• Best Mods For Sims 4 Realistic Gameplay
• The Sims 4 Best Mods For Realistic Gameplay
• The Best Realistic Mods For Sims 4
• Best Realistic Mods For Sims 4 Mods

We play EA’s Sims 4 to experience a detailed simulation of human life.

1. Nov 12, 2020 Top 15 Best Sims 4 Mods For Realistic Gameplay Updated: 12 Nov 2020 9:02 pm Create a complex and rich worlds with these mods by adding realism that was always meant to be there!
2. Simply put, mods add features or can change the functions in the game. The best part is that mods are created by the players, who actually play and enjoy the game. I personally think The Sims 4 wouldn’t be as successful as it is without mods and custom content but especially mods. Mods are what give the game so much depth and possibilities.

Conclusion: Best Sims 4 Mods (Resources) & CC These are some of the most common and popular mods used by people worldwide if you are looking to mod the sims 3 or 4. Although the game has spent more than five years since its release, millions of players enjoy this game due to add-ons and mods.

It’s fun to watch the wacky situations our sim counterparts get themselves into… or the situations we force onto them for our amusement.

But The Sims contrasts substantially with human life in its cartoonish nature. Everything is funny, absurd, and sims just take everything as lightly as possible. For them, life is simple.

Well not anymore! Thanks to the tireless work of some amazing modders, we can re-introduce some of the more nuanced aspects of human life into the game, increasing the simulation’s complexity and often making everything just a little bit darker, grittier… more real.

For anyone interested in making their Sims experience as real as it can be, here are the some awesome mods for increased realism.

20. Realistic Reactions

Have you ever been cheated on?

Hopefully not, but let me tell you it isn’t chill.

For this reason I always found it unrealistic that sims would just get angry at their cheating spouse for a little bit before returning to normal, at least whenever infidelity was actually discovered.

Creator Scaldwellhu agrees. And they made a mod to make cheating as big a deal as it usually is in real life.

Now couples will be devastated by the event, and it’ll take a lot of work to get things back in order. Even the kids will feel upset when their parents are in this situation!

19. Miscarriage Chance

Pregnancy is a beautiful process. But sometimes there are complications, and that’s just a fact of life.

This mod by LittleMsSam introduces a slight chance that one morning, a pregnant Sim may wake up with cramps and abdominal pain, prompting them to go to the hospital.

While sometimes they’ll come back with a healthy baby and make everyone in the household relieved, more often than not they’ll return with dark news despite the doctor’s best efforts.

It’s sad, it’s dark, and it’s incredibly realistic.

Now on the flip side, if you want pregnancy custom content that’s a bit more light-hearted take a peek at our pregnancy mods list. Not as much realism, but a whole lotta fun in there.

18. Pregnancy Overhaul Mod

Creator LittleMsSam doesn’t just want to put a damper on your reproductive fun.

She just strives for realism, which we can find in her Pregnancy Overhaul Mod.

Not only does it replace the absurd pregnant belly size found in vanilla for something more anatomically correct, but it removes the exaggerated pregnant walking animation as well.

It also lets expecting sims continue practicing yoga, swimming, and other such activities up to the beginning of their third trimester, as is normal for would-be-moms in real life(which I had to Google to confirm, I mean I’ve never been pregnant so…)

17. Risky Woohoo & Try For Baby Chances

Normally you can actively choose whether you want a sim to have safe Woohoo with a partner, or outright try for a baby and get them pregnant.

But that’s not quite how it works in real life.

Modder PolarBearSims came up with some tweaks to make the Woohoo experience more immersive by replacing it with Risky Woohoo, and implementing a complex fertility system affecting all sims.

Depending on their fertility levels, location of the encounter, and some other factors, some sims will have more of a chance of becoming pregnant accidentally than others. Sims may also become infertile, requiring them to get fertility treatments to actually get pregnant. If that isn’t real, I don’t know what is.

16. More Best Friends

I’ve never been able to give a definitive answer when someone asks who my best friend is.

I would never be able to pick just one. They’re all key parts of my life!

Thanks to creator LittleMsSam, your sims won’t have to pick just one either.

Now the “become best friends” interaction will have a 30-minute cooldown rather than a one-time use, allowing you to create inseparable squads of Sim besties.

15. SNB – Sim National Bank

The way money and bills work in The Sims 4 is pretty basic for a game made for simulating human life.

Sim National Bank by SimRealist is an in-depth mod that endeavors to overhaul the financial system in TS4, letting sims manage bank accounts, take out loans, pay their bills individually, and so on.

Quite honestly, this is one of the most realism-enhancing mods I’ve ever seen.

But only the most hardcore players will actually have fun introducing accounting into their sim lives, which is why I don’t place it higher in this ranking.

