User Score
2.2

Generally unfavorable reviews- based on 4557 Ratings

User score distribution:
Buy Now
Buy on

Review this game

  1. Your Score
    0 out of 10
    Rate this:
    • 10
    • 9
    • 8
    • 7
    • 6
    • 5
    • 4
    • 3
    • 2
    • 1
    • 0
    • 0
  1. Submit
  2. Check Spelling
  1. Mar 5, 2013
    3
    The management part itself is good.
    BUT.
    Online only so actually hard to access to the servers. Very small maps. IA pretty strange sometimes. I can already smell the near DRM. It's easy. Just take the features of simcity4 you don't have in the fifth. (-_-) Your city is a part of a group of other cities else she can't be... You are far away from the good old games we played where you
    The management part itself is good.
    BUT.
    Online only so actually hard to access to the servers. Very small maps. IA pretty strange sometimes.
    I can already smell the near DRM. It's easy. Just take the features of simcity4 you don't have in the fifth. (-_-)

    Your city is a part of a group of other cities else she can't be...
    You are far away from the good old games we played where you built your own city self sufficient by your own.
    Perhaps you will like this "ALL MULTI ONLY ONLINE LOL" we get now, but not me.
    Expand
  2. Mar 5, 2013
    9
    Note: Most of the reviews posted in the user section should be avoided, if not deleted. The people giving this game a terrible score are really the disgrace of the gaming culture, and not the DRM. Most people will be able to tell that the low scores are posted by people who have no actual imput of value. The game is great. Although it would be ideal to be able to play the game offline,Note: Most of the reviews posted in the user section should be avoided, if not deleted. The people giving this game a terrible score are really the disgrace of the gaming culture, and not the DRM. Most people will be able to tell that the low scores are posted by people who have no actual imput of value. The game is great. Although it would be ideal to be able to play the game offline, with online the game shines, and it can be seen why this was included. Lush visuals, appropriate music, and excellent sound draw you into the Sim City world, and the gameplay and mechanics will keep you coming back again and again. Expand
  3. Mar 5, 2013
    0
    Don't Support Always on DRM. Never! Can't even play a game because servers are full for a SINGLE PLAYER GAME. I can't beleive that they would do this to consumers. But people are still buying the game left and right. STOP SUPPORTING DRM.
  4. Mar 5, 2013
    8
    The game is excellent. I loved that it is not a single player anymore, it's a great multiplayer experience. My main complaint is about the very small size of the town, but I can solve it by having multiple towns in the same region. The game is fun, runs smooth.

    I personally hate EA and origin and this is my first game bought there, but I'm not letting my hate interfere in my opinion on
    The game is excellent. I loved that it is not a single player anymore, it's a great multiplayer experience. My main complaint is about the very small size of the town, but I can solve it by having multiple towns in the same region. The game is fun, runs smooth.

