As a sim-disliker, Simcity is my go-to series when I want simulation. Great game that falls just short of being classic.
d. At first it all feels quite overwhelming, but fortunately you have a group of boardmen giving you advice. Additionally citizens will give feedback on what they think is good and what isn'
t. Neighbouring cities will also suggest various deals to you from time to time. There is also an ability to choose the size of land based on whether you want minimalistic or a massive city.rnrnAfter the rough start the game quickly got really interesting. I started to have lots of ideas on what kind of districts I want in my city and placed landmarks around the city, then filling the caps with whatever was needed. The game feels very dynamic and complex with lots of factors playing into the game from the deals to ordinances to demands and population. There are a bunch of statistics for you to analyze as well. The zones improve with larger and cleaner buildings as the land value goes up, and you get reward buildings for doing well in different areas from commercial to culture. If you choose the starting time to be 1900 or 1950, there will also be plenty of new inventions from subways to nuclear plants coming available, giving you new content to play with. You can also skip past it and choose year 2000 leading you with lot less new inventions, though there are some like fusion power. The music and audio just compliment the game further. When nothing was happening I could just listen to the relaxing smooth jazz while waiting for things to pick up again.rnrnUnfortunately the pacing feels a bit off. At the beginning when population is low and you are almost forced to get loans it's easy to score losses and get fired. It required multiple tries for me to get a stable profitable city going. But once you reach that threshold of sufficient taxes and complete the basic investments and infasturcture, the city starts to grow expotentially and your profits are soon counted in millions. After that it doesn't take long for the city to be full and self-sustained requiring almost nothing from you. It feels like a good accomplishment after dozens of hours of gaming, but it also bores as there is nothing to do but to build a new city, or destroy the old one by initiating disasters like tornadoes and earthquakes.rnrnSummary:rnSimcity 3000 has lots of features to like. It encourages and oozes creativity by giving you an empty box to fill however you want, designing and running a city is really entertaining. I also love the trial & error gameplay. The game is humoristic, but it might even teach something. For quite a while the game was a prime example of "5 more minutes" kind of gameplay, I always wanted to go on and take a loan, build something, fast forward time until I can take another loan and build again. Unfortunately even the largest of cities reach their apex fast, if you aren't fired before. While I had plenty of ideas, the basics of running a city stayed the same and the game has some pre-built examples which include most of the types of cities I was planning to build. After seeing them the motivation to replicate them is gone. Still, a great game while it lasts.rnrn***rn8/10rnrnWishes: First of all there are some minor grievances here and there. You can't rotate the government buildings like schools and fire stations which means there is pretty much only 1 aesthetically pleasing way to place them. Additionally some of the zones look weird and could use more variety so there aren't 5 identical shops right next to each other. Also some things like how airport zone is constructed aren't explained well enough, city planner wants me to build more airport although there is plenty of unused left. Secondly I would like if there were more factors to consider after the city is built. I don't know about the details of running a city, but plenty of cities with complete infastructure are having economic and egologic issues. Thirdly I dream that one day I will be able to visit my cities in 1st and 3rd person view as a person walking on the streets and really experiencing what my city would be like - testing the bus network or witnessing the claimed criminal activity.