But let it be known, this mod is exceptionally realistic.

14. Personality Please!

Sims are notoriously less complicated than humans. They take life one day at a time and often choose what feels right in the moment, rather than what makes sense in the long run.

Personality Please! by PolarBearSims is a mostly romance-centric rework that makes Sims considerably less promiscuous by making traits, aspirations, and past events greatly affect their relationships with other sims.

Now they’ll actually need to be compatible if you want them to get down and dirty.

Other than that, the mod also gives cats and dogs more varied personalities, and sims can learn traits and choose careers just from having deep conversations with others. How cool!

13. Automatic Beards

Ever since I turned 14 years old, my ever-growing beard has been an important part of my life.

Every morning I decide whether or not to shave, and the choice has important ramifications on how my life plays out. The same should be true of our digital friends.

This mod makes sim beards grow automatically over time, requiring constant shaving. Unless you want your sim to become Gandalf the Grey, that is.

12. SimDa Dating App

Dating and finding partners is astoundingly easy in Sims 4 compared to real life. Which is why we needed dating apps, and they don’t – until now.

The SimDa Dating App by LittleMsSam works a lot like a streamlined version of Tinder, allowing your sims to schedule meetings, set up blind dates, or simply call somebody over for a one night stand.

Each of these interactions has its own interesting features and possibilities.

You can start relationships, have some fun… and even get someone pregnant by accident. Just like real life!

11. The Explore Mod

While there’s a lot of places to visit and activities to enjoy in The Sims 4, there’s always room for some improvement.

And more autonomy is always good.

The Explore Mod by KawaiiStacie lets your Sims go out and explore the world autonomously, either alone or with friends.

They’ll have adventures, gain skills, meet people, and maybe even change their world view!

This mod adds several entertaining activities like gambling, getting your nails done, doing temporary work for an extra buck, and even going out to get takeout if you’re too lazy to cook. All very realistic and very immersive.

10. Height Slider

One of the most frustrating and unrealistic things in the game is how every sim is exactly the same height as others of the same age group.

Well thanks to this mod by creator Luumia, you’ll be able to give your sims different heights through a slider in CAS.

Everything else will, of course, scale proportionately to height.

As a bonus, Luumia included a hip shape slider and neck length variation for even more Sim variety.

9. Extreme Violence

The world is a very violent place, and even peaceful suburban areas like see their fair share of violence from time to time.

Extreme Violence by Sacrificial Mods adds the possibility for wrongdoing sims to attack others in a wide variety of ways.

Shooting them with machine guns, cracking their necks, chopping them up with a machete, and even crushing their skulls by sitting on them are only some examples.

I mean, I guess it’s realistic?

Not only does it add the acts in themselves, but a bunch of added functionality revolving around them, like the possibility for sims to acquire the Serial Killer trait, or paying a gang to off someone your Sim doesn’t like. Yikes!

8. Meaningful Stories

Sims don’t take life too seriously, and they’re incredibly fickle.

They may be completely devastated by the death of their pet one moment, then ecstatic because they watched a good movie the next with no in-between.

This mod by Roburky reworks the mood and emotion systems to make them more nuanced and realistic.

A depressed sim will need time and help from their friends to get out of a rut, and something like a first kiss will make them feel happy like never before.

Transitions between emotions also take time, and there are transitional periods when they’re feeling a bit of everything.

7. Passionate Romance

The romance system in vanilla TS4 is pretty basic.

You can flirt, go on dates, Woohoo and get married, but it never really feels like a relationship.

Passionate Romance by Sacrificial Mods improved this greatly by adding several new interactions like snuggling, hugging romantically, taking a romantic selfie, and even grabbing each other’s butts like they used to in TS2.

6. After School Activities

Going to school has never been just about learning history or science.

It’s also about making friends, acquiring skills, and finding yourself.

With this add-on by amazing creator KawaiiStacie you can add all these things. It endeavors to flesh-out educational experiences by adding over 30 after-school programs for children and teens.

Examples include the Anime Club, the Yoga Club, band, and basketball.

Sims partaking in these activities will learn skills, make friends, gain motives, and may even apply for scholarships depending on their performance throughout their school life.

5. Wicked Whims (NSFW)

If there’s something humans never get tired of, it’s sex. We love it, and so should our Sims if we’re to have a realistic experience in-game.

Wicked Whims goes a long way to develop everything sex-related in TS4, from turning the Woohoo interaction incredibly graphic to giving female Sims a fully-functional menstrual cycle complete with mood swings, cramps, varying fertility and a need for pads and tampons.

This one goes deep.

It even introduces contagious STDs! Now if that isn’t seriously realistic, I really don’t know what is.

4. Basemental Drugs

Alcohol and other drugs have been a reality of life since time immemorial, and that’s not about to change anytime soon.

