Almost all the choices they made with this game are wrong.
The plot sizes are too small, forcing you to create multiple cities to cover all your needs. Like Gamespot's video review said, if you're public and your neighbors don't care, they shaft you too. Great. Now I have to kiss ass just to build cities or do it all myself. Now it's a chore instead of a game.
The abilities for a zone to grow are based solely on the amenities around, not the zoning levels-which is how every municipality I know of does things. Now I have to spend so much money and space on pretty parks to get higher end residents that I no longer have room for actual buildings. Or at least that's my limited experience. You know, when I'm actually able to log in and play the game I paid for.
The TWO things I like about this game is the ability to upgrade roads and buildings, and the graphics.
Quite frankly, I would have been MUCH more happy with a visual update to SimCity 3000 or SimCity 4 than this travesty. Too bad SimCity 4 doesn't work on my machine anymore (OS or hardware? Who knows.) so I can't even go back to that.
So, back to CitiesXL I go...