SimCity

 PC
User Score
2.2

Generally unfavorable reviews- based on 4557 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 602 out of 4557
  2. Mixed: 428 out of 4557
  3. Negative: 3,527 out of 4557
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  1. tallem
    Apr 8, 2013
    1
    What started out as a somewhat enjoyable title quickly became stale and boring. The city size, the arguably retarded traffic and the lack of subways and more really made this game quite lacking. Not to speak of the dumbest DRM ever to be put on a game.
  2. Uniphi
    Apr 10, 2013
    1
    The game is fun, challenging, and addictive. HOWEVER!!! as of 4/10/13 cities and entire regions are being lost! Imagine leveling up 3 or more characters in an MMO and have them get deleted and be unrecoverable. That's exactly the situation with SimCity. You can create regions compromised of several cities. Quite frequently the cities themselves will bug out and you will have to "roll back"The game is fun, challenging, and addictive. HOWEVER!!! as of 4/10/13 cities and entire regions are being lost! Imagine leveling up 3 or more characters in an MMO and have them get deleted and be unrecoverable. That's exactly the situation with SimCity. You can create regions compromised of several cities. Quite frequently the cities themselves will bug out and you will have to "roll back" to an earlier state potentially losing several hours of work. You can find many reports of cities disappearing potentially losing days of work. I did not lose a city, I lost an entire region. The game crashed during play and when I logged back in all of my cities and the entire region was gone. Customer support consists of a blog page that you post to and hope someone sees it. I couldn't find a phone number anywhere and frankly have had enough lost time at this point to not care anymore. So $80 down the drain. Worse than being a game that is not fun, this one wastes days/weeks of your progress and will do so over and over and over again.

    Second point is that many of the game features, specifically leader boards, are not functional. Also many of the main game mechanics do not seem to perform properly. STAY AWAY!    … Expand
  3. Kurlybon
    Apr 18, 2013
    1
    Well. I ended up playing this turd of a game without having to buy it thank god. My friend made the mistake for me. Everyone else has obviously explained the stupidity of the situation so I won't waste my breath. I wont purchase the game, or any other from EA at this point--to many disappointments. Simple capitalism, if you want something good from EA, then don't buy their productsWell. I ended up playing this turd of a game without having to buy it thank god. My friend made the mistake for me. Everyone else has obviously explained the stupidity of the situation so I won't waste my breath. I wont purchase the game, or any other from EA at this point--to many disappointments. Simple capitalism, if you want something good from EA, then don't buy their products until they put out something that the consumer really wants. They ruined Sim City. … Expand
  4. ground4hog
    Apr 26, 2013
    1
    I love strategy games. I love builder games.
    This is the worst implementation of either that I have ever played. It is the worst PC purchase I have ever made. Even if you get passed the online-only, "you cant save your own game" DRM issues, the game mechanics are a complete failure. The 2 kilometer (2k x 2k) map size restriction is unbelievably restrictive even insulting, there is NO    I love strategy games. I love builder games.
    This is the worst implementation of either that I have ever played. It is the worst PC purchase I have ever made. Even if you get passed the online-only, "you cant save your own game" DRM issues, the game mechanics are a complete failure. The 2 kilometer (2k x 2k) map size restriction is unbelievably restrictive even insulting, there is NO relationship between residential/commercial/industrial (no, really none), and the function of the sims/agents/components is so bugged as if to suggest they placed no real effort into planning or executing the code.

    It looks nice. But the game is awful.    … Expand
  5. Kruos_95
    Apr 26, 2013
    1
    Huge disappointment.

    This 'reboot' is a big cut in the licence, the glass engine is joke, this game has no depht. It is just another DLC machine for EA. EA kills another ancestral licence.

