Pros: In the year two-thousaaaand! One of the best city building/management sims ever made, and set the standard for the simulation genre going forward. Two major aspects of the standard that this game popularized were the isometric/dimetric perspective for the land grid, where you could now see just how tall some buildings were compared to others making for visually exciting and captivating cities! And the other aspect, the terrain deformation, where you could build mountains, valleys, tunnels, waterfalls, and landmasses of any size you wished! The world was yours to create! Otherwise, this game did more and did it better as a successor to the original SimCity. Management options expanded as you could create waterworks piping and plumbing systems, highways, and general quality of life additions like clicking and dragging to make roadways. And another big gimmick of the game, was time, meaning, the further in time you go, the more advanced technology and architecture is available for you to create! Leading up to the "future" era where you could build gigantic towers called Arcologies that contained massive populations and ecosystems all in one building! But with the optimistic future also comes the pessimistic one, as disasters still play a major role in this game, with one terrorizing new menace being a giant one-eyed robotic spider that crushes the city in typical movie monster fashion (though sadly, no Godzilla or Bowser type monster here) Generally speaking, it's a better SimCity in every way.

Cons: The additional management options do complicate the game ever so much more than the original, I recall when I first played the game, the waterworks construction underground was a bit confusing for myself. And, I know it's not exactly fair to criticize it here, but the music, while fine, is nowhere near as whimsical and delightful as the SimCity SNES soundtrack. Hard to compete there though. And a minor nitpick, that UFO that you see on the box there? Not in the game. There is "space travel", but never a UFO, at least to my knowledge. Strange thing to advertise front and center on the box...

What it means to me: This was the first SimCity game I had ever played, first sim/management game period, I suppose. And it glued me to the PC longer than any previous PC game ever had, it was quite the sandbox experience!! I recall the version I had of the game, included an editor where you could design your own buildings in an MSpaint type sofware, and I found this incredibly charming, as I'd try to create the "tallest building ever" or recreate buildings from my home city... which, I did not have the artistic ability to achieve at that age, haha! Everything ended up looking like play-dough towers plopped into an otherwise gorgeous metropolis, hehe. Still, I had a blast with this one!