The Tenants - Ishvii Reviews

Probably the longest review list I've ever done. The Tenants is a brilliant idea, with lots of content and an addictive gameplay loop (for people who like designing rooms). So at the very beginning I will say that I've loved playing it, and I really think it's worth trying if you like building, or The Sims. It does also come with a long list of UI annoyances and probably the longest bug list I've ever found in a game. The primary loop is buying apartments, renovating them, then renting them out to tenants and taking care of their desires (which are a bit limited). There's also a bunch of random and hand-crafted renovation jobs.

Pros

The furniture placement system is very dynamic. For example, some objects the game recognises should go together and gives you an indicator, like sinks should always go near a towel rail. Toilet rolls must be a certain distance from the toilet, TVs should be within visual range of a sofa, and get bonus points if they're on some kind of surface like a TV stand. This only applies when you're doing renovation jobs, and weirdly doesn't show up when you're designing your own apartments.
Huge number of objects and furniture (although it takes dozens of hours to unlock them all)
Tenants are all different, and their personality traits do have an effect on their behaviour: gender, age, profession etc. As far as I can tell, criminal background, tenancy history and debt do absolutely nothing
Time slows down when you're renovating
All items in the game are tagged with their general aesthetic such as modern or zen, and tenants have item tag preferences. Tenant personalities also affect the objects they like, such as gamers liking figurines
Does what it says on the tin. The game revolves around keeping your tenants happy, but has plenty else to do too. If you need some extra cash you can take on quick renovation jobs, find tenants on behalf of other landlords, buy, renovate and resell houses
There are a wide range of Elite Contracts - renovation missions in hand-crafted locations. For example, an RPG den, a detectives office, sushi restaurant and a train yard. Completing them gives you items from that mission to use in your apartments
The properties that you renovate are not just random locations for that job - they are specific places in the city district (like a Sims neighborhood). I renovated an apartment, and a few minutes later it came up for auction to buy the flat
When you reach the second district, you unlock gardens and garages. The third district allows you to convert your apartments to offices
The tenants adapt well to the furniture in their apartments. So for example in one apartment, they don't have a dining table, so when my tenant had a friend round they sat on the couch and ate dinner.
There was a bug in the game where I couldn't place furniture in the garden for the Sushi restaurant mission. I emailed the devs, and they sent me a fixed save file in 20 minutes
If I want to copy an object, wall or floor type, there's a key to copy it and create more

Cons

There's a few instances in the first hour where text will not disappear. My home renovation wasn't finished and I needed more money, so I took another job, but the text for installing heating vents stayed on the screen.
I got the achievement for "Earn $50,000" after earning about $3k
Too much clicking. When you want to move something, you have to double click it. Once to select it, once on "move" and THEN drag it around
There are no lighting effects from objects you place
There is no way to turn off the "Are you sure you want to leave the apartment?" prompt
Hidden mechanic: items are worth less prestige in larger rooms. I was trying to do a job with a small budget. I thought "Yeah, a large bathroom would have a big prestige score for being luxurious", but found it impossible to increase the prestige enough within budget. Turns out you have to make the room cramped for it to be considered luxurious.
It's a shame that you don't have an avatar in-game. Your only presence in the game is your uncle. That's fine at the beginning when he's there to fix things for you, but kind of creepy when a tenant texts you to say "Do you want to play video games together?" and your response is "Sure, I'll send my uncle round"...
During auctions, there are no sound effects, so it can be difficult to tell if you need to respond to a bid, or if someone is outbidding you
You're not allowed to renovate the apartment while someone lives there - which means once you've signed a tenant, and you get more money and want to make the place nicer, you have to kick them out.
It took me hours to realise I could click the "Item tag preferences" to pre-filter items instead of doing it manually
It can be difficult to click on tenants sometimes. The cursor is over them, but it just selects the apartment
The tenant requests could be more varied. At the point I'd been playing for 10 hours, 4 tenants had asked for "some musical equipment in my room" which is always the exact same items
I don't like the mobile phone interface for managing everything. Especially towards late game, I'm constantly getting texts from agents asking if they want to renew contracts, messages from tenants asking me to fix things, getting reports from tenant agencies on background checks etc. To see these things, you have to click into things and back which is really clunky. A better UI for this would really improve the game
The interface is too big and often in the way. Because of the cryptic prestige system, I have to keep a window open to see whether the score goes up or down when I place an item, and that window takes up 1/3 of the screen
The filters for open houses do nothing. You can say you only want gamers, or alcoholics, or a certain age range, but it doesn't do anything. Everyone shows up anyway. Being able to rent out apartments to companies is awesome, but the open house filters feel even more broken here compared to renting living spaces. I bought my first office, added the two required desks and asked gaming companies to come look at it. Maybe 1 out of the 10 bosses who came see it were game companies. None of the others were able to rent it because I only had programmer desks, and they required X number of architect or detective desks.
When building an office, the only requirement is that you have 2 desks. I ran my first open house for 7 days and not a single company boss with fewer than 7 employees came to visit, which meant none of them could rent it
I get half the rent from a property in manhattan that cost twice as much to buy as something in the second district. Doesn't make any sense.

Bugs

I changed the keybindings. The game forgot them.
On the Elite contracts, voice lines start playing from the beginning every time Uncle Steve cleans something
On the pirate Elite Contract, the voice line played but there was no text. Same for the Beach Hut and Film Studio
By default, Z and C are assigned to rotating items, AND getting your uncle to take actions. If you rebind rotating furniture (like, to R and T), it removes the keybindings from the Uncle too, but you can't then bind the Uncle commands to those same keys as rotating furniture like they were before
During the "film and date night" event, I replied "Pizza" to the tenant. Her date just stood in the kitchen doing nothing, the pizza never arrived, and eventually the date just disappeared and I never got a response from the tenant
When placing decor, the room guides say "only one counts". This isn't the case. You can add multiple of the same item and prestige will keep changing
I received a text from the mayor saying they were ending the bonus programme as the crisis was over. The next month I had a text saying what the bonus occupations were
The musican practice event is broken. The tutorial says to catch all the notes, which I did, and the health bar always just goes down. Happened 3 times in a row.
I started an elite contract to build a hunting cabin. Didn't finish the mission, then bought the house that the mission happened in. Now I am required to fill in the house I own with the items from that mission, but I don't have those items unlocked
One of my tenants has the "diligent" trait ("always pays rent on time"), and he just failed to pay the rent on time.
Sometimes the buttons to place outlets stop working during a renovation and I have to restart the game. Sometimes it places the socket, but the electricity indicator doesn't come up, and the objects have no power until I restart
When I unlock "new" items on level up, I regularly see "new" items in there that I already have access to
Sometimes messages from tenants don't make a notification sound
I got the achievement for renting to a company even though I didn't rent it to anyone after the open house (because even though I filtered to game companies, only one of the bosses who came to see it owned a game company, and he had too many employees for the number of desks in the apartment)
When I rented an apartment to my first business, I got the achievement for renting to 3 tenants, and for renting to 5 tenants
Clicking "fast forward" during dialogue in Elite Contracts doesn't do anything
On some jobs (especially elite contracts), you are required to place certain pieces of furniture. You then get marked down in the review because the required pieces of furniture had tags the client didn't like.

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