    I personally hate EA and origin and this is my first game bought there, but I'm not letting my hate interfere in my opinion on this game. Game's great.
    Expand
  5. Mar 5, 2013
    0
    Forced Online is never a good idea! I can understand why the developers maybe thought it was a good idea to evolve their game around the notion of "our metrics show" everyone is online, however 1) no caching of cities locally for saves and undo's 2) ea servers are the worst 3) a god awful launch The worst thing about this is Sim City is a rather good city simulation game shrouded in theForced Online is never a good idea! I can understand why the developers maybe thought it was a good idea to evolve their game around the notion of "our metrics show" everyone is online, however 1) no caching of cities locally for saves and undo's 2) ea servers are the worst 3) a god awful launch The worst thing about this is Sim City is a rather good city simulation game shrouded in the faeces of Electronic Arts business decisions! The saddest thing is I bet Sim City had massive pre-order sales and sales will continue to be massive! Better then all the other Sim Cities. I've heard of people that had a crashed game and lost their city! Talk about a time waste and a frustrating anti-user experience. Terrible game balance of too many fires (meh its silly really) Can't turn off disaters without turning on sandbox a mode that is fairly undesirable. As it negates the online experience for the sake of the faux online experience. For an online game you would expect calibration to be at the forefront but there are only 4 great works, the dlc has themes for other city types which are bad, and a false market world trade. This game makes me feel ill Expand
  6. Mar 5, 2013
    0
    This is the worst nightmare for anyone who is a long time SimCity fan. City sizes are limited to uselessly small cities. All the transportation and civil engineering is gone. It's impossible to play by yourself, or even play offline. If their servers don't feel like letting you on you're not playing, even "single-player". This is a game designed for people who are control freaks, and everyThis is the worst nightmare for anyone who is a long time SimCity fan. City sizes are limited to uselessly small cities. All the transportation and civil engineering is gone. It's impossible to play by yourself, or even play offline. If their servers don't feel like letting you on you're not playing, even "single-player". This is a game designed for people who are control freaks, and every choice they made seems to reduce control. I've waited years for this game and I'm so disappointed right now after trying it. Expand
  7. Mar 5, 2013
    10
    apart from not be being able to connect t servers this sim city is everthing you could want from a new simcity game better graphics. real sense of care for my lttile sims. good amount of depth in the gameplay and stargery side to make you build city after city seeing how different staregrys change your citys look and feel. i used love buidling huge citys on simcity 4 but this sim cityapart from not be being able to connect t servers this sim city is everthing you could want from a new simcity game better graphics. real sense of care for my lttile sims. good amount of depth in the gameplay and stargery side to make you build city after city seeing how different staregrys change your citys look and feel. i used love buidling huge citys on simcity 4 but this sim city offers so much more but in a smaller place and people may complain about size of the build plots but a quality well built city with a real sense that its is a live is better than just being able to build more. in future they may even be able to add larger build plots but rember not all people have gaming rigs like mine and these massive build plots may be to diffuclt to run for many computers. 8/10 game but all the other bad scores made me give it 10/10 those people need to learn pateince and that simcity 4 was terrible lagging on realease and they sorted so they will sort the server issues to. Expand
  8. Mar 5, 2013
    3
    I cannot emphasis how maddeningly bad this game is, and how boring it is.

    Yes, EA's "online only" requirement is incredibly annoying, but I also have Battlefield 3, so I'm used to it. I'm not even going to comment on this aspect of the game any further, as it's been discussed here ad infinitum. What is at issue is the actual game itself. It's bad. It's boring. It's restrictive. It's
    I cannot emphasis how maddeningly bad this game is, and how boring it is.

    Yes, EA's "online only" requirement is incredibly annoying, but I also have Battlefield 3, so I'm used to it. I'm not even going to comment on this aspect of the game any further, as it's been discussed here ad infinitum.

    What is at issue is the actual game itself. It's bad. It's boring. It's restrictive. It's maddening. You are only allowed to build your "village" within a very small, confined space, a square, with a dotted line around it. That's it. That's it! That, in and of itself, is enough to ruin the game for me. After an hour, you've built a small village, and you're... done. You are done. You can tweak what you have, bulldoze some stuff, and... yeah. You're done. Now why did EA/Maxis do this? I can only speculate they are either really stupid, or really greedy. I expect in a few months they will start rolling out new content that you will have to pay for, e.g. $14.99 for "medium" sized maps (which will still be too small). The game really is a joke. The graphics are nice, but so are the graphics in Cities XL. I also wouldn't say they are that revolutionary. You might have seen the same product in 2009.
    Expand
  9. Mar 5, 2013
    9
    Look beyond all the "0" reviews. Seems like there are a bunch of pissed off freeloaders who cannot play a game for free. The game is fantastic and improved on so many aspects from previous versions of the franchise. The new "bottom-up" approach is great. The way the Sims each have their own individual lives and are affected directly by what you do as mayor is amazing. TheLook beyond all the "0" reviews. Seems like there are a bunch of pissed off freeloaders who cannot play a game for free. The game is fantastic and improved on so many aspects from previous versions of the franchise. The new "bottom-up" approach is great. The way the Sims each have their own individual lives and are affected directly by what you do as mayor is amazing. The micro-managing of power lines and water pipes is long gone and everything is delivered via the road systems is a welcome added-edition. Get this game. Seriously. Expand
  10. Mar 5, 2013
    0
    This is a disaster. EA why have you screwed the SimCity Franchise. Curse you!!

