I Picked up the game today.
In my impression, now you have to remember this is hte stripped down skeleton Base Game.. and in a few years we're going to have all sorts of custom content and expansion packs and who knows whatelse... but in my experience it's a very well held together base game. Obviously it's kind of a shock from having gigabytes of custom content to only be able to use what they give us, but, they basically stripped out the net results of Sims 2 and all it's expansion packs.. well nto all of it but the more sucessful ones, and consolidated it into a new system.
Personally, I *Do* like playing it. The skin tones do NOT Compare to the custom skintones of sims 2 but you have to think, when sims 2 first came out, THEY didn't ocmpare either. But I Think there's a lot of oppurtunity for people to advance what they want and I for one look forward to it.