So, Cities XL. The Simcity 5 that has maps ten times the size but with excessive memory leaks and low complexity playstyles.
And, best of all...
Plus, there's no DRM. That's probably the selling point at the moment.
I'm terrible at explanations, so
here is a gameplay video that showcases the game reasonably well. Ignore the penis.
The graphics are very nice and the gameplay is quite a lot of fun, despite having to pay far less attention to detail compared to other games like Simcity 4. There's a few gamebreaking bugs, such as the random memory leak that occurs after no more than an hour or so of play and when you get a certain number of population. Plus, the game has horrible multi-core support. Yeah, not great for a game with this kind of processing potential.
I managed to find
a fix for one of the lag issues, and it definitely makes a difference. The lack of multi-core usage still hinders the game significantly, but with some tweaking the game is more than playable.
Each year, a new version is released as a sort of update. Cities XL Platinum (the 2013 version) is on steam for $29.99, but if you own a previous version you get 85% off your purchase, taking the price down to $4.50. Not bad if you ask me.