History YMMV / TheSims2

** Nervous Subject. He might be a mean, antisocial slob with no sense of humour, but he was neglected as a child and used by his 'adoptive parents', the Beakers, who are also very mean, for experiments. He's a Family Sim, and is a far more capable babysitter than the nannies the game provides (though that may say more about [[GameBreakingBug the nannies]] than Nervous Subject himself).

* SugarWiki/MostWonderfulSound: When a sim gets boosted up to platinum in their aspiration meter, you'll get a satisfying little 'woowoowoowoo' that's the audio equivalent of pure ecstacy. It really gives you the feeling that you're making your sim happy.

* PolishedPort: The Mac version was also given a complete overhaul recently by being ported to the modern Mac OS X native Intel x64 architecture, given support for newer graphics cards, and even added 4K resolution support. However it only include approximately 3/4 of the expansion packs and stuff packs (it lacks two major expansion packs Freetime and Apartment Life).

** Marsha Bruenig, the child NPC who occassionally comes home from school alongside one of your child sims. Expect to get phone calls from her every subsequent day, and it will never, ever stop. Even once your child sim has moved on and aged into teenager, adult, elder,... little Marsha will still call you, asking if you're still friends.

** Not only the cow mascots (which intended as the "evil" mascot) but heck, the mascots, the cheerleaders, and the coach (which influences your Sim to workout), all qualify because their apparent lack of recognization of personal space in the college area. They'll happily goes in to not only your dorm, but your personal college home (if you manage to gain one or play a Sim already living in one) to not only do their business but also mess up with your things. Thankfully updates allow you to lock your doors, limiting access to only your Sim or your household.

** Vidcund Curious might also have been the unfavourite to his brothers. Compared to Pascal and Lazlo, Vidcund was never helped with his homework by his parents, and his girlfriend dumped him for Loki Beaker, which according to his memories is implied to be because of a bladder accident.

* InternetBackdraft: The ''Ultimate Collection'' offer created quite a controversy for several reasons:
** The game still shipped with the universally despised [[CopyProtection SecuROM]] UsefulNotes/{{DRM}}, which no longer worked on Windows 10 and still-supported older versions. A later update removed it, albeit at the cost of requiring Origin to run the game; cracked repacks without [=SecuROM=] nor Origin verification are available if you know where to look. Many suspected the offer was done to get ''Sims 2'' diehards to sign up for Origin.
** Many users were provided broken serial keys.
** The event was not promoted properly, being spread only by word of mouth instead of through EA's On the House offers.
** The Macintosh version was excluded from the offer; the key could be entered in the Mac version of Origin, but the game could only be downloaded when logged into the Windows version. Meanwhile, Aspyr (the company that produced the Mac ports) made available ''The Sims 2 Super Collection'' on the Mac App Store a few days after the Origin offer ended, which included several performance and bug fix updates (including Intel Mac compatibility, support for modern graphics hardware and native 4K resolution) unique to Mac; however, this one costed money and still excluded the expansion packs after ''Bon Voyage'' that were never ported to Mac.
** The Windows version, meanwhile, was stuck with an engine that was last updated in 2008, which resulted in incompatibilites with modern hardware leading to bugs like "black box shadows" (which can be rectified by reducing shadow quality, disabling shadows or using a mod), being locked out of the graphics option screen, [[NightmareFuel sims looking like they had their face literally punched into their skull]] or the game plainly refusing to start.

** The Free Time expansion pack does allow an option to age up child and teen {{NPC}}s, allowing them to grow up when your sims do. Aging Marsha will at least get rid of the odd 'never-aging child who obsessively stalks my household' problem. At least then she'll then be simply more of a clingy friend rather than a creepy forever-child Neverland nightmare. If you want to go a step further than that though, once she's a teen, send her to college on a lot without a phone. [[CoolAndUnusualPunishment Now she can't call anybody anymore.]]

* PolygonCeiling: {{Averted}} with the series' transition from 3D sims on [[IsometricProjection isometric 2D backgrounds]] to fully 3D, although not only that, but The Sims 2 transforms the game from what once a mere virtual dollhouse with simplistic interaction and "needs" to a quite immersive life sim with many unique gameplay mechanics.