    1. Always online DRM
    2. No local saves
    3. Buggy mechanics
    4. My crap dump size is bigger than your city maps
    5. FCKIN Huge login queues what??? did I buy this game to stand in the queue to play?
  11. Mar 5, 2013
    0
    While it might be a good game, the always online DRM for single player is an insult to the player base (another one of a long series of insults from EA to their customers), and it's absolutely unacceptable. It seems EA didn't learn anything from Ubisoft's DRM failure...
  12. Mar 5, 2013
    0
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. The map is incredibly small, the fact that I can't build my own metropolis having to piggy back off others is ridiculous. EA online garbage.... for not the first but second time you ruined a once fun game. Oh yeah and a leader board? What crap is that??? I don't care whose doing better or worse than me I want to play the game the way I want to play. If you idiots can fix the Mass Effect 3 ending by having us pressure Bioware then you can fix this crap filled game. Do not game developers play games? Why do they bring the same stuff they hate into our lives? Expand
  13. Mar 5, 2013
    0
    This is an $80 facebook game. This origin (spyware) dumbed down piece of garbage, not only costs $80 for the full game (any lesser version witholds ingame content), but comes intact with intrusive, always-online DRM. Many people, even reviewers, were unable to access their games or load old saves because this. As a consumer, we should have a zero-tolerance for this sort of practice andThis is an $80 facebook game. This origin (spyware) dumbed down piece of garbage, not only costs $80 for the full game (any lesser version witholds ingame content), but comes intact with intrusive, always-online DRM. Many people, even reviewers, were unable to access their games or load old saves because this. As a consumer, we should have a zero-tolerance for this sort of practice and boycott any game which is essentially an $80 rental. As to the content of the game, the city plots are abysmal in size, deals with neighboring cities is done automatically, connections with other cities (highways and rails) is done automatically, and much content like subway stations have been cut. The overall nature of the game is so limited that it when taken into context with it's social gaming aspects, you have to conclude that would be better fit for a facebook or iphone game. Expand
  14. Mar 5, 2013
    0
    Compared to the SimCity games before this is a joke, always online DRM, you don't own your savefiles, if you have a disconnect you are kicked from the game within minutes. The game feels dumbed down, with maps a lot smaller, barely any content. DO NOT BUY THIS GAME!
  15. Mar 5, 2013
    0
    Don't be fooled by the high reviewer scores. The game proper is a good, albeit simplified and enjoyable game, but it is the EA(Origin) DRM wrapper that ruins it. If you buy this you will never own the game or your saves, you only licence them from EA for however long they decide to keep the servers alive and EA is notorious for killing off games before their time. That's right you're notDon't be fooled by the high reviewer scores. The game proper is a good, albeit simplified and enjoyable game, but it is the EA(Origin) DRM wrapper that ruins it. If you buy this you will never own the game or your saves, you only licence them from EA for however long they decide to keep the servers alive and EA is notorious for killing off games before their time. That's right you're not allowed to save or load, must now log in and queue a la MMO and are locked out of the game as soon your connection to the servers is lost, all this for a private single-player experience. It's a sloppy attempt at multi-player, wedged into a single-player game in a thinly veiled attempt to hide the draconian DRM and the forfeiture of your rights as a consumer. If you don't want this to become the standard for all games, vote against it with your hard earned dollars. Expand
  16. Mar 5, 2013
    9
    Ratings based on DRM alone are ridiculous and make a false representation of how good the game is. The servers will get smoothed out, its release day. Its made to be a different game than SC2000 or SC4. Small map size is the only con so far of this game.
  17. Mar 5, 2013
    9
    DRM isn't an issue for me so far. (It was for Diablo 3) The city maps are smaller then I am used to but once you start playing I didn't notice it that much. The game seem much more lively than then the previous versions which got boring after awhile. So far it has been real fun to play and can't to play some more after work.
  18. Mar 5, 2013
    1
    So I bought this after playing and loving Simcity 3000 and Simcity 4, enjoying Simcity 4 even today, 10 years after its original release. I was hesitant about buying this, but the Glassbox engine and a few gameplay mechanic improvements were enough to make me plop down the $60 entry fee.
    Whoops, Origin is required, and you are always required to be online while playing the game. After
    So I bought this after playing and loving Simcity 3000 and Simcity 4, enjoying Simcity 4 even today, 10 years after its original release. I was hesitant about buying this, but the Glassbox engine and a few gameplay mechanic improvements were enough to make me plop down the $60 entry fee.
    Whoops, Origin is required, and you are always required to be online while playing the game. After waiting a good 40 minutes for EA's servers to let me into a single player game, I started playing a bit. Except my internet dropped out for a few minutes without my knowing until the game kicked me out for being offline. To EA's credit, it didn't make me lose my save, much. I still lost about 10 minutes of progress.

