Customer Ratings & Reviews

First of all, I have played the previous versions of Simcity and I own Simcity 4 & Rush Hour, the expansion pack, and thought they were a lot of fun. What first caught my eye about this game were the new graphics. What I didn't expect was the online requirement. You play the game online and its saved in the "cloud" or online. The problem with that is if the Simcity servers are down, you can't play the game, and then of course you have to have an internet connection which isn't a problem for me. After having played the game for 149 hours (which Origin tracks), I still liked the game and with all the added features, including trading alloy, metal, plastic, etc (which are made from recycled items) for cash or sending it to one of the big region projects (called great works) which requires various resources that have to be provided from cities, the game is a lot of fun. There are also streetcars and you can share resources just like in Simcity 4. Some things are more complex such as electricity powered by oil or coal in that you have to drill for coal or oil. The piece of land you pick, determines whether you have large deposits of coal, ore, or oil, and then you might not have one or the other at all. Plus, education isn't just plopping down a building but with every school, there are options for expansion especially where the university is concern where you decide what college you want to add on and depending on the one you choose, it effects your city in some way such as business college effecting commercial positively. Two of the things that wasn't included in Simcity 5 but was in 4, is the ability to add your own Sims into the city to get their opinion of the living conditions and the ability to drive vehicles unless I have to reach another milestone getting access to that. Overall, the game is a lot of fun even with the always online feature. In my experience, the Simcity Servers went down twice for a very short period of time. Once when I was trying to get on to play the game in which case I joined another server and the next time I was in the middle of a game, and they went down. The game continued and the servers reconnected shortly afterward without any interruption. There have also been instances of my computer shutting down due to a drained battery or overheating. When I pull the game back up, the last few minutes of progress in the game might be missing, not very much, so I guess they do autosaves throughout the game. I like the idea of leaderboards on Simcity 5 but they're not working right now. I've also heard several people talk about DRM and whatnot. Just as with The Sims 3, Origin is installed with the installation of Simcity 5. Having all your EA games available in one place and for download is nice but having to re-login from computer to computer is kind of restrictive. If the number of active logins could go up to two, then that would be nice, but I really don't have a HUGE complaint about it, and I understand people needing to be paid for their work. Well, That's my opinion of Simcity 5, Sincerely Monique

To say that EA has not been forthcoming about the limitations of the game would be a gross understatement. I've owned the game for over a week now, but due to the fact that you have to be able to connect to the EA servers to play even a single player game, I have been unable to play the game for at least half the time I have possessed it. Even on the days that it has been working, I'm often unable to start new cities or save the existing one because I will get disconnected while playing the game. As there is no ability to manually save your city, you are completely at the mercy of the network connection to EA in order to save your game, and you can't control when it saves. It's not uncommon for a city to simply be annihilated by disasters with no real ability to recover. The map size is limited to 2km x 2km which is quite small, likely smaller than Simcity 4's medium size, which is far too small for the scope of this game. The AI is broken such that you cannot get the city much over 200,000 people without the entire city falling apart due to the poor traffic AI that apparently uses Shortest Path First routing which causes total gridlock. The AI's ability to poorly coordinate your emergency services cannot be understated, it's nearly impossible to put out more than one fire at a time for example. It's not even worth building more than one fire department. In short, EA appears to have stolen $65 from me, and many thousands of other individuals who are equally displeased with the situation.

Having been a SimCity original enthusiast as a kid, I was excited to pick up the new game for myself and my son. While the graphics and gameplay has improved, I do not find myself as hooked as I can remember. The gameplay is too difficult as a beginner and is not as 'fun' as it used to be.

Game is still fun and is nice to to be able to build cities. Only issues with the game I think is the camera angle at certain points. Can never get the angle and view of the city that I exactly like. Other than that game is still very fun and addicting. Overall a good product.