    Shame on you EA.
  6. krunkert
    Apr 29, 2013
    1
    The internet issues required by this single player game make it unplayable. The fact that this game is dependent on EA's servers (which has a fantastically awful track record) means you can play this game only when EA is up and running. On top of that the city size is crazy small and the sims themselves have the IQ of a fairly large bag of hair. The amount of frustrations this gameThe internet issues required by this single player game make it unplayable. The fact that this game is dependent on EA's servers (which has a fantastically awful track record) means you can play this game only when EA is up and running. On top of that the city size is crazy small and the sims themselves have the IQ of a fairly large bag of hair. The amount of frustrations this game generates is only doubled by the fact that I really loved the last SimCity and was looking forward to this one for months.… Expand
  7. hsram
    May 11, 2013
    1
    A prime example as to why DRM will not work as the game is still getting pirated and causing nothing but problems for the legitimate consumer but I digress. If you want to play with anyone that isn't a friend of yours, forget it. The multiplayer aspect looks like it was thrown together in about 10 minutes. You can't filter anything and the list is just thrown together. Every game you tryA prime example as to why DRM will not work as the game is still getting pirated and causing nothing but problems for the legitimate consumer but I digress. If you want to play with anyone that isn't a friend of yours, forget it. The multiplayer aspect looks like it was thrown together in about 10 minutes. You can't filter anything and the list is just thrown together. Every game you try to join to play with others, it's full or has abandoned cities which has to wait a certain time period before it disappears completely. Graphics are not optimized in the least and with 3 major updates now it still doesn't express concern with major issues like the multiplayer aspect.

    This game is fantastic if you like small maps and playing by yourself (only if EA's DRM allows it). A disgrace to the SimCity series, shame on you EA Maxis.    … Expand
  8. MrRelyt
    May 13, 2013
    1
    This game is by far the worst Simcity, ever and, I love the Simcity franchise but this is just unacceptable. The Simcity franchise was initially a single player game, but now that this game is only DRM, the game is dependent on server's. EA most have done this to reduce, or entirely prevent pirating of Simcity, but really it will just prevent die-hard fans from ever buying the game.This game is by far the worst Simcity, ever and, I love the Simcity franchise but this is just unacceptable. The Simcity franchise was initially a single player game, but now that this game is only DRM, the game is dependent on server's. EA most have done this to reduce, or entirely prevent pirating of Simcity, but really it will just prevent die-hard fans from ever buying the game. Further more, another terrible problem in my opinion is the city scale, the cities are way, way to small. It allows good players like myself to create an entire city, to the city borders in under 2 hours, which is terrible. Simcity fans want to spend countless hours on one city, without limits. The game is also a dumbed down version of the other Simcities, it is extremely easy. Overall this is a bad game. Recommendation: DO NOT BUY.… Expand
  9. PCgamer68
    May 14, 2013
    1
    I won't buy a single player game that requires always online connection. I wanted to buy diablo 3 but never did for the same reason. People that bought the game and are complaining about the always online connection....why? I really wanted to give blizzard (diablo 3) some money, heck, I would have given them a $100 for a single player game that didn't require an always online connection. II won't buy a single player game that requires always online connection. I wanted to buy diablo 3 but never did for the same reason. People that bought the game and are complaining about the always online connection....why? I really wanted to give blizzard (diablo 3) some money, heck, I would have given them a $100 for a single player game that didn't require an always online connection. I loved diablo 2. EA is doing other stuff (origin) that has made not buy their games despite me wanting to. This might not be fair but I give this a game a big ZERO because of this. EA/Blizzard etc must think everyone is weak minded and will accept stupid requirements because of past games success. Then again, looks like they are still making a lot of cash off these games anyway.… Expand
  10. DaveS
    May 24, 2013
    1
    The requirement for online play is not only annoying, it doesn't work. The fact that it exists ONLY as a way to enforce DRM is evident in that they didn't even bother to create a way to find servers with available plots.

    On to the game. Graphics are well done. The fact that there really is no proper connection to the RCI demand from teach category (e.g. the nonsense of having all    The requirement for online play is not only annoying, it doesn't work. The fact that it exists ONLY as a way to enforce DRM is evident in that they didn't even bother to create a way to find servers with available plots.

