I tend to hate f2p games, but after discovering and enjoying Plunder Pirates and Seabeard I've started to give them a try. I downloaded this thinking that I would probably dump it within half an hour because EA + f2p. 4 days later and I'm still playing it. While it has everything at a f2p game should have (timers, in game currency, etc.), I haven't found myself needing to spend any money on it so far. I'm only at level 12 and none of the supplies take over 30min to create. It may sound like a lot, but once you have 5 factories each producing 3 units of material, it really doesn't feel that bad. Plus you can purchase materials from other players for a decent price, so if you ever need a material RIGHT FREAKING NOW you can go and buy it from someone. Almost every time I go back to collect my products I am able to upgrade one or more buildings, which gives you a decent amount of money and experience, thus allowing to progress even further in the game. It's nice as it actually rewards you for what you're doing, rather than making you go back to it 5 times before you can do something. I think the trading post (or whatever it's called) is well set up too and you can actual make good money selling some of your goods. When setting up a sale, you're given the option to freely "advertise" your product, meaning that more people will see it and your chances of selling it will increase. I think you can only advertise something ever 4 minutes, so if you sell 3 items you will be able to advertise one of them, then go back later to advertise the second one and so on. Once you've advertised an item it stays that way until it sells. I've been able to sell every item within half an hour, wich honestly surprised me as I imagined those items sitting in the shop until the end of time. The game also looks gorgeous. The lighting effects and day/night cycle are very well done, with the sun reflecting off windows and the water in deferent ways depending on what angle your looking at your city from. It's a very enjoyable game, and while the f2p mechanics do slow down your progress with the usual timers, they're fairly subtle in my opinion and don't make the game unplayable. Of course I would much rather pay for this game and be able to play it as much as I want to, but since that's not an option, this is the next best thing. It's worth a try.
This is my take on Sim City, i like to hear your feedback. Video too long, just right, something i may have missed. Subscribe to the TouchArcade YouTube channel
For the record, if we are complaining 'on topic' about how bad the paywalls etc are in the specific app, that should still be fair game yes? Im fairly anti-freemium but there are a handful of companies / games that do 'get it right'
I agree in part they fair game yet i have lost count times the second question or even post in a thread is "what is the IAP like?" enough already look they are never going to go away there are part of mobile gaming. Every often i gone to a thread to look up what the impressions is of a game and given up as all its often about is the IAP in it....boring......
Game Impressions Been playing this for about 2 weeks (and getting nearer to deleting it every day) so figure it's time to give some impressions: I remember when I was playing The Sims Freeplay and thinking how cool it would be if someone took the graphics engine they rendered the overview town in and made a city builder with it because that looked sharp. That's what this game is aesthetically. Hands down, it is the best looking freemium city builder you're going to find on iOS. Gameplay and satisfaction wise, however, it's a bit of a dud at this point and I don't know that without a total do-over (which is extremely unlikely) there's anything that is going to save it for anyone but the most casual crowd, and I mean uber casual. The first thing to note: The basic interface and game mechanics remind me a lot more of Zynga's FarmVille 2: Country Escape than anything I ever experienced in SimCity, and FV2:CE is a lot more fun than SimCity BuildIt. It really is one of the oddest clones I've encountered with a lot of dubious choices made in the process. The general tasks are straight forward and easy enough to accomplish and there are the basics of a production chain system where you craft basic goods at the factories and more advanced goods at shops. Where it fell apart from me is the timer system, not that there are timers, that's fine, but that it's a pretty f'ing random system: Each time you've met a residential building's needs (based on the amount of city services you've unlocked via your level), a hardhat appears over it allowing you to upgrade the residential structure to the next level, and that upgrade will require a randomized selection of goods your city can produce (the variety also determined by your level). One upgrade will take something you can craft in under two minutes, another will require to you come back to the game multiple times over the next few hours as you make all the items. By and large, you might as well just request a different set of items and wait that that timer out than try and go for any of the complex ones since there is zero difference in the reward. One of the worst choices they made is that leveling up feels like a punishment. Your options for city services and produced goods are tied to your level BUT the second you level up and unlock a new service, demand for the service (which you don't have) is retroactive with all your existing residential plots. Whatever coins you've accumulated, if you're lucky, will go right to meeting the new service demand, but probably not since the cost of efficiently meeting the new demands continues to rise as your level does at a pace that outstrips your ability to earn coins through taxes. And since the amount you make from taxes is tied to population, and since population drops when you can't meet all their demands, a level up can halt everything you're doing for a couple of days until you can meet the new service demand adequately. But even when you get to that point, what's the pay off? Nothing. You accumulate the coins, you select the service