this is a good strategy game

Very chill game, simple, straightforward. The campaigns aren't really my thing but I can spend hour after hour in sandbox mode, just following individual characters as they go about their business in the city.

From the people who brought you Cities Skylines, this is not a city builder, but a public transit management game.

It's a really solid and fun game. It's still my favorite of the Colossal Order games. I like the original more than the sequel or CS.

I come back to this simulation about every six months. It never disappoints. No, it's not updated often like the other big names. But it doesn't treat you like you should know the twentieth digit of pi. Or who shot JR. Or how many children Tina Turner & I have.

There are maybe 20 cities here with different size maps. 5 modes of transportation. You can give your company your choice of icons, colors, & name. The years pass and new techs are researched, for new vehicles. There are fires, car accidents, and your own vehicles break down. You can take out loans. You can set your own prices for tickets, wages, & utilities. You don't need to run your trams or subways on roads. It also has a nice background vibe.

In short, one of the closest simulations to this, believe it or not, is (erased).

No mysteries here. No adult visual novel. And thank God, no worthless childish anime garbage.

I didn't receive this for free. But I'd probably pay $10 and play it while skipping DVD previews. Yes, I still have DVD, but 706 hours ago, that was hi-tech.

Compared to Cities in motion 2, I found myself way to less stressed with this, as the micromanagement aspect of CIM2, sometimes gets on my nerve. But there are some features in CIM2 which are better.

But as for the game's feel, CIM1 is far more realistic than CIM2. The city layouts are realistic. And the maps usually reflect their timeperiods very well. Some levels take place in very early years, and the layout for the same city will be very different to the later years. If we take our time to build networks, we can see the city developing ( like airports coming up gradually ).

With respect to the campaign, I just managed to finish the Great Europe campaign after 34 hours, only to realize it is only one of the campaigns. The thing about campaigns in CIM1 is, it ends abruptly sometimes when you least expect it. In some maps i grind for 5 to 6 hours without a goal, and out of nowhere it suddenly ends, and i have no idea how.

Also the brilliant thing about CIM2's campaigns are that the levels are interlinked, in the sense, the lines you built for a city will be intact when you come back to the same city later in the same campaign. Sadly thats not the case here in CIM1. You build monster networks for a city, only to realize it is completely wiped out the next time you come back there. But a clean slate sometimes helps to correct some mistakes.

Overall, as a transportation tycoon game lover, this and CIM2 were absolutely delightful. But beware they can be extremely time consuming.

CiM is a transport management simulator that can be fun if you don't get too hung up about its weirdly uneven quality and quirks. In some aspects it's great, in others it can be quite frustrating.

First of all the scope is strictly on public transit in a city. There is no cargo shipping, no industry chains. This allows for a more detailed simulation of passenger traffic. There are several different types of citizen classes and every single citizen has a separately simulated set of destinations. The task is to build a popular and profitable transport network by covering a reasonable chunk of these destinations with a good enough service.

Because of its design the game is 90% about building metro lines. You still have a lot of freedom about how you set up your network but its backbone will be the metro in almost every case. Deviating from that usually ends in disaster unless you are an expert of the game. Many of the negative reviews are by folks who unleashed buses into heavy traffic and then were offended that it didn't work and just made things worse. There's no shame in reading a guide or thinking a bit before starting to build. The game doesn't work exactly as real life but it's logical/reasonable within its constraints. If you get overwhelmed in huge cities I advise trying smaller ones first which have less road traffic and allow buses and trams to shine more. Ulm is probably the best for a laid back experience.

For me the biggest positive standout of CiM are the cities/maps. They are mostly well designed, a reasonable approximation of their real counterparts with the most iconic landmarks in place and even real district, street and square names present. Cities grow over time in a pre-set way and not randomly. Unlike in CiM2 train stations and airports are present and are among the most important hubs on the map, as they should be.

The biggest negative has to be the vehicles. Their stats are basically random with plenty of illogical stuff like some solo buses having more capacity than articulated or double-decker buses and the like. DLC vehicles generally tend to have higher capacity and better desirability. In some DLCs they didn't bother to set an introduction date for the vehicles so you can cheese your way through the early era scenarios with modern DLC vehicles if you wish. And they didn't even manage to keep to a single scale. Especially vehicles from the last few DLCs tend to be huge and look silly next to the others.

Other issues in short:
Interface is a bit cumbersome. Switching between menus and getting things done requires a few too many clicks usually.
The tasks in the campaigns / scenarios feel a bit random and too often are just distractions instead of nudging the player towards a reasonable network. At least you can quickly skip most of them with temporary lines.
City growth can erase parts of your infrastructure if it was in the way (which is fine) but you get no warning about it (absolutely not fine).
Some vehicles have a tendency to get stuck randomly for no reason. Boats, helicopters and the Vagabondo Satellite tram are the most common culprits.
There are 2-3 bugged tasks in the grand campaign that tend to not show up. You might have to edit 2-3 files to get 2 of the grand campaign related achievements (Amsterdam Aid, Veteran of Vienna).
There's no timetabling, vehicles (especially buses and trams) are prone to bunching up. And every time you modify a line you have to space out the vehicles on it manually again yourself. (Example: If you restart a line with 3 vehicles the game will plop them down in the first 3 stops. Which is a problem if the line has say 15 stops and you'd like the vehicles to follow each other in 5 stop intervals.)

Thankfully the game is modding friendly and even though most fan sites are long gone you can find links to several mods on the Steam forums. Some stuff like modifying vehicle stats is so easy that anybody can do it for themselves with a bit of patience and reading.

In conclusion CiM is a solid entry in the transport management genre. If you are a fan of the genre you'll most likely find your fun in this one. (Though you probably already played it a long time ago.:D) If you are new then this is not the best introduction I fear. Though if you are willing to read a guide or two it can be mastered without prior familiarity.

The OG Cities game. Still as fun as it always has been, if perhaps a bit simple and easy.

Love this game
fun and easy to play

Recommended.

This game is a decent transportation network sim. The graphics and audio are good with decent looking cities and traffic. The UI and tools are fairly easy to work with and the scenarios have nice missions to keep it interesting. It's starting to show its age and there are a few quirks in the simulation, but if you really enjoy these types of games, this is an easy addition for your collection.