Amazon.com: The Sims 2: Open for Business Expansion Pack: PC: Video Games

87 Reviews

5 star:		(46)
4 star:		(28)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

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4.3 out of 5 stars (87 customer reviews)

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184 of 184 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fun new addition to the growing Sims 2 library, April 26, 2006

By	Adam Sugarman (Miami Beach, FL) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars

Before the Sims 2: Open for Business, Sims owners could be in control of every aspect of their sim's life, save for one: work. They would make relationships, gain skill points, go to college, even become vampires, but for a few hours every day they would dissappear from view, leaving a hole in the day for the game's players. Well, that's not the case anymore. With Open for Business, you can now govern their economic ambitions, too. What it becomes is a fun, if more challening than expected, mini-game that tests the micromanagement skills of Sims players.

You can open up any number of business types: from bakeries to furniture stores to salons. You can even charge sims to just come over and hang out at your place if you want to. The flexibility is there for you to sell almost anything (because that's essentially what it all comes down to); I personally found it easiest and most profitable to sell televisions and artwork (somtimes in the same store), but you can do whatever you want. You can hire managers to do the work for you, you can buy real estate and sell it, you can sell cars; there truly is a lot to do in the game.

Now there are some game imbalances to take notice of. First of all, you need a truckload of cash to start a business. Without cheating it's usually quite difficult to pull the money together to start even the most basic of businesses. It would have been nice to have some sort of investing process, where you could invite others as investors or even stock owners, but as is, it's a pretty basic business simulation. The second imbalance comes when you do eventually create a successful business: it's so successful that you have more money than you know what to do with. Granted this isn't really a gripe, but it's certainly in stark contrast to the beginnings of your business.

The actual running of the business can be one of two things to different players: a fun, challenging break from normal sims gameplay or a boring, tedious excercise in micromanagement. I personally felt the former, but I could see why it could be tedious. Not only do you have to worry about your own needs, you need to worry about giving your employees breaks, and making sure your customers are happy. Also, they are in constant need of reminders why they are in the store in the first place; the sheer number of times I used the "sell" command on various customers is staggering. However, this is all exectued quite well, and it is really rewarding to see repeat customers coming in everyday to buy your cakes and pastries (although it gets a little suspect when they buy a new television every day). I enjoy the challenge and feel that most people will. It's a departure from the guarranteed-to-win dating mini-game from Nightlife, also.

I also have to mention the awesome robots that have been re-introduced to the series. You get to build your own robots from the ground up, from cleaning robots to fully functional Servos that work as people without needs (with the exception of the occasional recharging).

Other people are having trouble with bugs in their games, but I have yet to run into any (other than standard Sims 2 bugs). I did find it particularly difficult to run some businesses, though - i never could get that trendy new nightclub/salon off the ground. Oh well.

Pros:
Great new mini-game for Sim owners
Adds a lot of new content and options
Fun
Rewarding businesses
Robots!

Cons:
Lots of micro-management
Some might find the challenge a turn-off
Buggy for some people
Slight game imbalances

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258 of 274 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great fun except for some major bugs, March 5, 2006

By	K. D. Wells (Northern CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars

There are some things I just love about this new expansion pack. It's great to be able to easily choose the formal wear when our sims get married, I was getting really bored with that default wedding dress. As a result I've downloaded many beautiful wedding dresses from the fansites. And finally we're able to change appearance for the toddlers without needing a hacked mirror. Yay! Thanks Maxis. Also with this expansion we now get a twins cheat AND a food to increase the chance of twins. Maybe now there will be a slow down to the influx of all the twins threads on the BBS. Maybe not, but a girl can hope can't she?

The businesses are really neat in some ways but I'm not so much into the tycoon thing. It's very challenging and sometimes it seems frustrating to let your sim have a social life outside of their business. It is fun though.

It's a shame about the bugs emerging. They're so bad that they could potentially toast neighborhoods that gamers have worked so hard on. Here's just a few I've seen around-

-Sims getting "stuck" while at their community business. When the taxi arrives to take the sim home the sim won't get in the taxi. Instead the sim waves his or her arms in the air and yells like there's a problem. You have to wait for the first taxi to leave, then call for a taxi to take the sim to another community lot and then home. Supposedly this happens when you save on the business lot. I didn't save, just did some remodeling of the lot and this happened anyway. Thankfully I had not taken the sim to the business in his car, otherwise he could have been lost in some sort of limbo until we get a patch.

-Bakeries are really messed up. Dessert items disappear from the owner's inventory, making it difficult to restock. You can only make desserts during certain hours. In real life bakers start before sunrise so sim bakers should be able to also. And like the other review mentioned the sims who buy the desserts cannot eat them. What's the point of a bakery then?

-The new Mission furniture is beautiful but seems to have some problems. The loveseat shows as black and doesn't have any of the color or wood options like it's supposed to.

-Some business lots completely disappear like they never existed. Gone, poof. I'm not sure what's doing it but it could be related to problems with assigning uniforms. It hasn't happened to me yet (knock on wood) but I'm definitely not assigning any uniforms until more information's out. Hopefully this will be addressed in the future patch too.

I know there's a couple other bugs I'm forgetting at the moment. At least it appears that Maxis is right on top of this and will hopefully have a patch in just a short amount of time. I'd recommend if you love the sims like me go ahead and buy the game but watch out for the problems. Read the BBS over on the official site to stay updated on the bugs and the workarounds. Others may want to wait (hopefully just a week or two) until the patch comes out.

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60 of 66 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars More Fun and Variety with some more Frustration., May 8, 2006

By	James Chapman "WarriorForge" (Everett, WA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars

I'm still not tired of playing Sims 2 and it's in large part due to the immense replayability that the original game had plus the additions of these expansion packs. Open for Business adds a number of new things to a game that already has loads of replayability and variety.

Pros:

-New Items
-Ability to run a home business (despite the negatives below, I do have to give the sims team kudos for adding this ability).
-Ability to buy real estate and own community businesses.
-Ability to hire townies
-robots

Cons:

-Bugs! What does it take to get some clean, well tested software these days?!
-Running a Sims business is quite challenging. I play pc games as a way of resting and relaxing from a hard day's work. Running a sim business in Sims 2 at times feels more like work than play especially once the business starts having loads of customers coming in.
-The number of townies available to hire doesn't keep up with the business' needs.
-As with the other expansion packs, I felt the price was a bit high for what was added.
-The "own 5 successful businesses" lifetime aspiration. Running one is such more work than play, but 5? Any Sim of mine that comes up with that aspiration, gets their head stuck in the ReNu gadget for the purpose of getting a new one.
-As pointed out by others, sending someone to work a full day at a community business and then having them come home at the same time that they left is kind of wierd (of course we already had that with the original game and Nightlife with Sims going to community lots. University at least kept the Semester clock running).

Despite the fact that the Cons got more space than the Pros, above, I think this is, overall, a good addition to the Sims 2 lineup. If you want to fully enjoy the business operation side of this expansion, I would suggest creating a new neighborhood, associate it with custom University, Downtown and Business neighborhoods (that way you don't have to deal with all of those pre-made sims) and then run only one family. Keep the initial family members employed at the standard jobs that came with the original game, getting promotions and rewards and then build up a large income and pool of friends. Once that is accomplished, then you might get a younger member of the family to start a business with a good supply of capital and Townie friends to hire. That takes away the two most challenging/frustrating parts of running a sim business and allows you to concentrate on the fun aspects of the game. That's my two cents anyway. 4 stars for fun (the "work" as opposed to "play" frustration that running a business gives at times in the game led me to take a star away), 3 stars overall (Lost two stars due to bugs and price).