building(s), and, poof, instantly built and after an hour or two, where are you? Exactly where you were before you leveled up, only with a new building in town, one that may have forced you to tediously change the layout of your town, yay? Customization options are few and far between. The game makes the design mistake of giving the player the slow pace of a freemium builder but with the cookie cutter mechanics of a real time city builder. When I'm playing the real SimCity or a similar city builder, it's perfectly fine that every single block is the same optimal layout of services, residential, and entertainment zones - you're only going to spend a few days with any given scenario, and the strategy of optimization is the draw of the game. Here, no such underlying purpose exists, this is your city for now and always, and while you can rearrange fairly easily (definitely necessary with the way you will need to for meeting a new service demand), there is a lack of pay off in *slowly* building cloned block after cloned block, only to have some minor rearrangement as you unlock a new demand, and then settle into the same cycle again. The only thing to look forward to is unlocking disaster challenges, and I'd like to be able to report that makes it all worth it, but I honestly don't know since I'm still waiting on getting to that point after two weeks of tedious, incremental growth, and not really sure I have the patience to go that far. Last: I'm assuming this will get fixed before official launch, but I made the mistake of trying to log in with GameCenter & Facebook for saving my game, now I have to launch the game in airplane mode, wait for everything to load, turn off airplane mode, then wait for everything to reload as it establishes communication with the online services. Otherwise, if I launch it out of airplane mode, crashes to the springboard as soon as game loads, grrr... Conclusion: It's a fantastic looking city builder, but the pacing vs. sense of ownership is poorly balanced. I'm sure it will find its audience, but it won't be from those people looking for an indepth city builder on iOS.
GREAT review! I ended up deleting this game after about 3 weeks of playing for pretty much the same reasons. I actually didn't want to level up at times. I don't mind timers at all. I play The Simpsons, Family Guy, and Happy Street pretty much daily, put that's why I like those games, I can set everybody on a 24hr mission and forget about it until tomorrow if I want. With this game, I kind of felt more like it was a job, than a game. I had to keep going back at random times collecting resources. It's a bummer because I really wanted to like this game. I've been trying to find a good city/empire builder on iOS besides the ones mentioned above. If anybody knows of any, please let me know.
I've probably already said it, but... I really wish this would have been a "port" from the PC game. I would pay $30 for it easily. Now, especially after watching the videos and impressions, I don't even want to play it for free.
It could have been done with flying colours but controls would be a tad difficult or not maybe,it would also have to be premium with timers and iap's so I guess that would require bit of effort on EA's part.
I'm really interested in how it'll be after the full launch. I want it to be something I'm interested in playing. /crosses fingers
It's everything I hoped it was going to be. Mediocre at best. Controls are a bit clunky. Production is absolutely nonsensical. You have to queue every single production item (and each factory only has two slots) making you run around over and over again to make nails and wood. Production follows a certain pattern, iron makes nails, wood makes planks, iron and wood makes hammers, etc. but this is a horrible process because you don't know what mats you have until you try to produce an item (unless you memorize everything). And if you don't have them, the game automatically prompts you to buy one... for cash. Buildings are locked by level, so you can't build a city from scratch and plan it. But that's irrelevant anyway because you can move buildings. Messages from advisors pop up constantly and are repeated dozens of time. It doesn't matter if the last thing you clicked was a house. If you click it again tou will get the same warning. Buildings don't evolve by providing them a good environment. You upgrade them with materials you collect. Which is opposite of every Sim City I ever played. The city forces you to micromanage everything. There's always something to click on to get it working. Of course that you can visit other players' cities and trade resources. IAPs are abundant and timers are everywhere. All in all... horrible experience. EA has taken this franchise into the ground.
A poster on reddit's /r/iosgaming summarizes this game very well: http://www.reddit.com/r/iosgaming/comments/2pgw6j/im_scared_to_start_playing_it_because_i_really/cmwqecq
Geez guys give it a chance, you haven't even tried it and call it trash? It might even turn out to be alright if you have it a go ..
Liking the different take on sim city games, albeit it's like any time based game, the fact that's it's a sims city makes it feel fresh. Game centre login seems to be broken though, can't seem login and play
Well here are my first impressions about this game. It's fun for me because I can go back in spurts and upgrade and build stuff and get supplies. I guess I like management kind of games. It is annoying that I need "supplies" to upgrade buildings and not just build the city I want to. But the graphics are nice and is one reason I will stick with this game for awhile.
So I can't seem to make enough Simoleons to keep the utilities up. Tons of residential but the money doesn't come in fast enough for me to buy energy or water or whatever. Very annoying.
The music is the only good thing about that game. The graphics are not bad too. However, the whole gameplay is ruined by having to wait for production items to finish. It takes forever to get nails which all of a sudden I need and I'm accumulating too much metal and wood. This game is purposely flawed just like all EA freemium games.
