Game Review: Cities XXL

Cities XXL is a sequel to the former Cities XL. I’ve never played Cities XL, so unlike other people who have been giving Cities XXL a thumbs down; I’m having a hard time giving it such score. I would understand that people are quite angry as Cities XXL is a Cities XL with an upgraded software, some patches, and few tweaks and new maps; clamoring that it should be a DLC rather than a whole new game but for the sake of those who not played the game like me; we will be reviewing it as a stand-alone.

Cities XXL is a city-builder game; much like EA’s Sim City. There are pros and cons between the two; but I prefer Cities XXL than Sim City; just because the former gives me a larger land to play with; while Sim City, on the other hand gives you better control, better buildings, better support, better everything, but limits you on your city building; which defeats the purpose. Moving forward, Cities XXL is a standard city building game, you could choose different map depending on what resource you are trying to build with; you could create different cities and have them  trade with each other to sustain economy between cities you have.

One of the best feature of the game is the huge maps available. You would find yourself trying to fill up the whole map for hours and hours of gameplay; with only stopping to pee or to eat. The map is so big; my largest population for one city is only 200,000+. By this time, I already have a hard time working on my traffic problem, and resources have become too expensive that nobody wants to enter my city.

Another nice to have is the map filter, you may filter maps base on what you want to do. It is either you may want to focus more on agriculture, tourism, oil, or water and possible a region of kind of landscape, and difficulty.

There is not much else you could say about the game; it is not challenging but it is a bit frustrating. Why? Here are three complains that I have for this game.

• Well, for starters there are some part of a the maps available that you could not put roads on it. There is a purple highlight; where although there is enough space, the game would just not let you construct roads, which entails buildings not being connected with the rest of your city.

As you could see I could not continue my residential area here because the game does not want me too. 🙁

• 2. Another frustrating thing is your cash flow. When building a city you start with 400,000 cash. In some cases this is a large sum of cash; but it will dwindle fast. And if you are not a bit anal with looking through your revenue and expense tab; you will be in red in no time. This will prompt you to trade some of your excess resources to Omnicorp, and not being able to trade to other cities you have in the globe.

• Yes that is right! When you play  the game, you will find out that the most frustrating  thing is being unable to trade with cities that you built around interacting with your other cites because of a negative cashflow. For example, I have right now two cities, one an agriculture-food heavy city, and another a fuel-electricity heavy city. I wanted to trade the the food from the former to the latter, but the problem arises because my latter could only produce positive cash flow when I play it and trade some fuel first to gain a bit of money. Once you log it out the city, all trades that you made will be cancelled and my fuel-electricity producing city will be back in red.

Other than those three major complains that I have, everything seems to be okay for me. Adding a few buildings/DLC might help the game but overall the game mechanics is great.

If they could add a sandbox mode; even better.

The video presentation was outstanding. I have no complains whatsoever on how  Cities XXL is graphically sound and beautiful. Audio, on the other hand sucks big time; as you are stuck with an annoying elevator sound for life. Yes! For life!

Evening and Morning comparison of a close up view of Cities XXL

Cities XXL is a mediocre to a good game. If you have not bought the Cities XL Platinum version; they you are in a treat for a good ol’ city builder game. It offers numerous pre-made maps but you will not be able to create an idealistic map for your gameplay (which sucks). It is a bit challenging to fill up one map, but you will find yourself playing this game for numerous hours trying to figure out the best layout for your city. I found myself replaying my cities again and again because of wrong turns that I could not undo.

Cities XXL is available on Steam for 1000Php.

Minimum Requirements