This is definitely not your typical SimCity game. Maxis/EA decided to change the everything under the hood in this version. Every citizen is simulated, they have a place to work, a time to be there, they go shopping, nothing is lumped together, and it shows in the feedback. There were some real growing pains with this game at launch which is why I decided to wait on the review until this was fixed. It's not fair to review a game solely on it's poor launch. That being said, the city size is a real artificial wall in game play, it forces you to use the region for expansion. Using the region and the way cities work together isn't a bad concept, but creating an artificial barrier to force it's use, isn't a good way to go about things. Also the online DRM while not usually in the way is a dangerous trend to follow with gaming. There is a noticeable lack of single player options unless you want to start your own region and make yourself mayor of every city. Even if you choose this option, you are required to be signed into Origin, EA's gaming platform/launchpad, and remain online at all times. Your network goes down? No playing. Their network goes down? Tough luck. EA decides they are done with running the servers? Game is now useless. Overall though, the game is solid, EA has already stated that they are looking into expanding the city size. If you have broadband the DRM won't normally cause you any problems. If you aren't sure, I would suggest waiting until this reaches a lower price point, but I would definitely suggest picking it up at some point.

I was unaware that EA had recently changed this game allowing single player also. Good choice because the amount of griping and complaining by Origin Multi-players quickly becomes disheartening. Find a group of friends or play the single player mode and besides a few glitches this proves to be hours of fun for adults, elementary school age and everyone in between.

It's by far the most visually appealing SimCity ever made. The only problem seems to be that the AI doesn't think for itself. You're the Mayor, not the rules of the 9 realms. These people need to think for themselves at some point.. Other than that, it's fun, it's defiantly worth checking out if your a fan of simulators, or the franchise. If you can get a copy under 20 bucks, go for it.

Dissapointed. The maps are tiny... filled up all the land in 15 minutes.... then what? Boring... good graphics. But very boring game conpared to sim city4. Cannot build giant cities....

Don't buy it. The servers go down for maintenance all the time. Cannot be played without internet connection so when the servers are down you can't play it. The graphics are good but since the servers are down every day I have stopped playing it.

Classic SimCity with tons of features and decent graphics.

I have played all the simcity games so far except for this one. Due to all the bad reviews when it first came out I decided it was not worth it right now to buy it especially when you have to play online only and there was no offline mode. I thought I would wait till they tried to fix and of the problems or bugs that usually come out. I kind of forgot about it for a while and just remembered about it one day. I checked Best Buy online website for it that day and saw the new low price plus I just got a $5.00 gift card from being a member of best buy and it was worth buying since it was like getting it free. It is not the greatest simcity game but it is a alright game since I haven't played with it a lot compared to the other simcity games I have.

Ah, how I remember wasting many summer vacation days on building, then destroying a city. This brings back many of those memories, and has some awesome features to boot. Good playability, good graphics, good game all around!

This isn't great, but it's not horrible. Wish the maps were bigger. Got it for under $6 on clearance so can't really complain.

I really like this new version of simcity. Previously I had played simcity 2000 as a kid and really enjoyed how the game has progressed and opened up to new ways to customize your space. It seems a disadvantage how dependent the game is on an Internet connection even when playing alone.

Use to play with sim city when younger haappy to be p,aying it again

It is totally amazing. They brought in so many new concepts relevant to modern times all without sacrificing the fun sort of gameplay they had in earlier versions (actually the only other version I've played was back in 2000) . Outstanding graphics (if you got the horsepower to run it), beautiful and highly detailed. Well animated, well thoughout game. I've let myself become totally addicted all over again.

Keeps me entertained for hours. I enjoy the ability to control the characters and format throughout the game.

I have been a fan of the SimCity games since the 2000s and was really excited to hear they were releasing this version. But, to my surprise, there's nothing really revolutionary with this game. Another example of just sticking with the original version rather than running to buy the latest copy.

This game is a good addition to the the sim city family and a must buy for any sim city fan. The game does have a lot of bugs right out of the box that are fixed with a few patches from EA. Only other complaint is that the game is only playable with an Internet connection. No internet, no city.

I bought this for my 8 yr old daughter and she loved it for about 3-4 days but ended up being to difficult for her instant gratification. I think the concept is cool but made for a bit older player. Looks really cool!