    Okay, so second try. I spent another hour logging in because the servers were getting pounded again. I decide to jump into the deep end by making the biggest city size they had available. I had to check two times to make sure that it was the biggest city size, because it was absolutely tiny. SC3KU's medium size was a bit bigger than this. So that's an actual city with suburbs gone out the window, and I resigned myself to making towns and nothing more.

    So when playing, I noticed another thing. Power and water mechanics are vastly simplified. Not streamlined, simplified. Of the vein "make a few buildings at the town edge and forget about it" sense, easily funded by pitiful money management. You can't even make water pipes or power lines anymore, removing any of the challenge in getting that infrastructure up. Sewage would be a neat addition too, but it's still largely useless.

    Then comes the zoning, where you zone different densities by... making different road sizes. You absolutely cannot have high-density buildings touching streets, so you have to build avenues all over the place to get high density buildings, largely unutilized since the "individually simulated" citizens love to funnel into a single avenue regardless of just how gridded your city is. In addition, industry and commercial buildings all have childish, enormous, uncreative names plastered on billboards seen from space. It was a bit charming at first, but seeing your entire industrial core covered in "DIRTY INDUSTRY" billboards gets old fast.

    The difficulty itself is awful. I could easily get a full-sized city up and running within an hour or two, never once going into the red. Monetary concerns are gone out the window unless an infrequent and easily-managed disaster strikes, and the only difficulty in this game has to do with somehow utilizing all of your meager amounts of land.

    Which leads me to another thing. Yes, roads can be curved now, but lots still follow rectangular grids. There is tons of technology these days that allows for curved and unequal lots, including in competitors like Synekism, Introversion's city generator, or even Shamus Young's city generator. However, since EA is still somehow stuck in the past, any curved roads end up wasting massive amounts of space due to lots always being rectangular. Areas inscribed by curved roads end up wasting up to around two thirds of their area. Even when you're not using curved roads, it seems the snap-to-right-angles option always wastes space due to a lack of visible grid, but the in-game adherence to a grid system. It wastes a bunch of space in the areas next to lots. This is horrible when your city size is already at a minimum.

    Finally, we come to the entire region view and multiplayer aspect of the game. The region system as set up is extremely visually jarring. There is a lot of wasted space and it results in two massive high-density cities being next door to each other but having absolutely no connections to each other aside from a meager, meandering highway. Then you have the myriad of idiots who just build cities in the shape of phalluses, ruining your experience anyways. Then, you're forced to play in a multiplayer region if you want the full experience of the singleplayer game, namely having all those imports and exports. However, all the cities next to you also move pollution to and fro. So there's always that guy who picks an upwind position and builds nothing but coal factories and industry, filling everyone else's cities with stifling pollution and preventing any meaningful progression. "So just play with friends in your own region" you say, well I'm sorry to say that I'm the only idiot dumb enough to buy this awful game.

