The Sims 4: Horse Ranch

 PC
Metascore
68

Mixed or average reviews - based on 12 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 5 out of 12
  2. Mixed: 6 out of 12
  3. Negative: 1 out of 12
  1. CD-Action
    Aug 17, 2023
    70
    The latest expansion pack has a couple of shortcomings but brings a whole lot of fun. It enriches the game’s world, provides many activities, offers different ways of running a backyard business, and gives a lot of freedom in how you handle the horses.
  2. God is a Geek
    Jul 27, 2023
    70
    If you're a horse lover, the The Sims 4 Horse Ranch expansion is a no-brainier. For anyone else, this is one that it might not be a bad thing to skip.
  3. Twinfinite
    Jul 25, 2023
    70
    I highly recommend playing the Horse Ranch if you love caring for these animals, want to try out a new Sim experience or enjoy farming simulators. Despite its lack of gameplay, it pairs well with the base game and the rest of the DLCs, bringing in a new wave of challenges. The pack has a lot of potential to open other doors in the franchise, and it’s already made me begin my traditional binge-playing for the next few months.
  5. GamesHub
    Jul 24, 2023
    60
    It’s a great escape to the ‘wild west’ countryside, but one without significant bells and whistles.
  6. Screen Rant
    Jul 20, 2023
    60
    This latest Sims 4 DLC delivers exactly what it claims to and little more. Were this a Game Pack there would be nothing wrong with that, but with the steeper price tag of an Expansion Pack the areas that barely scratch the surface of what they could be or remain unexplored entirely are more glaring. That being said, Chestnut Ridge is beautiful and several elements of the EP are legitimately fun despite these flaws, and players who have long been clamoring for horses in the game will certainly want to pick up The Sims 4 Horse Ranch - it just may be worth waiting for a sale.
  7. GGRecon
    Jul 24, 2023
    50
    Ultimately, The Sims 4 Horse Ranch feels more like a Game Pack than an Expansion. If you're mad about horses, then you'll get immeasurable joy from the DLC, and it will be well worth your time just to see your foals take their first steps on your ranch. However, if you're expecting a full-fledged Expansion with everything that comes with that, full neighbourhoods, activities, storylines and more, you may feel disappointed.

User Reviews

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User Score
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User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 0 out of 1
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 1
  3. Negative: 1 out of 1
  1. tangledwings
    Jul 27, 2023
    4
    Horse Ranch underpromised and yet still underperformed. Horses are pretty and well animated, but creating a custom horse in CAS is just bad.Horse Ranch underpromised and yet still underperformed. Horses are pretty and well animated, but creating a custom horse in CAS is just bad. Instead of giving the player common markings to layer on, like socks, stars, blaze etc., you just get a paint tool to scribble on your horse. There are a few templates on the paint tab, but they inexplicably omitted all the common horse markings. It's bizarre and kind of pathetic. And because they chose this paint system over the layered marking system, they have no way to generate foals that are a mix of their parent's markings rather than simply copies of one or the other. Horses have a "breed mixer" button in CAS, so they clearly wanted to put in a decent genetics system that would mix traits from the parents, but didn't. It looks and feels half-baked.

    Speaking of half-baked, the nectar making skill is a 5 point skill instead of a 10 point. There aren't many varieties of nectar. Instead of the flavor profile system from Sims 3, you just use any fruit. I would like to see all these food and drink making skills thoroughly incorporated into Dine Out, but cross-pack compatibility is again ignored. For an 11-year-old game with tons of expansions, I cannot understand why they keep making these expansions stand-alone rather than using them to evolve and develop the original world. Players who buy most or all of the packs, for hundreds of dollars, deserve a better overall experience rather than an isolated bit of new content that they tire of quickly.

    I find myself waiting to really play this pack because I need mods to fix the genetics and fix nectar making. I know people are already working on it. Then I think, why are unpaid, individual modders doing so much of the heavy lifting for this massive company? If one person can vastly improve a feature in a week, there is no excuse for the dev team not doing it. It just makes no sense. Animations and most art assets are consistently good, but gameplay and functionality is mediocre at best. Same old, same old.    … Full Review »