My Sims 4 game takes forever to load, once the music at the loading screen stops, the game stops responding & I'm forced to force quit the game. I've tried taking out mods I don't need/want, I've tried merging files in Sims 4 Studios but every time I merge them, it won't merge all of them (only some). Also, I've cleared my cache numerous times & the game will sometimes get past the logo screen, but when I select a Sim household to play as, the game takes forever to get to the actual gameplay. Is there anyone who can help me figure out a way to get the game to load faster?? I'm sick of waiting literally HOURS just to play the game.

Number of reasons, first the obvious, remove your entire mods folder and launch it in a vanilla state, if still persists check your hard drive for errors or bad sectors, file corruption can cause that too, let Origin attempt to repair your game.

Also, check the screen shot folder and the cache folders (images will appear there after visiting the Gallery). Check that your mods folders do not have note or text documents or pictures. Empty those folders. Rename your mods to take out special characters and spaces. Periodically, delete the localthumbcache file. Also, in game, keep personal inventory (the one your Sim carries with them everywhere) to a minimum.

Also, you could have something of cc that isn't for Sims 4, like clothing for sims 3. With S3 cc game also takes forever to load, make sure all of your cc is for S4.

I love your username, btw - Mr. Diddles.

Just in case, if the other solutions don't work, check your background processes on your computer. I recently ran into an issue where my anti-virus was hung up and wouldn't let the computer load the start screen.

I've made SLIGHT progress doing this, the game did get past the logo screen & I managed to play a household. But it still takes forever loading this household. I have these files in my mod folder called EP01_Recipes, EP03_Recipes etc. Should I get rid of these? They don't seem to be doing anything

Take them out and see what happens.

I think those go to GrayCurse's Cooking & Ingredients Overhaul and it might be causing a problem if you've removed part of the mod and not all of it. You really should remove all your mods and put them back in batches (i.e. the 50/50 method) to see what triggers the problem.