    This is not a SimCity game in any sense except name only. This is just SimTown with awful design decisions and a clear plan to have loads of microtransactions.
    Save your money and don't buy this game until it hits the $5 bargain bin. Hope that EA doesn't shut down the servers by that time.
    Expand
  19. Mar 5, 2013
    1
    I created an account here just to say how bad this game is. I'll give it a 2 for nice visuals but the DRM and the server issues for this game are some of the worst I have ever experienced. WHEN WILL EA LEARN?! Seriously, I hope EA eventually goes bankrupt. They have absolutely no intention of supporting the gaming community. It's all about money to them. And the map sizes?! Ridiculous!I created an account here just to say how bad this game is. I'll give it a 2 for nice visuals but the DRM and the server issues for this game are some of the worst I have ever experienced. WHEN WILL EA LEARN?! Seriously, I hope EA eventually goes bankrupt. They have absolutely no intention of supporting the gaming community. It's all about money to them. And the map sizes?! Ridiculous! Mark my words, they'll release DLC that allows bigger cities but you'll have to pay for it! Typical EA. What an epic fail. Expand
  20. Mar 5, 2013
    3
    All the 10 positive reviewers are complete morons. Spouting rubbish to try and defend this game. My favourite so far was, "There's a reason why it's sitting at 91% from the critics right now" Jaylenko Do I need to point you in the direction of; MASS EFFECT 3, DIABLO 3, COD:MW2&3, COD:BOPS1&2 ETC ETC to make you realise just how stupid that kind of statement is? These are all primeAll the 10 positive reviewers are complete morons. Spouting rubbish to try and defend this game. My favourite so far was, "There's a reason why it's sitting at 91% from the critics right now" Jaylenko Do I need to point you in the direction of; MASS EFFECT 3, DIABLO 3, COD:MW2&3, COD:BOPS1&2 ETC ETC to make you realise just how stupid that kind of statement is? These are all prime examples of games that were complete and utter blunders, had next to no innovation in just about any aspect of their game and yet reviewers gave them all extremely favourable reviews. It would almost lead someone to believe that EA/Activision are blackmailing Reviewers, or Buying them out, telling them they won't give them games pre-release or bribing them so they get a good review. Honestly if anyone ACTUALLY believes any kind of Big Gaming review websites these days, they're a complete moron. Now onto these same people trying to defend Always Online DRM, you can't defend it, PERIOD. It's a cheap and dirty practice that holds no place in the gaming world. What happens when you grab your Laptop and go somewhere that doesn't have internet access? What happens to the people with bad connections? What happens to your game when the servers crash? What happens when they do maintenance and you can't play for hours? What happens when the Cloud Saves glitch and you have to roll back your town (Which btw has already happened to people)? Honestly the problems with always online DRM is endless and serves no place in Gaming. Have a Singleplayer version of the game which can be accessed without Origin or can be accessed from a "Origin Offline Mode (Where you don't need to log in Like you can do in Steam)" and then have a Multiplayer version, then people get to choose which they prefer and you can do make changes to the different versions of the game without effecting the other. It's a disgusting practice by EA (And Blizzard for that matter with D3) and if you are enabling this kind of crap by buying these companies games then you are part of the Cancer that is slowly destroying gaming. I suppose I should talk about the game, well it doesn't come out till the 7th in Australia and I wasn't going to buy it anyway, I've boycotted all EA Products. But there's streams going on and Videos all over the net showcasing the gameplay (In great detail mind you since Press had the game for a solid week or so pre-release and made tons and tons of cities). And they all agree it's good, but not great. I only gave the game a 2 because morons are giving this 10 to try and counter-balance the 0's, and whilst I think the 0's are taking things a little to far, low scores have to be given to balance. Frankly with none of this always online rubbish, bigger build plots and less focus on Multiplayer, I'd say this game could definitely be a Solid 7-8/10. In it's current state, but without Always Online DRM probably a 5/10 is an honest Score. But sadly with the Always online BS in place, I think the 3-4/10 mark is spot on where this game deserves to be. Expand
  21. Mar 5, 2013
    0
    Always online DRM sucks and it is completely unacceptable that people who bought your game should have to suffer any consequences whatsoever! Massive limitations compared to the original simcity games. No subways, no terraforming, tiny map, can't build you own airport, game has been dumbed down and lots of actions are performed automatically.
  22. Mar 5, 2013
    0
    EA is one of the worst out there. I had huge issues buying the game in the first place, tried 20 times to get through with their dumb localizations in their store. Then connection issues for the game. DESIGNING A GOOD GAME DOES NOT GIVE YOU THE RIGHT TO MISTREAT YOUR CUSTOMERS. NEVER AGAIN EA. Screw them. Moving on to better things. Just feeling a little sad for the dumb game developer whoEA is one of the worst out there. I had huge issues buying the game in the first place, tried 20 times to get through with their dumb localizations in their store. Then connection issues for the game. DESIGNING A GOOD GAME DOES NOT GIVE YOU THE RIGHT TO MISTREAT YOUR CUSTOMERS. NEVER AGAIN EA. Screw them. Moving on to better things. Just feeling a little sad for the dumb game developer who went with EA. All their efforts are in vain. Expand
  23. Mar 5, 2013
    2
    All i have to say is THERE IS NO SAVE SYSTEM Wtf No even in Single player mode!
    ITS AN MMO with Private island and a cheat mode...

