User Reviews (1 - 11 of 68)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

The expansion packs keep getting better!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 38 / 77
Date: February 28, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Your Sims Get Down To Business...

Now your Sims can create their own businesses. They can design their own clothing boutique, beauty salon, florist, high-end electronics shop, bustling restaurant chain, or virtually any other type of business. Hire your staff as the business grows and put talented Sims to work making toys, running the register, crafting floral bouquets, giving sales pitches, or manufacturing robots. But watch out for slacker employees and be prepared to fire them on the spot. From clever tinkerer to master craftsman, develop your Sim's talents to best suit your business needs. Will they build a thriving business empire or become eccentric entrepreneurs designing the next big thing?

*Create Thriving Businesses:
Open up shops selling just about anything from clothing, electronics, and toys to flowers, baked goods, robots and more. Customize any business to your choosing by tailoring the store theme, layout and prices. Hire employees with high sales skills and employ independent managers to run things while your Sim is away. Watch as your business grows from a mom and pop shop into a booming empire.

*Be The Boss:
Train employees, promote the best, and fire the rest. Cater to different customers including browsers and loyal shoppers. Dress your Sims in outrageous mascot outfits that resemble Knights, Ninjas, Gorillas, and more. Promote your best employees, but beware of slacker workers and be prepared to lay them off without hesitation!


*Learn The Tricks Of The Trade:
Customer is king. Develop your Sims' sales skills and determine if your employees should use a hard sell or drop the price to close the deal. Win the Best-of-the-Best Award to establish your Sim's business rep. Will your Sim's business make more money selling low quality products at basement rates or luxurious goods at scale-tipping prices?


*Turn Talents Into Cash:
Arrange flowers, make toys, and create robots to catch thieves at home or clean up the shop. Develop master-skilled Sims to make the most prized and expensive goods. Settle for an entry-level crafter and churn out pet bricks or faulty toy robots. Just bring home the bacon any way you can!


*More Than 125 New Items:
Stock up on essentials for your Sims' business, including display cases, a beauty salon chair, a toy workbench, a floral station, cash registers, and more. Complete your shop atmosphere with awnings and elevators for easy store navigation, or matching uniforms for all employees. With all the new items, there will never be another dull day building a business!


Highly recommended to all! Remember, you must have The Sims 2 before getting this expansion pack.

Adds to the Sims experience while fixing pesky Night Life bugs

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 31 / 39
Date: March 02, 2006
Author: Amazon User

One of my biggest concerns regarding Open for Business was that it would drag down loading times and exacerbate the bugs I've been seeing since Night Life came out--no more work uniforms, Sims arriving home from work (sometimes even getting promoted) and not getting money for it, townies getting stuck on my property and unable to move...

I've had the game one day so far, and I'm happy to say that those particular problems have been done away with. Not only that, but the installation process and loading times are surprisingly quick and painless for such a vast expansion pack.

Game performance on the large business lots, I've found, is a tad bit less jumpy than it is on the large Night Life lots: Fewer hangups when you rotate the camera, fewer split-second paused screens. The smaller business lots run almost like a normal house-lot.

The expansion pack itself is every bit as fun and addictive than the others, if not more so. Your Sims now have the option of buying an already-established business, starting one from home, or purchasing an all-purpose starter lot to make the business of their choice. Running a business itself is challenging enough to be fun, but not so hard that you feel overwhelmed by all the duties you have and 'little things' that you, as manager, have to keep a constant eye on.

pretty good fun

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 9 / 14
Date: March 04, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I've had the sims open for business for two days now... went to pick up a copy the moment it came out, and it was for $24 bucks! Anyhow, the game takes a while load, but overall, rarely any bugs. I tried to run 2 business in one lot, resturant and toy/flower shop. And let me tell you something, it was almost impossible with 8 employees! stick with one shop that sells one service. also, employees tend to need to take breaks A LOT. it was almost impossible to keep my employees happy when you have a busy shop, especially a resturant, because once you're opened for businness, a lot of sims come in and you really dont have time for them to breaks. Also, the host/hostess are annoying because they never do their job and they're on the phone all the time. if you were to play a resturant, have your own sim to be the host/hostess instead of NPC. i had to use one of my hacked objects that max out all of their needs in order to satisfy the demand.
some of the new items are pretty cool, overall its pretty fun.

