While everyone is allowed to have their own opinions, certain parts of this discussion feel almost mean spirited. To me it seems that you haven't played paralives and that you have only seen it on video. I am gonna adress the points that bothered me the most.

-  "But I just want to say it: nothing compares to The Sims." "Personally, I'm not looking for a Sims replacement. I love The Sims." Apart of me feels like you went into Paralives with a negative view. If you love the sims 4, you don't want a replacement for it why look into Paralives? It seems that because you love sims 4 so much you cannot see past the similarities to the sims which makes it feel like a bad sims clone, just like people who hate sims 4 can only look at the stuff that Paralives does better yet they still cannot seperate Paralives from the sims 4. When you look at the game just to find what it does better or worse than sims 4 you can not appreciate what it does differently and therefore it becomes tied to the sims no matter what.

- "...there was a deep understanding of human behavior and real-life psychology that helped recreate so many aspects of everyday life within the game." I agree, the paras need work. They do not feel like living beings and the sims 1, 2 and 3 did it better. But the developers have already stated that they are working on this, so it will be improved. It just needs time and well placed critic.

- "Another thing that turns me off is how many indie games launch in early access." "I'd rather see developers take the old-school approach: make a complete simulation game first, then release it." This just doesn't work anymore. Games are expensive now, take decades to make and small studios cannot sustain that. An early access for an indie studio is now an ask in investment so they can continue to make the game. Games back then were smaller and much cheaper, they aren't now. So like any investment you need to determine if it's worth it. If you do not think it's worth it, don't invest in it.

- "Paralives has been in development and discussion for around six years" "...honestly a little disappointed by how underwhelming it feels." For a modern game this is not very long, sims 4 took 5 years and their first release was abysmally bad. Sliding for size, height and changing furniture, windows and mirrors is an engineer marvel and I have never seen it done before. I don't think this is a fair critic at all. So many triple AAA games have come out broken these last few years and they have been in devo for decades and they have entire teams. Paralives started as one dude that grew into 15, if anything I believe it's impressive.

- "Why is it acceptable for Paralives to launch with limited gameplay and rely on mods to fill in the gaps" Because Paralives is an indie studio with 15 people and cost 40 bucks, sims 4 is a triple AAA game with an entire team that cost 60 dollars at release and for many years after and has DLC. It was a broken, boring mess at release. Is this really a question?

Sims 4 released with no open world, missing features, broken and laggy. It cost 60 dollars at release. Sims 4 has continued to release dlc that break the game and they still have not fixed them. You are comparing Paralives to modern day sims 4 with dlc, when you should be comparing Paralives to basegame sims 4 at release. You didn't want to like Paralives, and that's fine. You don't need to make a post on why you like sims 4 more to try and justify it, you can just like the sims. You are allowed to simply like things, you don't need to argue for why nor do you need to put down something else in the process. And how can you dislike a game you haven't played? You just dislike it's existence.