[Darth-Apple]

I'll admit, I have been a longstanding fan of the series (as have quite a few members here). Simcity 4 was well done for its time, and is still a fun game today, but we're talking about a game that's well over a decade old. To be honest, I might be speechless if the gameplay mechanics of Simcity 4 were combined with the city sizes and graphics of Cities XL. Unfortunately, both have now become boring to me after what was probably too many long hours of gameplay.

I've posted some stuff regarding Cities XL on the forums, and I'll say, it's actually a pretty fun game. It does get boring once you reach a certain goal because there is little left to really achieve in the game, but it's fun for a while, and it's worth the price tag for the amazing graphics you get. That said, the community isn't as good, the game can't handle large cities well, and the gameplay mechanics are only fair at best. 

I'm not going to necessarily write off the new Simcity because of its mechanics. I like online gameplay, and at least, from what I hear, it makes you feel like you're really a part of your city. However, it's been a while since I followed the series, and I don't know where it's at now that offline mode has been implemented, and a good 10+ patches have been released. 

Is it worth $30 to buy the game for what it is? I would have tried the trial, but it didn't start under WINE and I'm not booting into Windows just to spend five hours downloading files for two hours of gameplay.

[Thomas]

At this point it's probably worth getting on sale when it's really cheap. Apparently the city sizes are smaller than SimCity 4 though.

[Darth-Apple]

They are. You have about one square mile or so to build on and that's it, IIRC.

Cities skylines apparently has about 9 times the total building area that the current Simcity has, which is larger than the Simcity 4 building tiles. I could be wrong regarding my math, but that actually doesn't sound too bad. It's still a bit smaller than the Cities XL tiles from the looks of it, but hey, they claim that individual citizens are simulated in the game. That's impressive to hear, so it looks like it might be a good game.

[Thomas]

I believe Cities XXL is currently in production so you might just want to hold off until that comes out :p

[Darth-Apple]

It's already out, and it's not worth buying. I might put together a better post with my thoughts later, haven't had the time to really properly express my opinions on it. But either way, long story short, it is an improved version of the game, but it wasn't worth 20 dollars as an upgrade. It's basically the same game with tweaks.