Good concept, full of errors and restrictions
First of all, let me clarify one thing that I have played nearly all of The Sims 2 and all of The Sims 3 game and thus, this review will be written from a view of a long time Sims player.
The graphic: It was a nice addition for LN to add new sky scraper and certain new light effects to the game. Otherwise, LN still retains the cartoonish style of graphic from the vanilla game. This although makes the game familiar but in no way "exotic" or fits into the concept of LN entirely. Since for most of what we remember, The Sims 3 has focused onto a more "suburban" feel rather than a big city feel with its graphic. It's done a decent job however.
The new game play: There is a nice sets of addition to the game play. However, not all are developed as fully as it should. The first notable addition is the reputation system. In my personal opinion, it is still too easy to gain high reputation living normally. (My farmer guy who plays some piano got to 5 stars just by talking to some celebrities and getting married.) It would have been much more challenging if Maxis has incorporated many more random events to increase the significance of this system. However, the cost of doing so would be to lose the "macro" feel of the game, when you control the entire family, in which was already somewhat jeopardized by the sheer large size of the world and unpredictable behavior of the computer "auto" feature.
The big feature introduced was night club and bars. Generally speaking, the addition was good. However, it's not perfect. You still can't "operate" a bar as a household business as well as order and eat something. Bar is still only a place where you hang out (nearly mostly like a park) to talk and spend your time. One more irritation with bars and night clubs are its closing time. With the fast flow of time in The Sims, it would appear that closing down the bar at 2 a.m sounds a bit silly. Luckily, there is a modification available to extend the opening time for the bars and night clubs.
Other features include: Vamparism, new musical instruments/ extended parties/ pent houses/ new careers. All of these features could have been developed further and more in depth.
Building/Buy: First disappointment: You won't be able to tweak the pent houses unless if you type two distinctive cheats in the console box. Secondly, you have to be extremely careful when tweaking this buildings since if you're not, the apartment will be unplayable and freeze at the time of Sim arrival.
That being said, the hot tub returns, with the "under the floor" style. I would have much preferred the over the floor style but oh well, gotta live with what's given.
Other than that, the addition includes new "vampire beds"/"elevators" (return from The Sims 2 Open for Business) and picture height adjuster (return from The Sims 2 Apartment Life). The build/buy addition is pretty neat and well sorted out (although the object addition is, as usual was insufficient for my taste)
Bottom line: Good try, well sorted out game play but could have gone in a lot more depth than what has been executed.