'd agree that the pack is worth the money, but it could easily be so much better if EA/Maxis would just fix the glitches that have been plaguing Sims 4 almost from day 1.

EA seriously needs to hire you to be part of their sims team

After I get this pack, the only EPs I have left are Get to Work and Eco Lifestyle (this one I don't care about lol. Woo hoo Dumpster.)

Im still mad about the fact that i cant train my dog to guard my farm animals. Or herd them. Or do literally ANYTHING with them. I would actually die of happiness if working breeds in the sims could actually have jobs.