** Starting from Free Time, Mr. Humble will give you a new computer. Always nice - but he does this for ''every family'' you create. Needless to say, mods were instantly created to disable this since the very high end computer messes up "rags to riches" scenarios.

* MostWonderfulSound: When a sim gets boosted up to platinum in their aspiration meter, you'll get a satisfying little 'woowoowoowoo' that's the audio equivalent of pure ecstacy. It really gives you the feeling that you're making your sim happy.

* JerkassHasAPoint: General Buzz Grunt's [[FantasticRacism hatred]] of aliens and the Smith family in particular is portrayed negatively, but the fact is that they are [[AlienAbduction abducting]] Sims and [[FaceFullOfAlienWingWong implanting]] alien babies in the [[MrSeahorse males]], which is a [[{{Understatement}} bit]] unethical, and Pollination Technician 9 Smith is a retired [[MedicalRapeAndImpregnate Pollinator]] himself and has done quite a few impregnations on male Sims.

** Meadow Thayer is a teenage townie NPC from Pleasantview (& any custom neighborhoods made by the player). Due to her good looks, better-than-average clothing sense, and fairly high amount of 'Nice' personality points, she is a frequent target for fulfilling a controllable teenage sim's "First Kiss" want, and other romantic wants by teenage sims. This leads to an in-joke amongst Sims forum communities that she's the town hussy, as she's so eager towards any teenage boy's advances. It's paradoxical however, since Meadow's aspiration is Family, not Romance, and many other players treat her as such, usually sending her to college then marrying her into a family afterwards. Thus the division is strong amongst players when it comes to her.

** Goopy Gilscarbo is one of the default Townies ([[NonPlayerCharacter NPCs]]) in Pleasantview & custom neighborhoods. The name Goopy, his memorable facial features and his hilarious fashion sense (or lack thereof) definitely have caused him to stand out. 'The Goopster', as players sometimes call him, is such an (in)famous darkhorse among fans of The Sims that a Sims 3 dish [[MemeAcknowledgment was named after him]], the Goopy Carbonara.

** Kaylynn Langerak was an NPC with a minor story role in ''The Sims 2'', but it made her popular enough to merit a promotion to playable character with her own extended family in ''The Sims 3''. Despite definitely being a darkhorse, she was pushed a little, since she wasn't exactly a subtle figure in Sims 2's Pleasantview, being tangled up with both the Lothario & Pleasant households through love affairs. As far as [[NonPlayerCharacter NPCs]] go, Kaylynn is the most remarkable, story-driven one.

** The Free Time expansion pack does allow an option to age up child & teen {{NPC}}s, allowing them to grow up when your sims do. Aging Marsha will at least get rid of the odd 'never-aging child who obsessively stalks my household' problem. At least then she'll then be simply more of a clingy friend rather than a creepy forever-child Neverland nightmare. If you want to go a step further than that though, once she's a teen, send her to college on a lot without a phone. [[CoolAndUnusualPunishment Now she can't call anybody anymore.]]

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny: Players of posterior games, mainly The Sims 3, may complain about The Sims 2 limitations, like the lack of customization of body types or the interactions restricted to the lot you are on. Besides that, The Sims 2 was hugely popular in the early-mid 2000's (there's people still playing it, though) and is the most inovative title in the franchise so far, considering it was the game that introduced aging, genetics and family trees.

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny: Players of posterior games, mainly The Sims 3, may complain about The Sims 2 limitations, like the lack of customization of body types or the interactions restricted to the lot you are on. Besides that, The Sims 2 was the most inovative title in the franchise so far, considering it was the game that introduced aging, genetics and family trees.

** Lilith Pleasant and Ripp Grunt, the famous [[TheUnfavourite unfavorites]]. Same for Joe [=MacDuff=], MuggleBornOfMages.

