It can feel like you just build the same things in the same order in all your cities, but honestly, we prefer this streamlined, clear guidance. The basic strategy for dealing with them is to not build anything until they ask for it. The interface for monitoring your city's populace is fairly clear: clicking a category of citizens on the main heads-up display tells you what that group is thinking, and whether they dislike a certain aspect of the city. Cities XL does admittedly feel a little forced due to this design decision. One mistake SimCity 4 players made often was to build city services too early and drain their cities' budgets, and Cities XL stops that from happening by banning those buildings entirely until you hit a population of 5000 people. For example, you are not allowed to build medium- and large-density zones (skyscrapers and the like) from the outset: you have to start with single-family houses until your population supports the larger buildings. By default, Cities XL locks out many of the buildings until you are ready for them. Grids might be ugly, but they're efficient! Although road networks are the bane of many new mayors, you won't have to worry about an overwhelming number of choices to other aspects of city planning. As I destroyed sections of road to redo them, commuters were forced to take detours to even worse areas, making a giant mess and upsetting the entire community! I improved my road networks in subsequent games, using lessons I've learned from decade experience with the SimCity franchise, and everything worked exactly as it should. My first couple attempts at playing with the tools to intentionally test their limits resulted in proverbial angry mobs due to my Boston-like approach to ridiculous bypasses and inefficient routes.
Be warned that, also like reality, it can be all too easy to destroy a town just because of your road network mistakes. You will have to destroy a road completely if you wish to increase its width, but as you can see from the never-ending road construction across the country, this too is realistic. Changing roads to a different type or switching them to a one-way is as simple as clicking the road and selecting a new status for the road in a pop-up box. Cul-de-sacs, one-way circles, thoroughfares are all very easy to set up, and you are really only limited by your in-game budget. The game basically uses a waypoint system: your first click is the starting point of a given road, and each subsequent click sets a new waypoint for the road to go to, until you do a double-click or end the path on a road that has already been placed. Gone are the days of SimCity's grids, and Cities XL also adds curved roads, allowing you to make some rather impressive displays of macro architecture. Speaking of roads, one of the most pleasurable activities is in laying down your road network. After you lay your first or second zone, laying more will feel so natural that you can do it in your sleep. That means sticking a zone on a corner will change its orientation just by a little flick of your mouse, rather than a silly combination of holding ALT and Shift as in SimCity 4. A lot of this is streamlined: after you build your roads, buildings and zones will orient themselves to the roads, and will face the direction of your cursor before your click. Luckily, aside from a couple minor quibbles, city building is absolutely fantastic and really makes you feel like an all-powerful city planner.
The core of the game is, of course, the city building if that was broken or subpar, then the entire game would fall apart. That said, Cities XL has indeed pushed the genre in the right direction, streamlining some of the more annoying parts of Maxis's juggernaut while adding features that were long overdue. While reviewing Cities XL, we try not to draw too many comparisons to the SimCity franchise, though we know it's ultimately an exercise in futility.
(And the less we talk about the abhorrent SimCity Societies, the better.) Maxis in general and SimCity 4 in particular have been collectively established as the true city simulation king, but French developer Monte Cristo has attempted to overtake the throne with the release of the PC-exclusive Cities XL. SimCity 4 hit the shelves in 2003, with its expansion coming out the same year, and no game has even come close to its scope since. It's been a long time since we've had the pleasure of a true city-building simulation.
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