Basemental Drugs endeavors to introduce this reality of human life into TS4. It lets your sim pals acquire, consume, and sell alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, and many other mind-altering substances.

Sims engaging in these activities may become addicted, have problems with the law, get arrested, and even go to rehab… and that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

It’s not pretty, but it is the real world.

3. Basemental Gangs

If you like Basemental Drugs, the Basemental Gangs expansion is sure to pique your interest.

It fleshes out the entire drug dealing aspect of the mod, allowing you to create a criminal empire and become the leader of one of four gangs.

Again, dark but quite brutally realistic.

You’ll have underlings, earn loads of blood money, and there’s even an entire skill system to become a better thug. It may not be wholesome, but it sure as hell is realistic.

If you’ve ever wanted a little more GTA in your Sims experience, this mod is the ultimate crossover.

2. Life’s Tragedies

As you may have realized by now, not everything is glitter and candy.

There are tragic and difficult moments in everyone’s lives. And they can arrive when you least expect them.

Life’s Tragedies by Sacrificial Mods adds a wide variety of possible tragedies that may befall your Sim or NPCs close to them. Like randomly being run over by a car, getting jumped by a homicidal maniac, or even contracting a life-threatening disease they’ll need surgery to overcome.

It may seem a bit intense, but don’t worry. You can control how often these tragedies happen, so you can either turn your Sim’s life into a horror story or just inject a tiny bit of dark realism into your game.

This will be absolutely hilarious, devastatingly upsetting, or some kind of in-between, depending what you’re looking for.

Just note the download page includes a lot of other mods from this creator, so look towards the lower part of the screen for their “Life’s Tragedies” download file. It does get updated from time-to-time so if you want the absolute newest version definitely grab it from the link above.

1. Slice of Life

Easily the most comprehensive and complete realism overhaul for The Sims 4 is Slice of Life by KawaiiStacie.

It’s an extensive mod that touches almost every aspect of life in the game.

Your sims get visible emotions, recurring memories of past events that’ll affect their moods, a complex fitness system, and reactions to their own appearance. Among many other things!

One of the most impressive features of the mod is giving every single sim a personality based on the Myers-Briggs 16 personalities test, which affects the way they behave and interact with other sims to a great extent.

It also adds many features we’ve already seen in previous mods such as functional alcohol, serious sickness, and a complex menstrual cycle, all in a single polished CC pack affecting every sim in your world, including NPCs.

This is truly the ultimate realism mod for The Sims 4, hands down.

If you need a one-stop shop realism mod then give this a try before anything else. You’ll be surprised how much it offers.

Despite enjoying great popularity and still getting new content packs, The Sims 4 has been out for almost six years now.

And the graphics have begun to show their age despite the game’s cartoonish style slowing the process(and everyone waiting for Sims 5 details).

Luckily, Sims lovers in the fandom have always been a fertile breeding ground for passionate modders. They stay hard at work improving the game’s functionality, and more importantly, its looks.

This is generally achieved with a combination of tweaked graphic effects and updated textures in the form of custom content, either hyper-realistic or following the game’s original clay-like art style.

The sheer amount of variety can make modding appear to be a daunting task, so I’ve put together this list ranking all the best graphic-enhancing mods that can make your game more aesthetically pleasing.

But I’ve also dropped in a few options for the hardcore mod-enthusiasts out there too. Enjoy!

12. ReShade

ReShade isn’t exactly a mod, but a graphics injector that works on many games.

It lets you tweak several effects like chromatic aberration, lighting, and a whole other slew of visual options.

While playing around with the program’s settings will eventually give you the perfect look for you, this can be a very time consuming trial-and-error process.

So most people prefer downloading presets uploaded by other users.

This is hardly the least important tool on this list, but it’s necessary to understand before we take a look at some of the best presets available online.

11. Pixelore’s Drama ReShade

One of the most well-known presets used by Sims 4 players is Pixelore’s Drama ReShade, which lends your game a very cinematic feel reminiscent of something released in the mid-2000s.

Light sources look much brighter, as if your game was being shot from an actual camera.

This same effect also highlights your Sims’ facial features thanks to the light being reflected off their skin.

This preset is ideal for storytelling screenshots too. And it comes in both day and night versions for an easier setup.

10. Honeybodies Nostalgia ReShade

Another very popular ReShade preset is this melancholic, nostalgia-inducing one by creator Honeybodies.

It gives your game the look of old pictures, the kind you took with a disposable Kodak camera back in the ‘90s and have lost some color over time.

Your Sim probably has a picture that looks like this stored somewhere deep within a drawer in their bedroom.

It’s ideal for storytelling screenshots and just making your game look very, very dramatic. The sepia filter is optional.

