SimCity™ 3000 Unlimited

This is the single best SimCity game. The iteration that followed was worse. And the newest is pretty terrible. Some people claim that the SimCity games are impossible in the late-game but this one seems pretty doable at metropolis size and density. I've dropped several hundred hours in it.

It's got it all: Style! Humor! Music! Flare! Disasters! Scenarios! Other stuff! Seriously, though, this one outshines the rest. It improves upon 2000 in many ways: nost just graphically, buy through play mechanics and dynamics as well. Unlike SC4, it has personality and soul. SC4, unfortunately, suffered from the EA syndrome where they buy a company, milk the IP for money, then liquidate everything after the initial cash grab (all of The Sims integration was just to sell more boxes of The Sims). Don't even get me started on whatever SC5 was supposed to be. SC3K is just one of those games that is fun, start to finish, all the way through, it's enjoyable— even when your treasury is in the red and everything is on fire, it finds a way to make you giggle. The news ticker is perhaps the best part of all. You'll be laughing the whole time you're building. I hated the music at first, but over the years it grew on me. It's a sort of techno-infused jazz that is simultaneously Art Deco and Post-Modernist. As others have mentioned, it doesn't have the complexity of SC4 in terms of region management and other things, which I didn't particularly care for. SC3K is far more attractive than four as well and features a wider area of visuals and building diversities. Your cities feel real and they grow and evolve along with you. No two ever really look the same no matter how much you try. No matter how many times you've played, it will still challenge you and every time you try something new, it'll push right back and make you do it better and faster. It loves to make you second guess your expenditures. I've been playing this game off and on since 1999 and I will probably play it off and on until I die. It's just one of those rare games that holds up to the test of time. You can't consider yourself a real gamer until you've played it, IMHO. You can skip the rest of the series, but this one is a must in anyone's gaming education.

When I tried SimCity 3000 back in 2000s, this was beyond anything I could imagine in terms of creating your own city. Even today I believe this game to be the pinnacle of the genre with so many aspects of gameplay and design being on such a great level. Even without any additions, SC3K offers a variety of opportunities to start a community as you see it: a small town or a large megapolis, editing the terrain, type of landscape and setting the general layout for the streets, quarters, government buildings and sights among many other things. Oh, it has so many famous places of interest from around the world! 😍 With SC3K Holiday Theme and Unlimited you got a chance to celebrate holidays, build news structures, set European or Asian feel and do much more. I also enjoyed the Architect tool, coming with this game: it allows you to recreate your own house or buildings from your home town. Unfortunately the game isn't stable if you upload too many new structures at once, but it's still fun. 😎

I liked pretty much this game as a child. Is easy to learn, have a nice set of colors and pixel art, relaxing music, charismatic characters. Maybe it doesn't have many options like city builders from these days, but if you like the genere you can get engaged to this game, What i am disappointed from the GOG Version it doesn't bring all the original translations, like Spanish. The game is not recommended if your language is not in the game, because part of the enjoyment is reading what your sims have to say of you mandate, and there is a lot to read. The following post teaches who you can get translations in spanish and portuguese. Thanks to the guys from the post. https://www.gog.com/forum/simcity_series/sc3000_language_availability

The game has some old-school clunkiness that makes it a little... underdeveloped for today’s standards. It’s ludicrously hard to place water pumps for no good reason; editing the landscape can be a faff because it’s all grid based; you can only make straight roads for a similar reason; the news ticker regularly contradicts itself as it struggles to keep pace with the simulation... if you want a cleaner, slicker experience, there are more modern, accessible choices on the market today. But... I just keep coming back! I played this when I was very young and owned it on disc, and could never get a functioning city together back then. But it had so much personality — the silly writing, the advisor system that gives you conflicting bureaucrats views on any given topic, the click with every button press even, and of course the absolutely phenomenal soundtrack... it has some spark that the newer games lack, and it’s easy to become engrossed and lose hours at a time setting up the perfect city, scrambling together funds and experimenting with new structures or deals. Maybe it’s just nostalgia, but I just can’t convince myself to stop playing. Highly recommended.