Reviewed by Megan Parker
It’s strange to think that up until this expansion, the Sims didn’t have the ability to experience one of the fundamental elements of life on this planet: weather. Up until now, it was always a nice, warm day without a cloud in the sky; no chance of rain, snow, sleet, hail, or any combination thereof.
Of course, with this expansion that all changes. Once installed, you can choose the seasonal pattern for your neighborhood. You can keep it in the typical order (Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall) or even rotate it around to make very little sense (Summer, winter, spring fall). Whatever you choose for your neighborhood is entirely up to you.
If you have the Nightlife expansion, your downtown neighborhoods can have different seasonal patterns from the main neighborhood. For example, you can have the typical pattern for the main, but an entirely winter set up for one of the downtowns. Sims 2 is very customizable, and the weather isn’t any different.
When you play a particular home, you go through the seasons you set up. Each season is five Sim days, which actually seems almost too short sometimes. Then again, if you start a new adult sim at the same time, in one “year” they’ll be well on their way to old age (without any youth aids).
The weather isn’t as divided as it may seem from the set up. Like reality, you may have a warm winter or a cold spring. In my first family using the Seasons, it never snowed more than a very little before it moved on to spring. This can actually be pretty disappointing for your first time through, when you want to try out making snow people, having snowball fights, or ice skating.
The neighborhood you play will be affected by the last sim household you were in. If you played a household that was in winter and has snow in one household, but moved to a different house that is in summer, the neighborhood will change to reflect that. It doesn’t make sense from our perspective, but from within the game’s mechanics, time is relative.
Since the weather changes, so does the sims clothing. There is now an added set of clothes each Sim has: outerwear. There are varying degrees of outerwear too, like a spring jacket, fall coat, and dead-of-winter-it’s-absolutely-freezing heavy coat. If you sim goes out when it’s too cold without the right outerwear, she’ll get cold pretty quickly. There is a thermometer next to each sim’s profile, one that will change depending on the temperature. Obviously.
Sometimes, winter is cold enough that even the heaviest coat isn’t enough to keep your sim warm. Send her back inside and you can have hot cocoa waiting in front of a nice warm fire. And in the opposite, your sim can become too hot, or even sunburned if she’s out in the summer heat for too long.
Seasons isn’t just about the changes in weather, but it also adds a new past time for the sims: gardening. You can set up plots, either in a greenhouse or in a more traditional garden setting. Obviously, if you have your plants outside of the greenhouse, they’ll be affected by the weather like anything else. As your skill in gardening improves, you’ll learn how to plant new items. Unlike the other skills, such as cooking, there isn’t the typical meter. There are just three levels to gardening, and a small handful of fruits and vegetables you can learn to plant. This is really one of my few complaints for the expansion. There are some trees in the gardening section to put around as well, ones that bear fruits like apples, lemons, and oranges. They can actually be kind of a pain to take care of, but they produce quite a bit of fruit.
If you hire a gardener, I’ve noticed she actually can end up over watering your plants, so as much of a pain as it can be, it’s better to do your own gardening. Gardening itself is something that takes a little getting used to. Even if you can water a plant, you don’t necessarily want to. It’s better to keep an eye on the progress of a plant, shown by sad or smiley faces . The happier your plant, the better tasting your harvest will be. Once you harvest the plant, you have to plant again. It’s a little strange to do it that way since most of the plants you can grow often have multiple yields.
With your harvest, you can either sell it immediately after picking it, or you can place it in your juice mixer. Depending on what you’ve placed, you can make a variety of drinks.
Once your garden is growing and producing, you can call over the Garden Club to join and evaluate. If you’re allowed in, seeds and fertilizers are cheaper. If you get a perfect score with them, you get the exclusive wishing well to place wherever you’d like in the yard. The wishing well allows you to wish for friends, romance, or money.
The romance is sweet and creepy at the same time. A sim wishing for romance will suddenly have another sim transported to that lot, totally in love with the one who made the wish. You can’t choose who shows up, so that’s the twist.
A small, but very cool addition that was added (to keep up with the seasonal changes) is that each outfit you have can have a different hairstyle. So your sim can have her hair up while working out, in a formal style for her night out, or just down for everyday. Unfortunately, you can’t change the hair for their work. Which isn’t so much of a surprise considering the sims work clothes are set as well.
Speaking of work, Seasons added six new careers to choose from: Adventurer, Education, Law, Journalism, Musician, and believe it or not, Gamer. Of course, there are also added career related aspiration rewards as well.
Some of the smaller additions are gifts, new pool shapes, a water slide, and an interior foundation too for split level homes. Finally, my favorite 
is the leftover option. It always bothered me that if you were going to make a dinner for more than one person that some of it would have to go to waste. Now, you can just put it back. It seems to stop the timer on food going bad; though I can’t tell if it stops it or just slows it. There are a few new items that pertain to the seasons, but not a ton. Most of the new content is gameplay.
Of all the Sims 2 expansion packs, Seasons is one of the absolute musts. It adds more to the world that you’ve created and brings the game to life in a way it hasn’t before. With new careers, gardening and of course the weather, this expansion is worth every simoleon.