The first notable thing about Cities XL is that you get a whole globe of sites to pick from rather than a little square of a world. Different sites have different potential for tourism and the use of resources. An interesting feature is the option of which kinds of roads you would like your city to have. I of course usually choose English roads, on account of living in England. Regardless, though, the signs are always very American and often facing the wrong way for the drivers on that side.
The game is amazingly detailed and at first the menus on the screen may go slightly over your head (or maybe it's just me). You can adjust the time of day and angle of the sun (or lack of sun), or set the day to cycle through continuously.
Using the menu on the right you can check which areas are fertile for farming, pumping water, and which areas are good places to put hotels for tourists. Some of these areas may be quite far apart, but the span of your city will need to accommodate them.
The menu at the bottom left allows you to build, although most things are beyond your reach until you surpass certain population markers, which can be tricky.
You mustn't build too much at once. This game definitely isn't like SimCity in the regard of building a lot of things, being in the red and just zoning more population areas, waiting for people to move in and for their taxes to bring you back into the black. Cities XL doesn't work like that. If you get into the red, you'll likely continue to keep spiralling deeper into it.
Cities XL is tricky in the regard that supply needs to meet demand pretty much exactly, otherwise things will be off balance. If you put down more shopping or manufacturing areas than people want, the lots will remain empty but you'll continue to lose money for having built them. Increasing the residential areas doesn't always solve the problem either, so it's advisable to only build something when it's being asked for.
Areas are divided by class, and the different classes will need different things in order to be happy. Everyone seems to want a school to be built within fifty feet of their front door, which of course is neither spatially nor financially feasible. The more wealthy people there are in your city, the greater the demand will be for certain job positions and the buildings that create them (and the greater the unhappiness will be if you fail to satiate them). However, you won't be able to implement these job positions without passing certain population thresholds for that skill sector, and of course, more people from that class will not move there, or may even be moving out, because such jobs are not available, so it can be a bit of a pain in the ass to get right.
Getting roads to connect can be difficult to achieve for reasons I can't quite fathom (especially the wooden walkways to houses on stilts) and I still can't figure out how to make bridges that don't look ridiculous.
The details on buildings and houses are certainly surprising and the game is really quite beautiful. It is certainly a pleasure to sit back and enjoy looking at what you've created. As long as you're not haemorrhaging money.
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