    On to the game. Graphics are well done. The fact that there really is no proper connection to the RCI demand from teach category (e.g. the nonsense of having all residential cities) is just bad mechanics. Traffic is still horrible, and impossible to manage. Linking the density to the rods is also poorly done, since you cannot choose to have roads that eliminate traffic, without also allowing more density, thus increasing traffic.

    You can't build a decent size city unless it is building consumer electronics because there is no way to generate enough money otherwise. This becomes a boring thing you have to do in one city in the region generating money, to have any chance of building up other cities for fun.

    Cities are absolutely too small. There is no way to create real city. You are making little towns that (sort of) interact, when tho online thing decides to work.

    Traffic is still out of control, even after a couple of patch attempts. Basic problem is that vehicles STILL don't make a decision based on the highest-capacity, lowest traffic route. Poor path finding. is inexcusable because they had to KNOW how important it was for SimCity4.

    Eventually traffic just chokes everything. I didn't sign up for SimTraffic-jam.. Real Life provides that one just fine.

    I keep trying to play it after each patch, and I keep being frustrated, disappointed and saddened. I really wanted to like this game.    … Expand
  11. lolfactor100
    May 29, 2013
    1
    SimCity is a very boring game that requires many monotonous hours before you get any good at it. I personally didn't enjoy playing it at all and will probably never play it again. I'm lucky that I didn't have to waste $60 on this sad excuse for a game.
  12. Malorey
    Jun 9, 2013
    1
    Months after this game was released and it is still full of bugs and the only way you can get any enjoyment out of the game is by exploiting and manipulating the bugs in your favour. In the meantime Maxis/EA continue to release DLC for their broken game. A total travesty!
  13. Maruge
    Aug 18, 2013
    1
    Stereotypical EA game, Little content, multiple DLC's that add little content, for high prices. Dull, full of bugs, obvious cash grab. This game is terrible when compared to previous games such as Simcity 4 They had so much potential, they could of made the game of 2013, but instead they scrapped the core gameplay of simcity 4 and removed a majority of the functions and sold it to us for $70
  14. RobertC
    Sep 17, 2013
    1
    Forget the abusive DRM. It is so buggy it is not worth playing at all. Sure, some great ideas but, you actually have to be able to play before that counts in my book. The trade bug, gifting bug, great works bug, traffic bugs (many), service vehicle bugs (many), the list just goes on and on. The high critic reviews (100?) show they never actually played the game to any degree in myForget the abusive DRM. It is so buggy it is not worth playing at all. Sure, some great ideas but, you actually have to be able to play before that counts in my book. The trade bug, gifting bug, great works bug, traffic bugs (many), service vehicle bugs (many), the list just goes on and on. The high critic reviews (100?) show they never actually played the game to any degree in my opinion (maybe paid reviews or a marketing firm?). Certainly not a human player that knows anything about games.… Expand
  15. Rome
    Jun 13, 2014
    1
    I really tried to like SimCity. I really honestly tried. But it's just not working well. The mountains of problems is huge, even now more than a year after release date. Not calling the game "Sim City 5" but just "SimCity" is very appropriate; because it clearly does not continue the success of it's predecessors.

    The list of issues is huge: - Cities not buying the required amount of    I really tried to like SimCity. I really honestly tried. But it's just not working well. The mountains of problems is huge, even now more than a year after release date. Not calling the game "Sim City 5" but just "SimCity" is very appropriate; because it clearly does not continue the success of it's predecessors.

