Seems the only BAD THING I have heard is City size is EXTREMELY small. Might need to have two cities in a region to make up for it, limiting who plays in a region by half. 
REDDIT SAYS:
I've done about 15 hours in the Dev Beta now and thought I'd share my feelings so far.
The game really is great - it does feel like a good quality product, despite some shortfalls it's overall excellent.
TRANSPORT Laying roads feels very similar to CXL - except Maxis has done a better job. Being able to draw even curves, perfect circles - as well as dotted lines appearing on the ground to guide you all adds up to a good system. Being able to upgrade roads is a valuable tool, and GLR-in-avenue is very handy.
The traffic data view is a little more natural, in that you only see a snapshot of what's going on at that moment. In SC4, you saw day-long congestion data, in SC, you only see what's happening right now. So, if you want to see how your main avenue is doing at rush hour, you'll have to wait for rush hour.
Bus termini are an excellent touch, you are able to build large termini which also cater for intercity bus lines, so your sims can catch buses between cities. Your bus termini and depots can be upgraded, so you can add more garages to increase the size of your fleet.
Unfortunately, there are some shortfalls here. You cannot adjust road height as in CXL, which makes it difficult to iron out lumps and bumps in the roads. There's no one way streets, and no highways (that you can build, anyway). Also, I was disappointed to see that buses are used in the same way as SC4, in that you place bus stops and buses travel between them autonomously (with the exception you must now have bus depots/termini). Also, buses appear to be free to board (although I might be mistaken here).
CIVIC AMENITIES Police stations, clinics, fire stations, etc are all implemented excellently. Basic stations can first be built, which gives you the building and a fleet of 1 or 2 vehicles. Additional facilities (such as patient wards or prison cells) can be added later using the excellent modules system.
The operation of these systems is equally excellent. Sick people will drive to the hospitals, and your ambulances will go and collect injured people. Of course, if your fleet isn't up to the job, those injured people can die waiting for an ambulance. Sims will stay in the hospital for some time then will be released. Policemen sims will patrol the streets, and actively pursue criminals who will be detained in the police station for a set time. What I particularly like here, is how sims are criminals - crime isn't committed randomly, people with criminal tendencies start with petty crime and will escalate to things like murder. With fire, crews respond by themselves when a fire starts. They respond in much the same way as before - but the whole package feels a lot more convincing this time round. I particularly like watching emergency vehicles negotiate city traffic, and how cars will go around parked ambulances/police cars/fire trucks.
Adding the relevant department to your city hall will give you more options for upgrades and buildings. (While we are on the subject, you can add departments to city hall to get further upgrades for relevant items - plop the Department of Transport to get access to train stations, for example).
There is little to say against the game in this respect really. It all works as you'd expect it to.
UTILITIES This is one of my favourite parts of the game. All utilities are handled by roads - no laying pipes or power lines. Dealing with sewage is a new and interesting aspect to the game. I enjoyed listening to the gross sounds the sewage outlet pipe made when I first placed one.
Waste collection has been improved immeasurably in this new release. You place a city dump (which you can expand), and are given a few garbage trucks, which will make their way round the city collecting trash from each trash generating premises. If you open the data view, you will see the trash level at each property lower as a garbage truck visits. Once their rounds are complete, the trucks return to the dump to offload the garbage and await the next collection round. This system is absolutely excellent and very rewarding when you've got a well managed system.
Water and power work as very similar systems. You place a source at the best location (a windy hilltop for a wind power station, or a high part of the water table for a water tower, for example), and the power/water is distributed along the road network. Consumers are served on a first-come-first-served basis, so homes and businesses closest to the stations have the most reliable supply. When demand outstrips supply, those at the furthest reaches of the network are the first to lose their supply. The supply recedes along the road network, until capacity is increased. You can add further wind turbines to your wind plant, for example - or secure a supply from another city in the region (as you can also do with police, ambulances, fire service, garbage collection and other services).
Again, its very hard to fault this system - it works brilliantly. My only complaints here would be that the range of these systems are very poor. It might be an idea for substations to increase the range, for example.
STABILITY Not so good here, but we are talking about beta software. Occasionally, I've had problems where on trying to load a city the game states there has been a problem, and I am returned to the main menu. When this happens, the game must be rebooted or the game will hang at the loading screen when trying to boot a different city.
I've had one crash to desktop error, too, which was a .NET problem.
