3 Major flaws away from being an instant classic.
First, lets state the obvious cons :
-Server issues,no offline mode
-No underground view
-tiny maps : you will miss space, you will not be able to make the city your way because you will always miss space for this and that. VERY frustrating.
also the micro-management is switched from a financial standpoint to a ''community standpoint'' which is kinda disapointing. For instance, you cannot control the budget of schools or hopitals but get sample access to close or open them. You cannot also view how many people resides in a single building or work at a particular shop which differs from the fact every ''sim'' is a unique agent. This would have been very easy to track down. So, instead of managing the financial side of things, you end up trying to maximize your zones by building soooo much little parks with too low effects area so you bring in more residents... Its a constant fight to get more residents stacked up in a very small area. If you try to build a high density city, you always end up missing workers.
pros :
-city specializations
-deep online gamplay with great possibilities (will they be ever exploited to their max value and if so for how much?? )
I am not complaining about the online mode, which seriously brings a very interesting aspect to the Simcity franchise (once playable) : The ability to access a global market, buy,trade, cooperate. BUT SHOULD IT BE MANDATORY?? One could literally build a city of trade with only trade ports and stack resources when they are at a good price and sell them back later on. This is an interesting angle of city/region management that brings a whole new dimension to the game : the possiblity to differ from just building a city from scratch, you can stack money just by trading and then fund other cities : brillant! . Stockmarkets fans appreciates. Then the City specialization are fun to play with and brings an interesting replayability and a new level of city management.
In a nutshell :
When the tiny maps, underground mode and server issues are corrected, this will be a fantastic game to play for years. Meanwhile its just a wishful hope of what it will be...or could have been.