The Sims 2 is my favorite of the franchise so far. Like others mentioned, it has charm, loads and loads of charm. It is, in my opinion, a masterpiece of a game. I feel that the Sims in TS2 have distinct personalities (makes it fun to turn on free will and just watch what they do). I don't know, it's hard for me to explain exactly why I love TS2 so much. I've never had to warm up to it, I binge played from the first day I got my copy of the game. It's just one of those games that immediately sucked me in and the attraction still hasn't faded. It's OK if you don't like TS2, especially if you started with TS3, which IMO is a vastly inferior game but fun nonetheless. I think going backwards, from TS3 to TS2, may make it more difficult to see what made the game so incredible when it came out in 2004. Many of us who started with TS1 and loved that game really appreciated the changes and improvements in TS2. The changes from TS1 to TS2 were HUGE. At the time it was sheer, unadulterated joy (3D Sims! Aging! Pregnancy! Toddlers! Vacation days! You get my point...). I don't know that I'll ever enjoy a game like that ever again. If I started with TS3 and then played TS2 I probably wouldn't get it either, because it looks like a step back and it doesn't have certain features like the open world.

I started with Sims 3 and I always wondered about 2 but because I started with 3 I loved it and that was my normal. I read a few posts about 2 when the discussions were going on prior to 4 being released and decided to give it a go and collected every EP, etc., and then the UC was released for free...lol. I'm always a day late and a dollar short.

I made myself play it and not go back to 3 until I felt like I had really given it a shot. That was last July and I am still playing. I haven't purchased 4 and my Sims 3 game is still installed as I will go back one day. It's just so different but the modding community has come up with every mod you could ever want or need and if you want to mod some stuff yourself, SimPE is really easy to use....if you like doing that sort of thing...which I do.

I love both 2 and 3 now because they each give me something different. If I want to imagine I'm in a fantasy world with breathtaking views - I'll go back to 3. If I want to get really attached to my Sims and focus on personalities more - I go to 2. I'm addicted to the babies and toddlers right now in 2 so I'll be there for awhile. To me it's not an either/or....for me it's both.

I haven't tried 4 because from what I've seen they don't give me anything better than I have in 2 or 3.

Because I've played it for 10 years and still find out new things when I play, and the game still feels alive. There are thousands more reasons but I felt like leaving a short answer

I'm reading about rotational playing and people keep saying "main" hood and "sub" hood. What are they referring to? Also, I put that mod in that doubles my sims age but it only takes effect with new sims or when a sim transitions ages... since my teenager is on the double lifetime does that mean I should (when it's time) create a sim girl for him so she will be too? I really liked how his mom and dad met and all but I don't want to do it that way if it's going to be a huge age difference. Whew. Thanks in advance!

Main hood is the first area you create when you make a new hood and is the place you arrive at when you enter or the place you go to in a pre-made hood (e.g. Pleasantview). Sub-hoods are other areas attached to that hood that your sim can visit - a university, downtown, shopping district or holiday destination. That's how TS2 handled all that (in a similar way TS1 as a matter of fact). With the age altering hack - a new sim will get the new life lengths but you can also alter life lengths in SimPE if you want to.

Main hood: the one that you see when you first start the game. Subhood, a hood attached to the main hood, perhaps a business district, a downtown, a university, a vacation destination.
There are a variety of ways to adjust ages of sims who are already made. I use SimPE (my aging mod can be as much as 5 days equals 1 EA day, depending on age), others use Simblender, lotsynctimer, or other hacks. If your aging is double, then you can figure out how close you want her to be in age to him and play her accordingly. Since there is no story progression in Sims 2, you can move her and her parents into a house now with her as a toddler or child and play them until she is a teen like your boy is, if you want, and he and his family will not age until you play them again. You can wait and make her as a college student when he goes to college, or as an adult when he is an adult. Whatever works for you.
I think a lot of us like the flexibility Sims 2 gives us.

Okay this is going to sound really stupid. But how do you make 2 sims meet?? I made a family with a teenage girl and thought I'd switch back and forth between the two families but how do I make the families meet each other so they can be friends. *sigh* I'm feeling like such a newb.