    The list of issues is huge:
    - Cities not buying the required amount of power and water even though there is plenty of water and power to receive from the cities I have setup contracts to buy from. Forces you to utility buildings in your main city wasting valuable space and land value.
    - Tourists suddenly not coming to your city for no good reason at all, after you've had great success with tourist for a long while and made no changes. Suddenly they just not come anymore destroying your income completely forcing you to re specialize. Which is NOT fun.
    - Water tables drying out and not refilling unless you friggin build a sewage treatment plant just next to your water pump. What the hell is that about?! Like the only way to get clean water is from a sewage treatment plant... Rivers not having any positive effect on water table at...
    - Tiny city sizes...
    - Enormous traffic jams on intercity highways and absolutely no way of improving or building more. Only one road connection to intercity highway causing at times great traffic jams in your city at that road junction.
    - Street cars getting stuck and not moving. Can be 'fixed' by removing and readding section of road in front of street car depot, or sometimes streetcar depot needs to be removed. Not fun.
    - Cities got lost due to EA's crappy servers. Many many thousands of players experienced this.
    - Gifts of goods, like plastic and such, from one city to another cannot even be partially deliver if receiving city does not have storage to receive the whole lot in one go. The deliver truck will be forever stuck in the intercity highway until receiving city builds storage big enough to receive the delivery in one go. Who at Maxis/EA thought that was a good idea?? How hard can it be to implement partial delivery...?
    - Deliveries of goods to great works get stuck in the intercity highway traffic jam and often the delivery disappears or roam for a very long time.
    - Cities of Tomorrow DLC prevents you from claiming cities other players with this DLC have constructed and left, forcing you to buy DLC...
    - While music is not actually bad, it is a pathetic attempt compared to the genius godly sound track of Sim City 4 (search Sim City 4 OST on Youtube if you haven't heard it before). Bu tin that sense SimCity's music does fit the rest of the game.
    - All buildings, both zonable buildings and utility buildings etc. will demolish when just at single patch of road along it's side is demolished. I don't get why that is necessary and it only serves to needlessly complicate rearranging city structure. For example a road can be just next to a utility building and the module to place does not have any other space to be than on the same space as the road. Demolishing the road and replacing it elsewhere and replacing the utility building makes space to place the module on that exact same side. It's crazy that you can't do this without demolishing the whole main building structure.
    - Crappy low value with very limited content DLC's that sell for high prices
    - Great work sometimes not receiving any power (even though your cities clearly has lots of excess power) effectively destroying the whole purpose of great works.

    I could go on and on and on but whats the point. I don't even want to talk about the (few) positive aspects. F*** you EA, go to hell and leave our games alone    … Expand
  16. bluered1956
    Oct 15, 2013
    1
    My husband bought and installed SC5 last weekend. I managed to play once. Every time I try to open it, I get a message saying we have not registered the Origin. Each time we have to re-register and then wait for 2-3 hours for the game to upload. Total waste of money. I can't understand why other game companies have not had the good sense to create city building games such as SimCity.My husband bought and installed SC5 last weekend. I managed to play once. Every time I try to open it, I get a message saying we have not registered the Origin. Each time we have to re-register and then wait for 2-3 hours for the game to upload. Total waste of money. I can't understand why other game companies have not had the good sense to create city building games such as SimCity. Truth be told, I will never buy another SimCity again.… Expand
  17. contract
    Nov 6, 2013
    1
    One of the worst game launches ever to happen in history.

    The game-play itself was alright, but capped out at about 10 hours. I spent about another 90 hours trying to figure out of I actually enjoyed the game at all, but it became clear that the game had no real point or optimization to make it worth the effort. I paid for a city simulator and got nothing but bugs, corrupted data, and    One of the worst game launches ever to happen in history.

    The game-play itself was alright, but capped out at about 10 hours. I spent about another 90 hours trying to figure out of I actually enjoyed the game at all, but it became clear that the game had no real point or optimization to make it worth the effort. I paid for a city simulator and got nothing but bugs, corrupted data, and terrible drm.

    The graphics were stunning, but after a while it clearly all looks the same and it becomes apparent that you can't actually make the city how you want, all you get to do is build your city how they want.

