Must Own.
If they run some kind of shop or store then you usually have to help out further by building them stuff they need to get things running again, like kitchen stuff, furniture, other things.
As you move more people back into town and helps the shops get back into the swing of things your towns rating goes up giving you access to other sections of town.
Basically the game revolves around building stuff whether its buildings or bathtubs. Both are pretty easy to do and only limited by your imagination. All the sims in the game have two interests. To make them happy they want their house and their decorations to match those interests. Interests include: "Geek, Scholar, Fun, Cute, Food, and Sad".
To make buildings match a sims interest you are limited to using specific building materials like doors, windows, lights that are themed. Making furniture and decorations is where you will spend most of your time. Thanx to the killer workshop you can make the furniture/decor look like anything your imagination can come up with. To make it appeal to an interest you use paint.
To get paint you have to collect "essenses". These are all over the place. Some are buried, some you get from interacting with people, some grow on trees, and some you get by fishing. One example of an essense is a "red apple". It takes 1 essense to paint one block of whatever you made, so if you used 10 blocks you will need 10 essense to finish it(although you can use less). Usually the sim your building for specifies how many essenses they want used, but you can go over that.
Anyways each type of essense like red apple has 4 patterns associated with it. They all consist of 2 prints, and two shades of a solid color. Besides painting blocks you can also just place an essense in a design in which case it looks like the object. A red apple would be a red apple and you could place it where ever. But that would take up a crapload of space so its better to just paint.
Back to making stuff. To make something you have to choose from a blueprint which will set what its premade parts will look like. You enter this rotating platform with a grid on it and a ghost image of where you should place blocks. The cool part is in the ghost image there are little shiny stars. To "complete" the design and create the premade look of the object you just have to cover those stars. The rest of the ghost image can be ignored or you can go on to build something insane.
Do you want a basic tv set or do you want your tv to look like its sprouting giant claws with eyeballs on the tips?? Do you want a nice comfy flat bed or do you want it to be made of really sharp angles and held up by one leg made out of balls? The item building is what gives this game so much enjoyment.
The end goal in the game is to make everybody your best friend and that only happens after you trick out the inside of their house. You are given new blueprints each time you do a job for a sim and for when you become best friends with them. Some of the sims dont run a shop or anything they are called townies. Townies are your chance to go nuts and do whatever you want. They dont ask for anything so you can build whatever you want as long as it matches their interest, but they usually have cool rewards.
I guess I should mention that unlike all the other sims games you dont have to manage your sims needs and wants. You will never get tired, you will never have to take a dump. You just have to keep building like you are an 8 year old from china who has a quota to meet.
I loved this game and thinks its a must own. I think you can get bored with it if you are not creative but if you are creative the game has no end because you can just keep changing everything in the game, where people live, what their house looks like, their interior.
Its probably to late for this since My Sims: Kingdom is already getting released but there were a few issues I took notice of:
#1 Framerate. This game pushes the poor little Wii to its limit and here and there the game really bogs down in the framerate, especially when moving complex furniture or searching for buried stuff.
#2 Clean up the friends list. You should see a list of a large number of sims with a pic of the sim, their relationship status towards you, and their two interests all on one screen. Right now you have to open the list and then choose a sim just to see some stupid tiny images of their relationship and interests and a bio.
#3 Sometimes you get asked to build something specific but it doesnt go into your official task list which is stupid. If something specific gets asked for PUT IT IN THE LIST.
#4 When you build something you should be able to save the design and name it. I figured out its best to build stuff and leave it unpainted as templates and to leave them at home. Then if somebody wants something I have a template for I go grab it and use the edit/copy feature and then paint up the copy. This result in a house full of unpainted crap though. It would have been so helpful to be able to just save and name designs. Like bathtub60 which would mean a bathtub made of 60 blocks.
#5 Why are we unable to use essense to paint houses?? Maybe that unlocks later in the game? I only made it to 4 stars in the two days I had the game. They did such a killer job creating awesome paint patterns and then you can't even use them on the outside of a house.
#6 When your painting a design we should have had a paint all blocks option. When your creating your own stuff for people it would have been helpful to have this. Most sim requested items are mix essense so not so much for those although i guess even for that. If you have 99 of one thing you could use all paint on the object to paint all the blocks and then use the other essense to fill in just the ones you need. So thats 2/3 situations it would be helpful.
#7 Last but not least...the buttons definately need reconfigured for making stuff. The rotation buttons are on the same controller as the placement button and the button you have to hold down to place multiple blocks?? What freaking moron thought that up? I guess the easiest fix to the problem would be to make the B button/copy button an on/off button. Right now you have to hold it down and if you let up it deletes the block your working with. If you trying to place multiple blocks and have to rotate them to its a freaking two handed nightmate. On/off B button would totally fix this because you just turn it on, rotate away without fear of losing your block and then turn it off when your done.
Those problems were all pretty minor. If I owned a Wii I would definately buy this game and My Sims: Kingdom as soon as it drops. Your fun with this game is only limited by your imagination.