It has its flaws but its still great fun.
First off the touchy subject of DRM, it sucks I know, and it is silly. But How often are you not online? For the many of us, when at home, usually only ever when the power is out. Or when traveling and such. Now this is suppose to be a multiplayer centered game, so i could understand of the DRM. Even though it is also a singleplayer game. Still its not as bad as everyone makes it out to be. Just because it is DRM does not automatically make it a terrible game.
Another argument is about the DLC, dont buy it? Its not mandatory to buy it. EA seems to get a bit excessive with it, I will agree, but its not at all needed. Many often forget that this is still a company and they need to make a profit. Making games is not cheap, many just assume that they are just taking your money. From game development, advertising, even office rent and space. It all costs money and they are still a business.
Lastly the city sizes, yes they are smaller, and yes it made me angry at first too. Seems to me players do not even think of the reasoning and logic behind somethings, they automatically assume that they did it too screw them over. The game seemed to move more towards the whole trading of goods and such between cities. Especially between other players, they wanted to promote working together with neighboring cities. If you were able to create massive cities that could substain themselves, whats the point of trade and sharing between other cities? Also they wanted the cities to have their own theme, while one might strictly be an industrial town, another could be a rich community.
(There is still hope for some though, there are plans to expand city sizes in the future.)
Now that I got all that out of the way I can focus on how I think the actual game is. Even with all this stuff I mentioned, other reviews on here still fail to mention how fun the game is. Its still a great simcity game at heart, and still a challenge to maintain your city. The whole simulation thing of each individual sim is awesome and just shows how advanced the engine is. The game looks great and there is still alot to do and maintain. Im sure in time the game will become even better.
You can believe these other reviews if you want, just nit picking at the stupidest of things, but overall I will continue playing and enjoy this game that its clear maxis put alot of work into. The others can just continue crying and complaining about stupid things in the game that they will probably forget about in a week or so.