    Playing with others was impossible, and it seemed like that was the whole point to the built in drm. It simply didn't work people would abandon their plots after a few hours leaving you all alone, which wouldn't be terrible on its own, but the way they built the game made it seem like team play was the point, yet there really wasn't any way to actually play with others.

    Overall this was a promising game that became a huge let down.    … Expand
  18. squebec
    Nov 18, 2013
    1
    Been a fan for every one of them. This one is the most deceiving. It takes forever to start the game (about 10 minutes). Very slow and it is NOT my computer!!!
  19. saris1
    Aug 3, 2015
    1
    What were they thinking? So to keep out pirates they screw paying customers. Nice. Guess what? The pirated version actually works properly and doesn't depend on servers that crash your game all of the time.

    So... I paid and got reamed. Pirates did not pay and got a playable game.

    Nice work EA, well done.
  20. ChrisLight
    Dec 3, 2013
    1
    Better graphic doesn't mean better game,the game is downgrade of Simcity 4.The online DRM is the worst thing ever because the server always full.I prefer my Simcity 4 than this Simcity...
  21. IceBlood
    Dec 31, 2013
    1
    The game is 9 months old now and the agent system still doesn't work. Vehicles are disappearing and ghost town phenomena still exists. Power and water usage is raising cumulatively even the city plot is cleared completely. Students disappears and vehicles just disappears. The game is broken but Maxis is making new content instead of fixing the game. There is also plenty new bugs likeThe game is 9 months old now and the agent system still doesn't work. Vehicles are disappearing and ghost town phenomena still exists. Power and water usage is raising cumulatively even the city plot is cleared completely. Students disappears and vehicles just disappears. The game is broken but Maxis is making new content instead of fixing the game. There is also plenty new bugs like unremovable street car tunnels.… Expand
  22. dennispublic
    Apr 16, 2014
    1
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Spolier alert: This game sucks very very badly.

    I registered on this site only to warn people about this game. I own hundreds and hundreds of games and I can honestly say this is the worst $45 I've ever wasted. This game is horrible, horrible, horrible. Never mind all the DRM problems, even with out them is a horrible game. In all my years of gaming I have never hated a game as much as I hate this one. Not only do I want my money back, I want to be reimbursed for the time I wasted. I would however pay another $45 if I could spit in the developers' faces.

    This game is pathetic and I will never ever by another game from "Origin".    … Expand
  23. TheKingJpiter
    May 27, 2014
    1
    EA made a crapy game full of crap it has a small city sise game breaking bugs and it's boring an creativity in your city is small and the forced mult- player aspect is bad why do you need internet all the time with internet but luckly single player was added and cities of tommrow dlc was added and why sim city is 60.00 dollars plus tax and if you buy the dlc pack you also have pay 30.00EA made a crapy game full of crap it has a small city sise game breaking bugs and it's boring an creativity in your city is small and the forced mult- player aspect is bad why do you need internet all the time with internet but luckly single player was added and cities of tommrow dlc was added and why sim city is 60.00 dollars plus tax and if you buy the dlc pack you also have pay 30.00 dollars plus tax and the crapy drm stuff… Expand
  24. isradv
    May 8, 2014
    1
    This is a horrible version compared to its predecessor Simcity 4. Boring, without remarkable improvements and high resources-consuming. I would never buy this game again.
  25. SovietUnion38
    Oct 14, 2014
    1
    Минусы-плюсы:

    + Красивая, приятная графика + Интеграция между городами + Большое разнообразие домов и построек А теперь минусы, их куда больше и они существеннее: - Даётся слишком мало места для развития города. Это ужасно. мне не нужна интеграция между 10 городами, мне нужен режим в котором даётся одна большая территория для развития одного большого города, места очень сильно    Минусы-плюсы:

    + Красивая, приятная графика
    + Интеграция между городами
    + Большое разнообразие домов и построек

    А теперь минусы, их куда больше и они существеннее:

    - Даётся слишком мало места для развития города. Это ужасно. мне не нужна интеграция между 10 городами, мне нужен режим в котором даётся одна большая территория для развития одного большого города, места очень сильно не хватает, что б построить от души.

