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Cities XL Reviewed
The guys over at Monte Cristo seek to topple SimCity as the leading city-building strategy game with the new Cities XL. Cities XL looks to stay true to the fundamental ideas of city-building strategy games, but also to bring this genre to the masses by having the game play online. Cities XL is still playable offline and without any subscriptions, but those looking to experience the game fully will have to sign up for a monthly membership. We take a deeper look at the good, the bad, and the ugly in our review of Cities XL.
The Good The Graphics
Cities XL looks great. There’s no other way to get that point across more clearly. Whether you’re high in the sky overlooking your city, or on the ground walking past that new stadium, Cities XL does an amazing job on the graphics of the game. The buildings have the perfect amount of detail on them, and don’t slow down your computer too much while scanning across your massive city. The people of CitiesXL resemble cartoons, rather than real people, but this art choice was probably done to devote more time to the buildings themselves – which is preferable in this game. Graphics of course do not play a major factor in our review, but it’s been awhile since a great looking city-building game has come along, and we appreciate the detail that’s shown in every building.
The Gameplay – offline
If you’re looking for a city-building strategy game, than look no further. Cities XL does a great job of building off the design principles of SimCity, and makes it a lot easier to build your city more quickly. Gone are the days of connecting power lines to your buildings; instead, Cities XL simply has you build your plot of land with the desired buildings, and asks that you connect it with your town hall. Simply wait and watch the people move in. Cities XL takes out a lot of the micromanagement of previous city-building games, because your main focus will be on: the economy, the businesses, and the people.
With Cities XL, you’ll never have to worry about plumbing or fine tuning your tax brackets, because you’ll be focusing on providing jobs for your people or providing people for your jobs. In late game, cities become more self-sufficient in the number of people, but require more resources to complete larger building jobs. You’ll have to start trading your resources to obtain ones that your city lacks – including: water, oil, metal, manufacturing, etc. – to ensure prosperity of your city. This trading aspect of the game starts to bring in the other players online, which I’ll talk about later in the review.
CitiesXL also has expansion packs coming out, called GEMs (game enhancement modules), that give you special, themed buildings to diversify your city. While we have not fully tested these GEMs, Monte Cristo has stated that these GEMs will also change the gameplay by adding new elements and minigames. For example, you could get a GEM pack that lets you build an amusement park, and you could end up playing tycoon-style minigames to support the park.
The Bad
The User Interface
Let me start off by saying that the UI still functions in the game, but it has issues. A lot of the time, the UI has trouble keeping up with user commands from either the mouse or the keyboard. This doesn’t become too much of a problem during gameplay; however, if you’re trying to build multiple structures quickly than you’ll hit a snag. Sound also became an issue later in city development, because many of the buttons have sound effects associated with them. We’d often click on a button and have an action occur, but never hear a sound; additionally, the opposite would happen where a sound would play, but it would be extremely loud. While the sound issue may be small, it did end up causing quite the annoyance during game play.
In CitiesXL, the UI has a warning system setup to make sure you focus on important things for your city, rather than forcing you to figure out what you need to fix. This warning is a great idea, but falls short of its intended goal. Often times, the warnings seem so dire – “Your industries need more Unqualified workers!” – that you immediately jump to the occasion and try to fix the problem; however, in fixing the problem you’ve made it worse. While the above statement was true, it was maybe one building that needed two workers, but now you’ve made twelve homes for twelve people, and ten of them now need jobs. The warning system has no level of warning, just WARNING! As the player, you can combat this dramatic warning system, but it requires more subtle attention to your city’s mass of information. 
The Ugly The Gameplay – online
Online is truly where Cities XL missed the mark. It feels like they wanted to make a really enjoyable city-building game, but they needed a hook, so they made it online. Almost everything about the online experience seems rushed and the UI is no different. The main reason to go online is to trade resources with other players, because you’ll have to trade to keep your city growing. While you can choose to trade offline, your only choice is to trade with OmniCorp, who will only offer ridiculous trades that hurt you more than help you. This is Monte Cristo’s way of nudging the player into online play, which is fine, but online trading has its annoyances: trading with players while they’re offline, re-establishing contracts, and the lack of trades.
First and foremost is trading with other players. This first scenario is the most ideal: your online and want to trade, another person is online and wants to trade, you both negotiate a trade and a contract is made between both of you, great! Now change this situation to the other person being offline: first go into planet overview, then search the name of the offline player, then search for the specific city of that offline player, then click that city, then click the trade button to make an offer, ugh. This long task gets quite arduous when you have a large city with lots of demands, and often your trades don’t ever get answered. We finally had enough with this method and ended up agreeing with the outlandish deals of OmniCorp.
Second are the contracts: all your contracts last five days. The length of the contract isn’t the issue, it’s the nonnegotiable length. With all the contracts lasting five days, you’ll most likely be renewing or searching for new contracts on the same day; thus, every five days your city goes into crisis mode because you’ve just lost all your contracts, and have too much of X and too little of Y. The hassle of the invariable contract length is troublesome, and detrimental on a city’s health.
Trading with other players is great, because you can often get a great deal, and you don’t have to rely on OmniCorp; however, finding a contract is often difficult. Most people will throw up contracts on the global trading interface, which is great, except for the times you don’t have enough resources to honor that deal.
Often times you’ll have to wait for a deal to show up, or rummage around the globe hoping to find someone to trade with. Playing with people is great, but a lack of people means a lack of resources. 
The Monthly Fee
Now don’t get me wrong, the game is still fun to play both online and offline, but playing the game online requires a monthly fee. I’m all for a fee, if it gets me something I need. With CitiesXL the monthly fee gets you access to a persistent world where you can build your city… and that’s it. There are no additional buildings, no additional maps, or some other amazing aspect online; instead, you simply get access to better potential trades with other players, than the terrible trades with OmniCorp.
The other big issue is the GEMs. If you choose to play online and pay the monthly fee, you’ll still need to spend money on the GEMs that come out, and playing online doesn’t provide early access to them, or to better GEMs than offline players. I understand that the game needs to make some sort of money to keep the servers running, but paying both the monthly fee and the cost of GEMs seems a little steep for this game.
The Conclusion
I enjoyed playing CitiesXL, because it does what I expected: be a great city-building strategy game. Simulation cities are a ton of fun, and Monte Cristo did a great job of making it easy to do. The game looks great from new cities to large metropolitans, and micromanagement has never been easier in a city-building game. CitiesXL falls short when it comes to online play. I almost feel that the online aspect was just tacked on to increase sales of the game. While I think CitiesXL tries to go into the right direction with their online idea, I think the game fell short of its goal.
My Recommendation
If you love city-building strategy games, then get CitiesXL. Buy the game out of the box and play it offline at first. Any player can enjoy the game to its fullest offline. I’d shy away from the online aspect of the game for now, and wait until the online subscription becomes better for the money, or for the content. I’m sure GEMs will catch a player’s eye in time.
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