I love it! I've found it to be too "easy" though from an economic standpoint, as budget constraints usually sunk most of my fast growing cities in SC4 and I had to be very cognizant of the services:income ratio. Cities Skylines offers a challenge much more controlled by city management itself, centered almost entirely on traffic management. All city services' viability is also tied to this traffic paradigm, so you end up being a traffic planner, rather than a city planner to great effect.
I do like districts, the organic nature of city building that doesn't rely on grids, it's very very fun to build cities in this game, and has finally brought me to put away SC4 for good (it had a good run!). I need to play a bit more, but I do want some more challenge as so far it's extremely easy to have the income far outpace expenses even with full city services running in a smallish city.
I bought it at release. I love the game. It's the best city building game of the modern era by far. But it annoys me no end that there's no grid option, and that the curved roads aren't perfect arcs but have starting and ending curves in them. It makes concentric curves not line up correctly. My perfect cities aren't perfect! AHH! Maybe I'm just obsessive.
[–] true_north_blend ago
I played it once. Everyone in my city was so sick, that I had to keep building hospitals. Eventually he only traffic on the road was ambulances and there were traffic jams everywhere. I couldn't figure out what ailed them, so I resigned as mayor.