** Is Bella Goth a gold digger who simply married Mortimer for the money? A fair share of Simmers believe this (it doesn't help she's Romance aspiration in The Sims 2...), while Bella fans heavily disagree. The former camp sometimes even goes as far as to say Bella wasn't abducted by aliens at all, rather she left the Goth family and moved to Strangetown herself. That's right; Between an alien abduction and a woman fleeing her family, the latter is considered the more outlandish theory in the Sims 2 story. Talk about bizarro. Anyway, Bella's true nature definitely creates a bit of a rift between players and how they perceive the pre-made sims.

* UnfortunateImplications: The spell "Compello Acceptus" (Available for witches and warlocks in the Apartment Life expansion pack) will force the target to accept the next five social interactions made by the Sim who casted it, up to and including [[DateRape WooHoo]]. And this is presented as a ''good'' spell, not an evil one.

* PolishedPort: The Mac version was also given a complete overhaul recently by being ported to the modern Mac OS X native Intel x64 architecture, given support for newer graphics cards, and even added 4K resolution support. It also comes bundled with every single expansion pack released to date, for a reasonable price of US$29.99. Windows users ''may'' get 4K resolution only by fan mods and fan hacks, and even then on certain configurations the game has graphical glitches (most commonly the black box shadows which can only be rectified by disabling Sim shadows altogether) due to having only legacy support for modern renders.

** The Ottomas premade family, which, if played, causes game-breaking bug that extend to corrupt the neighborhood they was in to the point that the fix is to either remove the neighborhood or to reinstall the game. Thankfully it can be removed from the family bin.

* MostAnnoyingSound: Can anyone say '''salsa'''? That's right, turn on a random stereo and the first thing you'll hear will always be the Salsa music. They aren't bad songs per se, but you'll get really, really sick of it after a while.

** Back from Sims 1 with a vengeance is the carpool's irritating honking. It will not stop going "HONK HONK" until your sim gets in. The helicopter carpool doesn't have this issue, but for a share of players the helicopter is a big annoyance on its own.

* PolishedPort: Not only was the Mac version not discontinued like the Windows version was, it was also given a complete overhaul recently by being ported to the modern Mac OS X native Intel x64 architecture, given support for newer graphics cards, and even added 4K resolution support. It also comes bundled with every single expansion pack released to date, for a reasonable price of US$29.99. Windows users ''may'' get 4K resolution only by fan mods and fan hacks, and even then on certain configurations the game has graphical glitches (most commonly the black box shadows which can only be rectified by disabling Sim shadows altogether) due to having only legacy support for modern renders.

* PolygonCeiling: {{Averted}} with the series' transition from 3D sims on [[IsometricProjection isometric 2D backgrounds]] to fully 3D, although the many new feature helps.

* PolishedPort: Not only was the Mac version not discontinued like the Windows version was, it was also given a complete overhaul recently by being ported to the modern Mac OS X native Intel x64 architecture, given support for newer graphics cards, and even added 4K resolution support. It also comes bundled with every single expansion pack released to date, for a reasonable price of US$29.99. Windows users ''may'' get 4K resolution only by manually hacking about two dozen configuration files by hand, and even then the game has graphical glitches due to having no support for modern cards.
* PolygonCeiling: Generally considered to be {{Averted}} with the series' transition from 3D sims on [[IsometricProjection isometric 2D backgrounds]] to fully 3D.

** Is Bella Goth a gold digger who simply married Mortimer for the money? A fair share of Simmers believe this (it doesn't help she's Romance aspiration in The Sims 2...), while Bella fans heavily disagree. The former camp sometimes even goes as far as to say Bella wasn't abducted by aliens at all, rather she left the Goth family and moved to Strangetown herself. That's right; Between an alien abduction and a woman fleeing her family, the latter is considered the more outlandish theory in the Sims 2 story. Talk about bizarro. Anyway, Bella's true nature definitely creates a bit of a [[BaseBreaker rift]] between players and how they perceive the pre-made sims.

** The Newsons tend to receive more attention from sim players than every other sim bin pre-made household due to their unique and rather heart-wrenching situation; a group of orphans led by two teens after their adoptive parents died.