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I lucked out and happened to be one of the ones who didn't have any server issues at launch. Was able to download and play within about 20 mins. Was on and playing for over 3 hours with no connection issues after that. As always with me, would rather point out the cons and finish up with the pros.
Cons
1) City Size. While I understand why they did this, it's still frustrating on many levels. The major frustration comes from if you don't realize the true limitations you try to do everything in one city and end up fighting traffic, budget deficit issues, and the never ending demand of RCI. Instead, the concept of this game is to not have a single giant city but instead to have several smaller specialized ones. When you realize this and you plan accordingly, your regions really prosper.
2) City Safety. No matter how many buildings you have and even if you max them out, there's never enough to go around or you're stymied by traffic. In one of my cities, I have over 60 police cars, 4 detective vans, and 4 crime prevention vans and yet there's still too much crime. It wasn't until I looked closer at the entrance to the city that I realized the issue was:
3) Traffic. I've watched videos, read write-ups, and tried out many different road lay outs but I still can't get around the massive rush hour traffic that just about shuts all my cities down. In my tourism city I have 2 train stations, a port with a cruise line, over 25 street cars and over 30 buses and I can't keep up with the traffic. I try to route traffic specifically by park & go's and bus stops, I try and route local sims to business instead of into major throughways, and I try to keep the traffic from the trains and port routing to the tourism sites but none of it helps. Don't even get me started on by oil/ore/coal cities.
4) AI. Now, I'm sure they'll fix this eventually, and a lot of different reviews (amateur and professional alike) have hit on this already, but the AI is stupid in this game. Pathing, city service deployment, transportation, you name it. You have 3 T-intersections in an area completely clogged up but 2 blocks up and over there's 3 cars total passing through the entire road line. Why wouldn't they reroute the traffic jam to utilize the open roads? 3 cop cars, 2 fire trucks and 2 ambulances coming up behind you, don't pull over to the side and let them by or anything, just flip 'em off and continue waiting in the gridlock. I mean really, why would you not program certain vehicles to have a higher priority on the roads or to have the other cars move to the side for emergency vehicles. Half my city is burning because a) my fire trucks decided to go through downtown at rush hour instead of taking the alternate path and b) they're stuck in rush hour because no one lets them by.
Pros
1) Addicting. This type of game is how I wish all games were. It's addicting enough to keep you involved for hours upon hours while playing and you can work on city upgrade plans in the back of your mind while not playing. But the level of addiction isn't so bad as it's all you want to do. I can easily drop 2-3 hours in an evening and it flies by, but once I walk away I don't have any overwhelming urge to run back to it. Mind you this is a personal Pro because user experiences will vary, but for me it's what makes it an ideal game.
2) Graphics. While it's a simple city-planning style game, I really love the flow and look of the graphics. Realistic enough to leave an awe inspiring feelings of accomplishment as your city grows into a sprawling metropolis but not so much that you take the game overly serious. It's beautiful and the depth of overall visuals are extremely pleasing. Everything from the plans flying overhead (even if you don't have airports yet in your region), to the random boats passing by through your water ways, to the changing time of day (even if it sometimes is to dark at night) is just satisfying. It's nice to play a game that's still a game and not focusing on hyper-realism (graphics wise).
3) Regions. While I initially disliked the city sizes, once I realized the possibilities of creating a fully functioning region I actually started getting pretty excited about the possibilities. It takes some getting used to, planning out the individual cities to work in tandem with each other is really a fun and new take on for Sim City. Before you had a large area (probably the same size as a region) to build a multi-purpose city that involved everything, here you have smaller cities that add up to make the whole region. Similar to how you have a county with smaller city/towns that make it up and each city/town adds different things to the overall county. I'd really like to see at some point in the games future where they actually interconnect Regions with planes/boats/trains and truly turn the game from a single city/region responsibility to a true world environment.
4) Overall game play. I cannot knock on how they've managed to pull everything together on this game. Given, the last SimCity I played actively was 3000 so I'm not sure of how 4 played, but I really love the smooth game play implementation of this iteration. Takes a few failed cities/regions to realize the major changes, but once you do it really is a good game and helps add to and build up the SimCity legacy. The menus are extremely easy to navigate and find. The advisors give pretty decent advice even if they are redundant or obvious.
5) Music! I'm a music nut, in my opinion music is the true window into the soul. The sound track (when it works) is really amazing and even listening to it for over 4 hours still sounds fresh. I also like how it changes depending on your zoom level. Just overall amazing. As for the "when it works" comment, I've found that once the city hits a certain size or there's just so much going on in the city the sound will die out or glitch on a specific sound. Like if you clicked on your Police Dept while sirens were going off in the background and traffic noise was being introduced ontop of whatever the engine handling all of that gets over loaded and just loops those noises over and over again until you exit out and reload. Rather annoying.
In summary, despite the epic launch day issues (even though I didn't experience them), the DRM/Always on requirement, and the occasional sound glitch, the game is still fun and enjoyable. While I'm not playing it, the issues are present and frustrating and enough to not have me rushing back to it, but when I do get into it, it's more than enough to keep me in it for hours on end.
5/5 for enjoyment
5/5 for music
5/5 for graphics
4/5 for game play
3/5 for AI
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Excluding the launch - Is it a good game? Not really.
Reviewed in the United States on March 12, 2013
Forget about the always on issue or DRM for a minute? Is it a good game forgetting about those factors?No. Unfortunately it is not.This game looks good but doesn't play well. It isn't a simulation; it's more like a Farmville clone for cities. The visuals are the best feature of the game. It looks pretty good at times. But looks can only take you so far. Compared to SimCity 4 - This is a massively dumbed down game. It may look better but the game play isn't nearly as good.Some of specific gripes:I don't like that you can't really do much with roads. Curved roads are a nice addition but what about overpasses and one ways?This brings me to the single most important factor concerning this game (Forgetting the Online/DRM)Bugs - Pulls this game down 2 stars by itself. There are bugs everywhere. Things don't work. Features are broken. The way that Sims move around the city is severely flawed. It ruins the game.I feel like it's taken me a full three days to get to this point but I feel like for the $59.99 I paid on launch, I was severely ripped off.If you are a SimCity fan- You might just want to wait or go back to SC4. This game isn't complete. It feels like it's a beta version.
Reviewed in the United States on March 12, 2013
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