    60 euros for that just LOL
  24. Mar 5, 2013
    0
    Forced online no sale. It's not about DRM. It's not about Origin (no different than Steam). It's about one of the best single player game franchises of all time being corrupted by corporate whores. It's not acceptable to not be able to save your single player games on your pc, or mod your game, or to be limited by server up/downtime, or to have lag in a single player game.

    This is
    Forced online no sale. It's not about DRM. It's not about Origin (no different than Steam). It's about one of the best single player game franchises of all time being corrupted by corporate whores. It's not acceptable to not be able to save your single player games on your pc, or mod your game, or to be limited by server up/downtime, or to have lag in a single player game.

    This is not what players wanted. Optional online/multiplayer stuff would be fine. Forced online/social features is not. Tiny cities. Dubmed down gameplay. The destruction of one of the best games for people with brains, is just not acceptable.

    EA should be burned at the stake for this.

    The gaming press is grossly irresponsible for not slaughtering EA for this and it just makes it look like they are in the corporate pocket. Who do you think pays for their sites...yep...the big companies that ram trash like this down the gamer's throat.

    As with Blizzard and Diablo 3, forced online for what has always been one of the best single player games is not acceptable. Blizzard eventually admitted most people play D3 single player. EA chose to follow the bad example bliz set with D3 and forced online instead of being reasonable.

    I beg you, if you hate being treat like crap by corporate gaming that only cares about money and not quality of game, do not buy crap like this. Do not accept having your games taken out of your hands. Do not feed money to companies that treat gamers like criminals or cows to be milked for cash for inferior products.

    I pay for my games. I have no problems throwing more money at a good game. But I don't appreciate having some of the best games of PC history ruined in the way that SimCity has been ruined. Forced online single player, no saving your own games, no modding in a game that has been kept alive for over a decade largely due to modding, dumbed down gameplay for a franchise that has always been intellectual.

    It's a sad, sad, SAD day in PC gaming.

    It's unfortunate that a lot of uniformed people will buy this, partially because the gaming press doesn't call out companies on garbage like this, and/or that a lot of stupid sheep will flock to this game for the dumbed down gameplay. Please, don't be stupid.
    Expand
  25. Mar 5, 2013
    4
    Here we go again. Another game that is simply worse than its predecessor.
    1) You must always have an active internet connection
    2) You must use EA's origin service 3) Terraforming is officially out 4) Maximum sized maps are only the size of a SimCity 4 medium map, and to put the icen on the cake, you can no longer build outside your city area (the region is off limits!), so in other
    Here we go again. Another game that is simply worse than its predecessor.
    1) You must always have an active internet connection
    2) You must use EA's origin service
    3) Terraforming is officially out
    4) Maximum sized maps are only the size of a SimCity 4 medium map, and to put the icen on the cake, you can no longer build outside your city area (the region is off limits!), so in other words you are limited to building a small city/town (no more sprawling metropolises like Sim City 4).
    5) You cannot control regional mass transit anymore, and are restricted by pre-defined road connections.
    6) Modding is out, at least for the time being. Personally I don't see how Maxis can include mod support in an MMO game anyway, because mods would upset the game balance, and game balance is usually essential in an MMO game DLC's would make an attractive profit earning alternative to communty mods
    7) If you get some troll set up a city next to your city, and he decides to create lots of pollution or crime, your city will ofcourse pay the consequences
    8) The game is very expensive, and i'm sure there will be many more DLCs to come to "fix" the game, and ofcourse earn EA an extra bit of profit from us consumers.
    9) Your saved game will be located on an EA server. If EA decide to shut down the servers due to lack of profit, say goodbye to your cities! EA have a history of doing this with other games, and Maxis have blatantly ignored all questions regarding this matter.
    10) No direct control of zoning, this is now controlled by the type of road used
    11) No more farms or agricultural zones

