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Check out Tazreen’s review of The Now & Then Century Manor, and find out how the store has once again astonished us, despite a few shortfalls.

As we know, new Store content releases at the first week of every month. The newest Store venue, The Now & Then Century Manor was released on May 1st, 2014. This new Store content is a remake of The Sims 2 Mansion & Garden Stuff and brought back the Second Empire roof pieces and the stairs! This set is also a part II of the Bohemian Garden which was released in March. The Bohemian Garden set focused on outdoor, gardening etc but this set is all about for building. This set doesn’t include all the objects from TS2 Mansion & Garden Stuff, only includes a few objects from there. There are no premium content but includes doors, windows etc. There are two new themes- rustic and elegant. The new objects does not however, adds new gameplay and new animations. This is a suitable set for simmers who like to build. The price of this set is now 1,900 SimPoints. It was on sale for 1,700 SimPoints until 5/6/14 . There are total 42 items and there are no Create-A-Sim assets. The objects are not available for individual purchase as it’s a venue.

THEME AND THE VENUE

I’m going to talk about the theme first. The theme is a remake of the Second Empire theme from TS2 Mansion & Garden Stuff. Second Empire theme was popular in the 18th century and is an architectural style. It’s a mix of earlier European style. This is how the venue looks but the Store added some spice into it. As you can see, there are two venue not one. The store created two venues; one is a venue full of broken objects and has a rustic touch into it and looks haunted and gloomy while the other one is elegant and the objects are not broken in this one. Just for example, here’s a real life gloomy and haunted looking house, focused on the Second Empire theme:

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This one looks nice and is nicer than the gloomy-looking one:

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This is how the Store designed the venue. One’s gloomy and the other one is elegant. Like the idea though! You can see in both of the pictures that there’s four-sided gambrel styled mansard roofs. To say the truth, this venue focuses on building and the mansion aspects.

THE VENUE

The Then Century Manor

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This is the first time that the Store created two venues in one whole set! Also there are same objects in two different forms – Gloomy and Elegant. The Then Century Manor is a 30×40 lot (residential) This venue is completely perfect and there are no broken stuff in here. The price of the venue in-game is 248,457 Simoleons! Yeah, that’s expensive. There is a butterfly fog emitter effect in the lawn. There are 2 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. Here are some screenshots:

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The Now Century Manor

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The Now Century Manor is the second venue and is 40×30 residential lot, quite different from the other manor’s lot size. This one has the same objects like the other one. The only difference is that the objects are kinda broken and has a rusty look. The price of the lot in-game is 175,714 Simoleons. The price is less and cheaper than the other one. This is most probably because the objects here have the dark and rustic touch. There are also lots of fog emitters for bugs and fogs!

Here are all the fog emitters I found on The Now Century Manor so far:

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Here are the screenshots of the venue:

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MANSARD ROOF KIT

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There are 7 mansard roof pieces. All the pieces are used for decorating your roof and they are available in different shapes and corners. I think this is the first time I’m obsessed with roof pieces in the game. They are quite easy to use. I find them easier to put them on the edge instead of the whole roof. Here are all of the roof pieces with their prices and the tile space they occupy is included:

 

MANSARD STAIRS

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There are new stairs included with this venue. You must have seen these in The Sims 2 Mansion & Garden Stuff. There’s no new animations included with these stairs which quite disappointed because animations would have been appreciated for these beautiful- looking stairs. Keep in mind that while placing the stairs, you have to put the railings separately and as you see on the picture above, you can increase the length of the stairs. This doesn’t work like the L-shaped stairs as you’ve seen in the Prism Art Studio venue. The L-shaped stairs had all the railings and everything properly arranged while in this one, you have to arrange it yourself. There’s a bug with these stairs, once you uninstall the Prism Art Studio the stairs may become unusable. Here are the three types of stairs:

This is how it looks like when you join them all together:
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But there’s a bug with these stairs which I found quite annoying. Notice how the yellow carpet mixes with the blue one? I tried with every colours but didn’t work.
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Press alt, move it away but not too much. So here’s what I did:
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BUILD/BUY MODE OBJECTS
As always, new buy/build mode objects are included. Almost all of the objects are used for building and most of them are decor stuff too. There’s a new dead hedge and you can place it diagonally. There are same objects in two different forms. One consists of broken objects and the other one consists of “un-broken” objects. I expected L-shaped stairs to be in the venue but unfortunately, there are no L-shaped stairs this time. If you look closely at the broken objects, you’ll see some objects, such as the doors, look almost real (just like a real broken door!) This impressed me. However, the mansard stairs are quite disappointing because of the bug I mentioned earlier. And did I mention that spider webs are included?! Best thing for creating a haunted house. There’s a Forgotten Ironwork Fence which is a replica of the one from The Sims 1:
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Found this while playing The Sims 1 in Old Town. I love when we get the old stuff back from older Sims series!
Here are all the buy mode objects:

Examples

Just like always, I’ve done something just to show how the objects look outside the venue. Here’s a house I built which looks bright and clean outside but the inside looks… kinda rustic
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OVERALL REVIEW

I think the price is okay this time. There are total 40 objects! Plus there’s a venue actually two venues! So 40 objects + two venues= 1900 SimPoints makes pretty much sense. I’m so glad the price wasn’t 2000 SimPoints and it wouldn’t be fair at all if it was 2000 SP because there is no PC this time. All right, enough of the ranting; I love the venue. The fact that the Store created two venues in two different forms just made me a bit surprised. We never got two venues in one single set and it’s so perfect. I’ve always wanted broken windows, doors and spiders webs in The Sims 3. It was clever and a creative move, Store.  The theme? YES. I love it. Like I’ve said, I always love things from the older Sims series. I’m really not a fan of the European and Second Empire theme but seeing this content come to life in The Sims 3 made me like it. So, no complaints here. Also, the roof pieces are amazing. I’m using these almost everyday. Plus It’s so much fun to join them and design them in your own way, you know. The Buy/Build Mode objects are okay but the stair bug is quite annoying, other than that It’s not bad. Broken objects? Not bad at all. The fact that they included the Forgotten Ironwork Fence from The Sims 1 cheered me up a bit and It looks much better than the one in TS1 because of the graphics. I’m looking forward to build a house filled with broken objects. To say the truth everyone, at first I thought I was not going to like the venue and wasn’t pleased at all (before it was released) but I was wrong. I like all the things overall. There are tons and tons of Buy/Build mode objects. No premium content this time but I’m actually quite happy. The Store astonished us (in a good way) once again.