I linked my steam account with simtropolis to post this review:
Oh good God! This game is... AMAZING!
Let me tell you why this game, from an independent developer took SimCity's 2013 crown as the best city simulator:
1. This game HAS AGENTS! Just like the new SimCity 2013, don't believe me? Find a citizen on the street (the slang for the term citizen in this game is, ironically.. Cim) and you can follow the Cims in the city. They will do everyday tasks based on a schedule, which i will cover in a later reason why this game is better, they have a STABLE work place, and a STABLE house, not like the Sims in SC2013, who will randomly pick the closest available house and job every day.
2. The next reason why this game is better than SC2013, is related to the Cims. Since each Cim is interdependently simulated by the game, with its own daily routine, this will create traffic problems. Traffic in this game is way more realistic than the one in SC. The cars will actually park on the street (you have this type of road, which btw this game has more road options than all the SC games and Cities XL combined!). Once the car parks next to the job, house, etc, you can see the Cim GOING IN AND OUT of it! Most Cims have cars, close to SC, they will leave their cars and walk close to their work/home.
3. The time is more realistic than SC2013. It does indeed have a day/nigh cycle, but it also has a semi-realistic ingame clock. Each minute in the game is a second in real life, so an hour in the game lasts 1 minute in real life, and a day in the game lasts 24 minutes in real life (there are speed options). This does not stop here, there are weekdays, from Monday to Sunday, and the Cims are actually programmed to act according to these days, meaning you will get a huge rush hour Monday morning and Friday evening, but it will be less traffic on weekends, well less traffic between work and homes. Same applies to night hours, you will not see people wondering the streets at 2 AM... The weekend means that Cims will go to leisure places more.
4. Map size, the thing that in my opinion broke SC2013. I did not have time to compare the maps in this game, which by the way, it has a built in map editor, so people can go crazy and share maps, just like the old SC4 days, think of them as terraforming tools, they do just that, you can morph the terrain, add mountains, rivers, even build a city and use it to make a scenario like the good old Roller Coaster Tycoon days. Back to map size, the map is definitively bigger than the cities in SC2013, but there is a catch, it is a fixed map size, and there are only 6 available cities, different layouts, reliefs but same size, this is also the only available size in the map editor, but as i say, it is bigger than 2x2km, I say, it is somewhere close to 3x3km, I would dare to say that it is as big as the large map from SC4, but don't take my word for it.
5. City building, personally, I like it more that the city grows around your roads, it takes away the burden of micromanagement, comparing it to SC, which is the point of this review, it is better, not like SC2013 gives you many tools, just plop some zones and based on the road density, buildings plop out, well this mechanism is similar in CIM2, the road density affects the size of the building. There are no government buildings, the game generates them, which I think is better since it balances the services, like schools, police stations, etc. The only drawback here is that the schools, police and the rest of the government buildings do not generate education, security, etc, but they do generate work places for Cims. All in all, this is a much more simple city planning, and since SC2013 became so simple, from the two games, CIM2 has a better one. SC4 is still king at city planning, but we are talking about SC2013 here.
6. Mass transit. I will not say a lot here... SC2013 gives you bus stations, trains, which you cannot plop rails btw, and that is it... This game however give you buses, trams, trolleys, metros that can become elevated, and "boat buses". Not a lot of options compared to SC2013, but at least you can draw the lines wherever you want, create lines for each type, and not stay helplessly and watch your buses get stuck in a loop because the agent AI is broken...
7. Most important feature that makes CIM2 better than SC2013... IT HAS MULTIPLAYER.
But with no DRM. It actually has a fun multiplayer, you can play with your friends, you share a city with them, but the city gets saves on YOUR computer (and YOUR friends if you play it together).... Let me repeat YOU CAN SAVE YOUR CITY ON YOUR COMPUTER..
So yea, a indie developer destroyed a franchise that ironically, inspired this type of games, but it destroyed itself as well because of corporate greed. Bravo Paradox, you sirs deserve all the internets in the world!
Please Simtropolis, make a separate section for CIM2 in the forums! It is 1000 better than SC2013, this is what SC4 reboot should have been!