    Simply put, don't bother with this game, pick SimCity 4 up instead, you'll be better of that way.
    Expand
  26. Mar 5, 2013
    7
    To all the people giving this a 1/2/3 because of the always online DRM this is supposed to be a review of the game, not of a company's (poor) choice in piracy protection. Now i absolutely hate EA for their ridiculous DRM protection, but simcity is a beautiful game, with a good interface and is actually pretty damn challenging. yes EA are stupid with the always online drm. yes theseTo all the people giving this a 1/2/3 because of the always online DRM this is supposed to be a review of the game, not of a company's (poor) choice in piracy protection. Now i absolutely hate EA for their ridiculous DRM protection, but simcity is a beautiful game, with a good interface and is actually pretty damn challenging. yes EA are stupid with the always online drm. yes these probably will be micro transactions (once again, pretty stupid) but the game is decent Expand
  27. Mar 5, 2013
    1
    Many devoted SimCity 4 fans will not be moved by this game. It's too limited, requires you to be always online, and has little recourse for a community to grow around it like SimCity 4. Devoted fans loved Sandboxing even with regions. They also loved full on modding. EA will discourage this since each mod or add-on could be the source of micro-payments. SC4 fans did this in the pastMany devoted SimCity 4 fans will not be moved by this game. It's too limited, requires you to be always online, and has little recourse for a community to grow around it like SimCity 4. Devoted fans loved Sandboxing even with regions. They also loved full on modding. EA will discourage this since each mod or add-on could be the source of micro-payments. SC4 fans did this in the past because they loved it. I'm worried for the franchise. SC4 may be the last great city simulation. Expand
  28. Mar 5, 2013
    0
    WARNING after doing a TON of research I have deamed this game a joke. DONT BUY IT! Im not. This is the biggest slap to the face for simcity lovers, and gamers in general since EA became a money hungry. Buy a dog or something
  29. Mar 5, 2013
    0
    DO NOT BUY! This is not SimCity and this game is crippled by an online requirement.

    Gone are the days of sprawling cities, this game allows only small towns. Gone are the days of using the terrain editor to craft custom worlds to populate. Gone are the days of sitting on a long plane ride immersed in your city because you now have to be connected to EA servers. It's too bad Maxxis
    DO NOT BUY! This is not SimCity and this game is crippled by an online requirement.

    Gone are the days of sprawling cities, this game allows only small towns. Gone are the days of using the terrain editor to craft custom worlds to populate. Gone are the days of sitting on a long plane ride immersed in your city because you now have to be connected to EA servers.

    It's too bad Maxxis can't break away and get back to making the games that I used to love.
    Expand
  30. Mar 5, 2013
    8
    Pros... Several additions to SimCity 4
    Better graphics than SimCity 4
    New multiplayer mode
    Cons... Tiny city size limit
    Must be online to play
    Crashes alot
Metascore
64

Mixed or average reviews - based on 75 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 26 out of 75
  2. Negative: 10 out of 75
  1. PC Master (Greece)
    Jun 5, 2013
    65
    Given enough patches and DCLs, SimCity might eventually become the game that should have been on its release and justify the ambiguous choices that its developers made. [May 2013]
  2. Games Master UK
    May 9, 2013
    68
    Hints at great things but is limited by small cities and promises it can't deliver on. [June 2013, p.80]
  3. Hyper Magazine
    May 9, 2013
    40
    There's more problems with this game than I have words. Looks great though. [June 2013, p.80]