    - Главная проблема игры - пробки. Причём разработчики сами эту проблему и создали - нельзя создавать развязки-развилки дорог в городе (как на автомагистралях), нет дорог с односторонним движением, нет более широких дорог.

    - Даже при настолько малой территории для развития игра очень требовательна к железу.

    - Одной ядерной электростанции с макс количеством энергоблоков бывает недостаточно для очень крупного города (т у п о с т ь)

    - Территория около зданий бывает не "приклеивается" к ближайшей/им дороге/ам. Некрасиво смотрится.

    - Молчу про крупные проекты. Идея интересная, но её вы, разработчики, развили очень плохо.

    - Хреновая интеграция между городами (лень описывать)

    - Раздражает пиздец как ленивое население - при наличии 20 тыс разных вакансий 10 тыс человек так и остаются безработными (при условии ур. вакансии равен уровню жителя)

    - Электричество распространяется очень медленно - чушь, ибо скорость электричества равна 250 тыс/км, а не как в игре.

    - Та же тема с водой и канализацией. Не думаю, что в реальной жизни дела с водой и канализацией обстоят так же.

    Столько возможностей можно было реализовать, а разработчики не оправдали ожиданий, и, позже, выпустили дорогущие DLC.    … Expand
  26. FuzzyPuppy
    Aug 25, 2014
    1
    I really was excited for this game. And I continued to be excited for about 30 minutes after I started playing. The moment that I logged on it was like a ghost town. The maps are tiny. And what's with the constant Zombie outbreak and getting your city demolished by meteors? Huge let down, as I've been a really big fan of their past games. Too bad.
  27. PedroGamer
    Oct 31, 2014
    1
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. The tutorial is the only thing that´s good in the game. However, when the game really begins, I was really mad, cause the only thing that you can build are streets and roads, but if you place it wrong or put too much, you lose money, time and waste of tutorial process. What´s worse, everything is BLOCKED until you place the roads the correct way.… Expand
  28. LordSolidus
    Dec 12, 2015
    1
    Simcity is the worst simcity game ever, NO challenge, easy as hell, small maps (too small), multiplayer is wortless, too many ppl just enter your region and leave after about 1-2 hour's and don't return
    DO NOT BUY
  29. reviewfrom19842
    Aug 31, 2016
    1
    Horrible awfully boring game a shameless way for EA to get more money it might be fun for about 3 minutes but that's it..............................
  30. Stephenicus
    Jan 29, 2017
    1
    This new SimCity game completely ignores and butchers all standards set by the previous games. Rather than having diverse city-scapes with mixtures of dense, medium and low zoning areas, ranging from farms to suburbs to down down metros, you get a very dense, very congested square. Industry is limited to a single edge of the square, so sims don't get sick, and anything extra you might wantThis new SimCity game completely ignores and butchers all standards set by the previous games. Rather than having diverse city-scapes with mixtures of dense, medium and low zoning areas, ranging from farms to suburbs to down down metros, you get a very dense, very congested square. Industry is limited to a single edge of the square, so sims don't get sick, and anything extra you might want to build, like the Statue of Liberty, or even a hospital, requires the destruction of something else because every space becomes occupies within the first hour of playing a city. Every city is the same size, and building anything outside of the limited squares is off limits, even in the worlds themselves. Other Sim City games let the players edit the worlds. Not this one. This SimCity game is extremely limiting, and I curse EA for destroying yet another awesome franchise.… Expand
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Awards & Rankings

2
#2 Most Discussed PC Game of 2013
21
#21 Most Shared PC Game of 2013

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
64

Mixed or average reviews - based on 75 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 26 out of 75
  2. Mixed: 39 out of 75
  3. 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]
See all critic reviews »