9. Money and Milk ReShade

If rather than nostalgia you’d rather add a warm, homely feeling to your game, then the Money and Milk ReShade by Midpoosimmer is your best bet.

This makes heavy use of focus effects, blurring far-away backgrounds, and giving your game a decidedly photographic look.

Which is amazing for photoshoots depicting your Sims having wholesome fun with family and friends. Or something more depraved, up to you.

If your Sims could post this to social media, it’s safe to say they’d get a lot of likes.

8. Clear Bloom ReShade

The most versatile preset I could find that’s fit for gameplay rather than screenshots is Clear Bloom by creator Amoebae.

This ReShade will make your game look bright and colorful in a way the vanilla game just can’t achieve.

It’s also relatively discreet, so it’s perfect if you just want to give your game a slight facelift.

It’s also one of the easier presets to understand & edit, if you don’t mind opening ReShade from time to time so you can tweak it.

This will let you have a custom look to suit your tastes without having to dive so deep into the program.

7. Stealthic’s Hair Mods

Among a Sim’s customizable characteristics, their hair is one of the most influential in their overall look.

We’ve covered a huge list of hair mods for Sims 4, but this one definitely deserves a mention as a graphics enhancer too.

Proficient creator Stealthic offers a wide array of extra hair swatches to use in CAS with a much more stylish and realistic look than vanilla.

It’s what’s known by the community as an “alpha” CC.

While originally made to go with hyper-detailed skin and eye textures, they look just fine when coupled with the base game’s cartoonish look.

These elaborate hairstyles are ideal for Sims with a very active social media presence, vampires with a penchant for the dramatic, and just Sims who use a lot of hair conditioner.

Best Mods For Sims 4 Realistic Gameplay

6. Hair Physics Simulation

And if you’re getting better hair for your CAS, you can’t miss the chance to also give it some mobility.

This mod by creator GuiMerman_Z tweaks a Sim’s rig, the “skeleton” that controls their movements and joints.

By doing so, most hair types will sway as they walk, run, or dance. Immersive!

Luckily, most CC hairstyles are built on top of vanilla rigs by default. So they’ll all be equally enhanced by these newly introduces hair physics.

5. Encore Eyes

According to William Shakespeare, the eyes are the windows of the soul.

The Sims 4 Best Mods For Realistic Gameplay

Which makes them key in establishing a Sim’s look and personality. I mean, if they weren’t weird digital creatures living in your computer.

Encore Eyes by Kelly-Hannah is one of the most versatile eye-enhancing mods available for Sims 4, because it lets you replace all of the vanilla eyes for this bright and detailed version.

It feels much nicer than just adding them as extra swatches to your CAS – which you can also do. But go with Encore Eyes for the full effect.

4. Kijiko’s 3D Lashes

And if you’re making eyes look so much better, it would be too jarring not to also replace the default cartoony eyelashes for something a bit more sophisticated too.

Kijiko’s 3D eyelashes are the most popular and widely recommended CC to give your Sims some gorgeous eyelashes, which look great on both alpha-looking Sims and more vanilla-friendly ones.

There’s even a version made specifically for kids!

3. PralineSims’ Eyebrows and Make-Up

Once you’ve seen what some small changes can do towards making your Sims beautiful, you won’t be able to stop yourself from completing the transformation.

Famous creator PralineSims has tons of CC to make your Sims look better. Including much-needed HD eyebrows and make-up that’ll give them a more lifelike appearance.

Whether you want matte or glossy lipstick, glitter in your eye-shadow, or just picture-perfect influencer eyebrows – it’s all there!

2. Luumia’s Vanilla Skin

There’s a truly immense variety of skin-replacement mods available for The Sims 4.

You’ll find stuff ranging from very mild enhancements to hyper-detailed alpha CC.

Luumia’s Vanilla Skin belongs somewhere inbetween, enhancing the overall texture quality and detail of your Sims’ epidermis while maintaining the original game’s somewhat clay-like look so they don’t appear out-of-place in the game.

This also lets you experiment more with different kinds of CC, as both alpha and more traditional additions to your CAS will both work pretty well with this skin tone.

1. HQ Mod

If you truly want to take your Sims world to the limit, you’ll want to get the HQ Mod.

This lets the game load 4K textures among quite a few other graphical things.

It’s generally only used for screenshots, as it not only requires you to replace every single texture for HQ-compatible versions, but can only be run by truly powerful gaming rigs.

I mean 4K is no joke.

That said, if you’ve got an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti hooked up to your computer then it’s worth pouring in time to get all the textures and effects you need.

Nothing is stopping you from turning your Sims 4 playthrough into a truly sublime piece of eye-candy.

The Best Realistic Mods For Sims 4

Best Realistic Mods For Sims 4 Mods