SIMS!!!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: March 04, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I love the Sims 2 & all the Expansion Packs so much! The only thing that sucks about this new game was the process I went through to order it. First, the item arrived 4 days after it was released (Barnes and Noble has never been so late). Second, I preordered the item expecting the exclusive mascot and life-sized sculpture; it did not come, it wasn't included in the shipping notification as your web order form assured me that it would be, and after talking on the phone with customer service, I learned that I won't ever get it. I am so disappointed in Amazon.com. I could have pre ordered the game from EA or B&N and could have received the same exclusive offer, and believe that I wouldn't be disappointed. I will never pre-order from this company again and suggest buyers beware when they pre-order from Amazon also.

Great fun except for some major bugs

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 253 / 272
Date: March 05, 2006
Author: Amazon User

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.

Much better than the last expansion pack

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 10
Date: March 05, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I pre-ordered this game and used the free shipping and I seriously got it the next day after it's release from Amazon. Lot's of fun, installing was nice and fast, there are few minor glitches here and there but not as bad as Nightlife. There are always glitches but I'm sure a patch will be offered on the Sims site for that.
There is a lot of new stuff and it takes time how to figure out to run the biz and all but that's a good thing because I want to take my time with this game and not try to master it in 2 hours and feel it was a waste of money.
I think it's a really fun expansion pack and I really like that it doesn't freeze up on me when there are to many people on a lot like Nightllife did all the time.
It's fun and I think it's worth to have if you enjoy the Sims.

Its good, but there are some bugs...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 13
Date: March 06, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I was amped like hell to get this game, and I am happy, but there are some bugs.

Like the person before me said, the Mission furniture will decieve you, but I haven't really played it hard-core yet.

Another is when you want the new woosh-hair for the women, and when you tranisition to the teenager, its braids, but back to the adult, its also braids. PROBLEM!

BUT don't let the bugs keep you from buying the game. I'm sure the Maxis team will conjure up a patch and all will be good :)

In this game, you can make your own business, whether it be a bakery, a salon, a clothing boutique, a cafe, a restaurant, an electronics store --ANYTHING. You can even sell the stuff from Buy mode, but if your Sim is tres talented, have them make stuff and sell it.

Really, this is a good game, lots of new stuff, and its a whole new experience. I can't wait for the new expansion!

Good expansion despite insane bugs

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 10
Date: March 06, 2006
Author: Amazon User

First of all, this expansion pack is great, it adds a lot of nice features, the obdivious ones like starting businesses and all the robots. Though they are pretty easy to make piles of money with little effort anyone who plays the sims knows you can make it harder by doing things like trying to run the business with you as the only employee and such. But running a business in any sensiable way makes it just incredably easy to make piles of money. Despite that it's still pretty fun, since you can do all sorts of businesses.

Also, there are a lot of bugs, they do get pretty annoying but sooner or later they will make a patch fixing all these bugs. If you can't deal with bugs just wait for the patch and everything will be fine.

New and Exciting Possibilities

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 16 / 17
Date: March 07, 2006
Author: Amazon User

While this game is sort of light on the new objects, it comes through big-time in game-play. There are great new interactions you learn through rising through the entrepreneurial ranks in your business, valuable new options to perk people up, give motivational speeches and network. And it blows the community lot aspect of the game wide-open, really making it interactive and fun... the world of business is wide open: they didn't just limit us to 3 types of businesses. Now you can sell a bunch of stuff you make, pretty much anything in the catalog, run clothing shops, hair salons, and markets, and then build admission based businesses where sims pay an hourly fee to be on your lot and partake in the opportunites for fun and social interaction.

They also added a couple of excellent architectural features: half floors and elevators. I wouldn't mind if they made an entire pack of architectural stuff.

Overall, I think an excellent expansion pack.

Another Great Addition To The Sims

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 13 / 14
Date: March 07, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I can honestly say that I love this new expansion pack. It is so nice to be able to leave for work and actually see what your Sim is doing with their days. I have yet to experience any of the bugs that have been talked about here, but the one thing I found that I do not like is that, like in the other expansion packs, when you come back from downtown, it is the same time as when you left. So, if you go to your business at 9 a.m. and stay downtown working until 9 p.m., you are obviously exhausted, hungry, smelly......but when you get back home, it is still only 9 a.m. and your day is shot to hell. I have yet to have a family with this expansion pack, but I do not see how I will be to handle a business and a family with this game.

With all that said, I definitely suggest buying this!

Review Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next 

Actions