Bought this years late. The resolution stays at 4:3 making it hard to play on a laptop monitor and there is no detail at zoom levels with a broad enough view. I didn’t like how small the city areas are and how you have to make multiple small cities.

It’s old but it’s the best one out there if you ask me. Even though the graphics aren’t full 3D they are still surprisingly high definition and it is fun to zoom in close just to look at the buildings. The graphics really do still hold up. I was pleasantly surprised when I played it a while back.

The gameplay is fantastic if you’re into this genre although there are a few problems. Some of those can be fixed with mods, which there are plenty of. There’s nothing that would ruin the experience, just some nit-picky things that would make a couple of things easier in the long run. The modding community is great and popular mods are totally worth getting even if some of them change the game mechanics quite a bit. If you new to the genre I would recommend you first play a city or two without mods to get the vanilla experience. For the fans of the genre: mod to your hearts content. You can pull a lot of extra depth out of the game with the right mods.

Depending on how you play once you reach that final stage with your city where everything runs like a finely oiled machine it might feel like you’ve reached the end. Some may continue to micromanage every little aspect for days to come but I recommend starting a new city. I personally prefer going for a visually impressive city rather than the most efficient one. Sim City becomes more of an information management/puzzle game if you aim for the most productive city. It is more enjoyable to create something visually pleasing.

Conclusion: A stable of the city-building genre.