SimCity is the most aesthetically stunning in the franchise so far. The level of detail is immaculate and a pleasure to watch. The mechanics behind every unit is very impressive. For example - it's very enjoyable to watch sims drive to their cars and park in their unique work places and to watch individual garbage trucks collect from houses and return to the dumpster.
Unfortunately the overall premise of the game, a multi-city game, destroys all of the joy for me. I have loved the franchise in the past because I'm able to get a huge map and create all of the elements of a city within the borders. In this instalment, SimCity 5 aka just 'SimCity,' even in single player mode, I need to manage multiple cities just to play the game. There are rarely sufficient resources in one city alone so it become necessary to start a second or third city in the region to organise trade. Whilst gamers who love these intricate details might enjoy the 'challenge,' for me it's a huge burden. I just want to build a city and not worry about resources and trading and inter-city commuting etc etc etc. It's also very frustrating to play in the regional mode - each time I change cities I need to wait 30-60 seconds to save and load - it's an unpleasant experience. Another achilles heel of the game is the very small map size - a quarter of previous instalments. The developers thought that the regional play would compensate, but I'm really annoyed about it. I want a big map to build a huge city!
It's such a shame the developers destroyed the fun in SimCity for me by changing essential mechanics of how the game is played. I wish they had kept the gameplay and mechanics from SimCity4 and just updated the animation!