Improved Experience
I have thought the The Sims franchise was just like life...except a bit more boring and you seem to poop and pee a lot more often and at really inopportune times. Therefore, I didn't much like the series. I tried the original briefly and, well, hated it. I tried the sequel for a little more time...and didn't love it, either.
I have no idea what drove me to try the 3rd in the series...but I actually rather enjoy it.
The biggest stumbling block for me with The Sims was that there just wasn't much to do. I know "You can do anything you want" is a mantra, but in reality, it seems to be an excuse for piss-poor game design, and I cannot have that. Doing pointless bits of nothing for hours doesn't mean the pointless bits of nothing are enjoyable or fun. They are still boring and tedious...but really, really open-ended. EA finally addressed that well here and provide a constant string of small things to shoot for in pursuit of a large overall goal.
This actually makes the game seem to have, well, a point. Rather than a large, open-ended game where you don't really do a heck of a lot of anything --- you have mini-goals to achieve for which takes an unwieldy open-world monstrosity and makes it a fun little affair. For example, I sought to become the Leader of the Free World --- but in the midst of pursuing that overall goal, I had to do dozens of small tasks, not always directly related to the goal, but all meant to diversify the things my Sim could do. And just working hard isn't going to be enough to succeed in your career. You must actually have the necessary skills at the necessary level to actually hit the top of the pyramid.
If you haven't played The Sims in a few years, this one will definitely impress you as this is WORLDS better than the original. If you played it all along, the improvements still make this a much better game than prior versions. There truly is much more content this time than in prior incarnations. Dialogue is much more context-sensitive. You have far more abilities.
Not to say issues do not continue to exist. For me, the biggest annoyance was ghosts. I visited a mausoleum and had to deal with ghosts in my house until I moved. The problem is that the ghosts trash the joint. It became unbelievably irritating. They'd order pizza (no, I don't know how a ghost can order pizza), then leave the trash all over the house. I had to actually pay a maid to simply deal with the never-ending pile of garbage. And nothing gets rid of the damned things outside of moving. And moving isn't necessarily something you can easily pull off. And some of the Sim talents are a bit, well, dull. My sim became a good author --- which means he had to write books, which is possibly the most tedious talent out there.
The Karma Powers are a nice touch. You can do very nice things --- or unbelievably mean things. It's your call. And it is shockingly refreshing to drop a streak of bad luck on a random person. You don't have to know the person --- they just have to be in your line of sight.
In the end, this isn't a game one can easily review because the game never really ends. You can have your Sim die, but you will likely have kids and a spouse by then, so the game continues on. You can teach your kids to have talents and skills of their own.