I'm a fan of life sim games. I've been playing since Sims 2. InZoi is uncanny looking I agree, I don't think it will age well and I don't like the appearance of it now. It also seems too focused on looks, a cultural thing I'd say, but for me that does little. Also, my PC can't handle it and they use AI textures and other gen AI functionality which I'm not a fan of.
Life by You seemed promissing but they lost me once they made the characters actually say premade sentences. That gets repetitive and old quickly, it should just be image bubbles like on the sims. Also, I watched a dev gameplay of it and the romance interactions put me off completely as the flirts are all on the naughty side and not on the romantic side so I can't use them for shy characters for example. It removes the imagination component. It also had too much modding involved I think. I felt like I had to work on that game, as a modder, to make it worth while. The game was cancelled at some point.
Paralives seems like the best candidate - they're taking what works in the Sims franchise and making some nice creative decisions. The visual direction is great, stylised so will age well and has a cozy feeling to it. The main issue of that game is how long it will take to come out as it's a small team. They already nailed the customization for both characters and environment, now I'm mostly worried about the AI and game progression side of it as that is much harder to show progress on.
