The new werewolves turn The Sims 4 upside down. Why the mini-addon shows the best of the life simulation, you can read in our test.
I’ll be honest with you: After the wedding story debacle, I didn’t feel like playing my Sims anymore. Some of my neighbourhoods contain households that I have cherished since 2014 and have enjoyed playing with for a long time. But it seemed as if EA was slowly but surely spreading a lack of ideas – coupled with sloppiness, because the last gameplay pack for The Sims 4 was an unparalleled bugfest.
For me, The Sims 4: Werewolves was the last attempt to put my trust in the development team, because I have been a fan of the occult Sims since the first game of the series and play them the most. And what can I tell you? This DLC is one of the best things that has been released for The Sims 4 in years! I’ll explain why in my review.
Table of Contents
The character creation is a hoot
So get to the game, download pack and create werewolf sim! Anyway, the Create-A-Sim mode was not yet a revelation: no matter what I changed on my future werewolf, it motivated it to howl loudly. Adjust eyes, howl. New beard, howl! Trying out hairstyles, howl, howl, howl!!! The clothes selection was then only possible with the sound turned off, because my cats were already creeping around my desk all irritated.
Inwardly sighing, I launched into the game world and looked around the new Moonwood Mill neighbourhood. The former lumberjack settlement in the middle of picturesque coniferous forests looked really interesting at first glance with its scratchy industrial ruins and grungy decorating style. Besides a bar and library, there are underground tunnels to explore, a crescent-shaped lake and the somewhat remote hut of the rumbling hermit wolf Greg. By the way, he is not at all happy about visitors and likes to turn careless Sims into a werewolf, so be careful when exploring!
Too much anger is not good
Surprised, I realised in the first hours of the game that life as a werewolf was not so easy for my Sim, who no longer howls all the time: Werewolves have the same needs as normal Sims, but are also given an anger meter in the form of a slowly but steadily filling scale. This happens particularly quickly during a full moon, otherwise the changing moon phases provide our wolves with bonuses that change daily.
If the rage rises to threatening heights, an increasingly glaring red aura forms around werewolf Sims. When the scale is full, the previously peaceful Sim citizen transforms into wolf form, tearing apart the surroundings in a furious frenzy and frightening innocent Sims who have had the misfortune to be standing around nearby.
Besides using werewolf skills and a bit of running around, I couldn’t do much with my rampaging wolfling and ended up waiting until the frenzy was finally over after three in-game hours. The legacy of this wild episode was the demolished flat and a first bad impression in the neighbourhood!
The bad news: You can’t prevent a rampage in the long run, werewolves accumulate rage all the time. The good news: You can, however, delay it and even end it with a werewolf skill in higher ranks. And paired with the werewolf character traits, the game finally becomes challenging again!
Good Wolf, Bad Wolf
werewolf skills, ranks and traits – huh? That’s exactly how I felt in the first hours of the game. But it’s not as complicated as it sounds at first. First of all, a werewolf generates werewolf knowledge when using his abilities and reading wolfish books. Similar to the vampires from the corresponding gameplay pack, the accumulated knowledge fills a designated bar and unlocks new ability points and higher ranks.
Werewolves start at the Puppy rank and can allocate two ability points to the five talents available per rank at the start of the game. In total, with five possible werewolf ranks, there are twenty-five skills ranging from whimsical to truly powerful:
Would you rather have a more animalistic werewolf that licks itself clean with its own tongue, pees on the ground to mark its own territory and feeds by eating the furnishings? Or is an evil werewolf more your thing, terrorising the neighbourhood with her howls and having the time of her life?
Rightly powerful werewolves in the last rank can even become immortal or run faster than the wind through the game world. You can also unlock six other dormant abilities at any time by performing the necessary actions. If you manage not to scare any Sims with your raging werewolf, for example, you will learn to transform it into wolf form at any time.
A question of character
With the character traits, werewolves are additionally individualised, as these determine in which everyday situations more rage is generated. Each werewolf starts with one trait and gains up to three more as they rise in rank: grumpy wolves, for example, react very indignantly if they are not allowed to sleep sufficiently, carnivores only want to consume fresh meat they have hunted themselves and cocky werewolves increase their rage as soon as they flirt with others. So with four traits, anger management becomes really exciting because there are simply plenty of situations in which our fur friends see red really quickly.
How good that there is a remedy for that too: After all, there are like-minded people in Moonwood Mill’s two werewolf packs who know their stuff. I sent my first wolf to the peace-loving Moonwood commune, who, as real fur hippies, try to mediate between werewolves and normal sims. For me, this meant seeking out many conversations with non-werewolves, soliciting understanding and, above all, keeping calm during any frenzy.
With another she-wolf, I joined the Wildfang pack, where all aspects of werewolf life are high on the agenda, including the violent ones. By the way, there is generally a lot of fighting among werewolves: sparring with pack members is just as normal as fights for rank advancement within the pack. Only those who defeat the alpha can become alpha themselves – and they are tough opponents!
History at every turn
Besides the very turbulent daily life and the well interlocked ability, moon phase and rage mechanics, however, it was the background snippets scattered around every corner that convinced me that EA can still craft good content.
Conversation options and werewolf-themed books – including a wolfish Pride and Prejudice variant (!) – as well as the Moonwood relic collection provide you with plenty of details about the neighbourhood’s backstory and the werewolves’ origin story. Even the hermit wolf Greg, who is always rolling, can be elicited with a lot of skill, but only with patience.
All in all, there is a lot in this gameplay pack, which is suitable for fans of occult creatures and varied characters.
Editor’s Verdict
“Please don’t fuck it up!” was my mantra when I read the first announcement of the gameplay pack. This time, EA granted me my wish: It was really fun to go about everyday life with my chaos wolves, because thanks to rage mechanics, something unexpected could always happen. Exploring the tunnels, reading books, bugging Greg and digging the relics first out of the ground and then deciphering them were a great addition. With over twenty character traits there remains a strong random factor to the game, also the varied werewolf abilities allow for very different play styles.
This gives me a lot of room for experimentation even after this test. Apart from that, I like the many details, such as werewolves growling in love, or werewolf babies who howl like wolves instead of whining, and toddlers who dream of the moon at night. And maybe I’ll try my hand at something that various streamers have tried in vain so far after the release: Getting head vampire Vladislaus and werewolf elder Greg to hanky-panky!
