EA once again destroys a great franchise. It's an innovative idea but the game lacks the SimCity basic ideas and feel.
This is not SimCity by any means, you no longer control such aspects as the budget, water flow, utilities, and EA has completely eliminated the zones. Zones have been replaced by placing actual residential, commercial, and industrial buildings and all you do is build power plants that automatically make a power grid. The long desired god mode, regions and advisors that were in SC4 are non-existent so basically this game is a step back for SimCity fans, a HUGE step back to the first SimCity. The God aspect is gone or if its in there its impossible to find. Construction is a nightmare, the game lets you know that you can't build on certain squares, but yet doesn't fix the issue when building a, I don't know something important like a road up or near a hill!!?? Property values are gone, fire/ police coverage is gone, well its there but not like any fan is used to, and there are no advisors, but yet I get to see what the citizens think, like I wanted to play the Sims. Every city you build has no effect on any other city, and so each city is now forced to be self-sufficient.
Gameplay: There is no longer the ability to customize your city, and the game decides where it wants to place things. For instance, previously you can be just stupid on how you laid down roads and utilities but now you can't even lay a road without connecting it to the first strip you ever laid, or the game decides that it will just loop the road to that current point without taking any consideration for any thing you may want to place. You are stuck to feel zoomed in to the closest setting even though you are zoomed out as far as it goes. Placing objects becomes hassling at times by not aligning to a road, and because you are zoomed so far in, you have to find the cleared space that you want to place something in.
Sound: Is ok, not much here on variety for music, and ambient noise. Although, the sounds from certain objects, like plasma screens, gets annoying because it lacks anything other than variety.
Difficulty: Once you get the hang of the unique style it even lacks the challenge on the hardest settings.
The only good thing I could really say is about the graphics. Overall the graphics are great. You can actually see small detailed objects such as the pollution is more than a cloud, and roads have portajohns before they are complete.