Legacy Collection is trash.

Most of y'all already knew that, but I can't discourage buying it enough. Wasted $30 technically $40 because I bought Sims 1 also. I'm so disappointed because I like having my games in Steam.

Long story short, it crashed SO frequently that it gradually became unplayable. I tried everything under the sun and removed all my CC. I've tried Vulkan, I've tried deleting the caches every time I launch it, I've tried different graphics settings, I've tried the empty standby list, I could go on and on and on. It got to the point that I couldn't even get my Sims to go to a community lot successfully without it crashing.

I installed Ultimate Collection with the fan patch & RPC launcher and immediately the crashing stopped and it runs like a dream. I put all my CC back to test it and it has no problems. It still does crash, but maybe 10% of the time if that.

Don't give EA money. 🏴‍☠️

Had some issues when it was first released but seems to be all good now, there might be issues with crashing on certain beefy graphics cards/Windows 11 but that might just be related to the tech itself or just the game's temperament in general, even with an updated re-release it still requires a little know-how and tinkering, but thankfully the modding community has been alive for years and has a multitude of fixes and tweaks and knowledge

(If you're installing mods make a folder called "Downloads" in your Documents>EA Games>The Sims 2 Legacy folder and drop them in, never rename gameplay mods or fixes as it might bork their functionality, but feel free to rename any other mods like objects or clothing etc. to remove spaces or special symbols or replace them with _ or - to speed up load times!!!)

I would strongly recommend you look into these before you play:

#1. https://github.com/Secondhand-Feraligatr/The-Sims-2-Legacy-Collection-Fixer/ - This adds in the missing IKEA stuff pack, missing songs, store content, etc. all in a handy installer

#2. https://github.com/LazyDuchess/TS2-Extender/releases - This comes with a bunch of fixes and is very essential tbh, as of last week it has been updated and bundled with a fix for a memory related bug that has been the bane of players for over 20 years, but has finally been fixed and greatly strengthened how much the game can handle
The installer in #1 comes with an old version of this but there are instructions in the readme file included letting you know how to update

#3. https://modthesims.info/d/691808/clean-fixed-maxis-neighborhoods-installer.html - This installs cleaned versions of the neighbourhoods to get rid of any corruption or bugs, to get these to show up if you've already played then you'll have to delete the neighbourhoods folder in Documents then launch the game in order to generate the cleaned versions

#4. https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=689467 - This is a handy list full of mods with fixes to prevent corruption, fixes for things that are broken, or just quality of life things you might find useful, would highly recommend grabbing things from the Essentials category at the very least

Optional #5. https://youtu.be/Y3TZV8FplcY?si=Ry4Jp4OXUjQcdkyr - This is a really well put together guide to modernise the look of the game and also fix a few issues, like changing the UI so that it fits your screen better, very highly recommend this if you don't mind spending a little while tweaking things

Optional #6. https://www.reddit.com/r/sims2help/wiki/index/ - This reddit has a well written and researched wiki with download links to the Stories spin off games and other resources you might find helpful

Hopefully this helps out any of you that pick this up, and if you do have questions feel free to ask me cause i've delved way too deep into how this all works 💀

It crashed when I click on Belladonna Cove for a fourth time!! Do not Install this "Game" play Sims 3 instead.