Send the family to a community lot. If this is your own custom hood, the other family has a higher chance of showing up right away. If this is a premade hood, the game will randomly select sims to show up, so you may be waiting a while for your other family to appear. The game. also generates walkbys who stroll by your house but that's even slower as only one sim walks by at a time.

Thanks @SIMposiast I'm playing Pleasantview as is just with a house I built and now 2 families I made. How do I make it custom? I know I can't delete any sims because that causes corruption. Oh and btw she brought him home from school the first day!

That's the very first question that I asked here when I'd only been playing for a few days! Joandsarah77 suggested Phaenoh's Phone Book; Peni Griffin suggested a teleporter. Being a bit of a luddite, I chose the phone book. I wasn't even sure what a teleporter was! I guessed (I think correctly) that it must be something similar to the "Transporter" in Star Trek, and I felt that I didn't trust the lives of my Sims to such a contraption! (I do use Inge's teleporters as well as the phone book now!!) There are links to both mods in the thread I linked to.

I think it's worth using a mod here, because it might take a very long time for them to meet by chance.

And a very belated "Thank You" to Peni Griffin for answering my very first post. I didn't thank her immediately, and when I went back to do it later, the thread had been locked. (I see it's unlocked again now.)

@rainydayz179 You can tweak ages to whatever you want them to be. Do you have the Sim Blender? http://www.simbology.com/smf/index.php?topic=20.0 grab that as it has a lot of uses. One being under aging you can change a sims age or age them up or down by 3 days. On there you can check how many hours a sim has before giving birth and also see if she or he is having one or twins.

As Andrew said Phaenoh's Phone Book let's a sim look up any sims number. Once your sim has the sim in his caller directory he or she simply calls them on the phone. Make sure they are getting close to being friends before inviting them over or use the suggested teleporter or there is also Monique's computer which I would not be without. On there your sim can send an invitation email and the sim will always come on over. I just didn't want to through the name of too many mods at you at once. Understand some of us have a thousand and more mods.

Monique's computer updated http://www.insimenator.org/index.php/topic,93501.0.html I use the lap top. There are many things you can do on there from study, to take out loans with horrible interest to those invitation emails I said about.

There's a number of editing tools available: SimBlender, SimPE, SimManipulator. Some people swear by SimBlender, because you don't have to get out of the game to use it; I prefer SimPE, because it works with all stages of the game (SimBlender won't work for EPs lower than OFB; this matters if you're making BG hoods to share) and because you have to shut the game down to do it. That way I'm 100% sure I've backed up the game before I make any major changes, so if I screw up or an accident happens it won't matter.

A lot of the functions of these editing tools are redundant with the testingcheats, which require no mods at all, just a base level of information on how the cheats work.

This game is so customizable, and there's so many options for doing so many things, that it's easy to be paralyzed by too many choices! Take your time and decide what you want to use, as you need to use them. Things that look like Too Much now will seem old hat six months from now, and then you'll discover something else that takes your breath away!

If the age mod does not work for you, just use the aging off/on cheat. I still prefer it to any age mod, because it is just less work in general. (I do use one these days, by Boiling Oil, where only adults age, only on Sundays. That one works for me since I want my teens to have parents around when they come back from Uni. He made different versions of the mod as well), But for a beginner, I'd say just use the cheat at first. Once they gain aspiration points, you can also feed them elixir of life (provided they are in gold or platinum) and that Sim will then grow 3 days younger.

I never found it difficult to have my Sims meet people - send them to community lots. Kids will also bring friends home from school, etc. I have neither the phone book nor the teleporter (although Sim blender also allows you to teleport sims in. Good for parties).

Don't try to do everything at once. Play three days or so with every family so that you can get to know them. Eventually you'd be able to handle them quite easily. Sims 2 is much more of a challenge than 3 or 4 precisely because you can do this.

Most important, just enjoy it. They can drive you crazy, these Sims 2 Sims. One learns to handle them in various ways, and it does take some time.

When you play another family or make a new one, your first families should turn up to greet them as part of the welcome wagon.

I never have a problem getting my sims to meet other sims, either - but getting two specific sims to meet? Sometimes you really need that teleporter! Like, in the GS Uberhood Challenge, in which Rhett Hart is going around to each neighborhood to get one lady in each pregnant (and raise all the kids himself), I got him to Belladonna Cove and I sent him to lots of community lots, and I sent all the Belladonna Cove Ladies to community lots, playing from their houses, and they were meeting everybody and their dog from every hood except Belladonna Cove! So I put a teleporter on a community lot, sent Connie Weir to it, summoned Rhett, and had her greet him. Once that first contact was made, the rest were easy but for about three sessions I felt like I was trying to get the matching poles of a magnet together!

What I mostly use the teleporter for, though, is getting everybody to the party who needs to be there. You really can't do a proper wedding for the youngest of six to the oldest of eight without a teleporter!

I like TS2 because I like how I can control the town how I want it. I like the look of the Sims and the little animations (like getting utensils out). I went from TS3 to TS2, and I try to go back to TS3 but even though my computer's built for it, it's slow and horrible.
In Sims 2 you're also able to build your own custom town through SimCity 4 (Which you can get off Steam).

That's another thing I love about TS2 - they animated almost everything, compared to TS3 where they skipped a bunch of animations (like getting in and out of cars) and took lots of other shortcuts. Plus, all the running around they have to do in TS3 is so annoying and take so much time that for the most part I just used a trick I learned from TS2, and teleported them where I wanted them to be.

I've also finally figured out why I generally don't like TS3 faces. Their eyes often go cross-wise (particularly custom-made poses, where the eyes nearly always seem to have turned weirdly), and their mouths look off somehow. I have seen pretty TS3 sims, but with a few exceptions they were all heavily modified with custom sliders. Some of the sliders even make things a lot worse. In TS2 you can technically make pretty sims straight from the box, because the one-in-all tool Bodyshop is. Want a pretty skintone or some nice eyes? No problem! Need more slider control? Easy - just save the sim, clone, and the sliders reset.

When TS3 came out, I was excited about traits. I thought they would add so much extra personality to the sims. But it turned out, IMO that it made all the sims the same except for a few quirks. Most of the traits didn't do anything except make a sim get random moodlets or do some idle animations. The point system works much better at making a sim with a unique personality. I didn't realize this until a few expansions into TS3. The sims seemed to be missing something but I couldn't figure out what it was. I missed the TS2 personalities, but loved the idea of an open world and CaST. I thought I couldn't play with loading screens ever again.

When I got TS4, the sims had even LESS personality than in TS3 and there was no open world or CaST. Multitasking is kinda cool, but not as amazing as I thought it would be. All TS4 did for me was make me realize that I don't mind loading screens and lack of CaST as much as I thought I would.

So I went out to look for my TS2 discs, only to find half of them missing and I lost the registration codes for the CDs I still had. I decided to beg for a copy of TS2 UC on Origins customer service line and I got it back. I don't think I'll be playing the others much anymore.

I LOVED the cutscenes. They were always really funny or wacky, and I loved to find every single one of them. Oh, and I also liked the alien impregnation feature, quite a surprise the first time I got it to happen back in 2009.

Yea, use the phonebook! It's awesome. After you install it..

Step 1) Put the phonebook on a surface. To my knowledge, it works best on a counter-top.
Step 2) Click the "Look up Number" interaction on the phonebook.
Step 3) There is going to be tons of Sims, but look for the Sim you made (or a pre-made Sim). It goes in alphabetical order by first name (if my memory serves correctly). Select the desired Sim, and then click accept.
Step 4) Go to the phone and chat with the Sim. They will not want to come over until you have a higher relationship (since it starts at 0 when you use this method).
Step 5) Invite the Sim over.

You're done.

Another quick question. Is there any way to get the people they bring home from work to go home???

Edit: I mean when saying goodbye doesn't work.

Those who stay all night playing the drums They will leave sooner or later by themselves.

The simblender that joandsarah77 mentioned above has a feature that clears off other sims and pets you don't want on the lot anymore.

Force error>Delete - now bugger off home when I tell you.

Or: Force error> Reset - If you don't want to lose a valuable NPC friend.

Simblender is awesome! It does feel weird clicking on a tree to do stuff but still yay! That guy was coming home from work with the Mom every day and staying until 4:00am playing drums! So my next question is when do I send my teen to college? He has 1 skill up to 8 and is level 3 in his job. Should I try to get more skills up?