There are still a number of graphical glitches throughout the game, most prevalant are missing road textures on some intersections, and how terrain can 'cover' roads when zoomed out.
LOOK AND FEEL Feels a little strange at first, and I've only just started to get into the swing of it. Feels homely, though. Some reused sounds from SC4 as well as Simlish speak and Maxis humour reminds you that you are playing a SimCity franchise game.
Once you have become accustomed to the game, it hooks you in and is very playable - much like SC4. You can play by laying a grid pattern city, plopping down power/services as and when demanded, or you can play the game to its full potential and run a city to its full potential - so its accessible and engaging at the same time.
I particularly like how you can zoom into region view on the fly, to be able to setup neighbour deals, etc, and instantly zoom back into your current city.
However, a major problem here is city size. Whilst Maxis keep saying how cities are the equivalent of a medium SC4 city, it in no way feels like this at all. I'd certainly say that cities need to be at least double the size. I understood points made about restrictions on city sizes being dictated by computer performance benchmarks - but I don't buy this at all. I have been playing quite happily at 30fps on my low-spec system on low settings, and 15fps on high settings (in developed cities). I think it should be up to the player how large his city should be. For example - I avoid large cities in CXL due to performance issues.
This aside, the game runs beautifully. I run a low-spec system and the game runs upwards of 30fps (if you are prepared to sacrifice the gorgeous lighting effects). The game still runs to an acceptable level on a low spec system with decent settings if you don't mind sitting below 20fps. It looks beautiful - camera zoom effects when you move about are really nice, and the overall look is excellent. Being able to set a colour tone to match the city is a nice touch, too. I can't say too much about tilt shift as I've set it to minimum.
The music really ties it all together - you already know about this system but it really does feel better in the flesh.
MULTIPLAYER I've not played about with this yet, but I can certainly say that as a single player game, this works absolutely fine. You can play by yourself in your own region - and if you hash a city or a region up, just abandon it and start afresh.
Just as long as there isn't a network issue - which could be a problem in the future. I hope that there is an API or something so people can host their own SimCity servers if/when EA can't be bothered to anymore.
REDDIT SAYS:
I've done about 15 hours in the Dev Beta now and thought I'd share my feelings so far.
The game really is great - it does feel like a good quality product, despite some shortfalls it's overall excellent.
TRANSPORT Laying roads feels very similar to CXL - except Maxis has done a better job. Being able to draw even curves, perfect circles - as well as dotted lines appearing on the ground to guide you all adds up to a good system. Being able to upgrade roads is a valuable tool, and GLR-in-avenue is very handy.
The traffic data view is a little more natural, in that you only see a snapshot of what's going on at that moment. In SC4, you saw day-long congestion data, in SC, you only see what's happening right now. So, if you want to see how your main avenue is doing at rush hour, you'll have to wait for rush hour.
Bus termini are an excellent touch, you are able to build large termini which also cater for intercity bus lines, so your sims can catch buses between cities. Your bus termini and depots can be upgraded, so you can add more garages to increase the size of your fleet.
Unfortunately, there are some shortfalls here. You cannot adjust road height as in CXL, which makes it difficult to iron out lumps and bumps in the roads. There's no one way streets, and no highways (that you can build, anyway). Also, I was disappointed to see that buses are used in the same way as SC4, in that you place bus stops and buses travel between them autonomously (with the exception you must now have bus depots/termini). Also, buses appear to be free to board (although I might be mistaken here).
CIVIC AMENITIES Police stations, clinics, fire stations, etc are all implemented excellently. Basic stations can first be built, which gives you the building and a fleet of 1 or 2 vehicles. Additional facilities (such as patient wards or prison cells) can be added later using the excellent modules system.
The operation of these systems is equally excellent. Sick people will drive to the hospitals, and your ambulances will go and collect injured people. Of course, if your fleet isn't up to the job, those injured people can die waiting for an ambulance. Sims will stay in the hospital for some time then will be released. Policemen sims will patrol the streets, and actively pursue criminals who will be detained in the police station for a set time. What I particularly like here, is how sims are criminals - crime isn't committed randomly, people with criminal tendencies start with petty crime and will escalate to things like murder. With fire, crews respond by themselves when a fire starts. They respond in much the same way as before - but the whole package feels a lot more convincing this time round. I particularly like watching emergency vehicles negotiate city traffic, and how cars will go around parked ambulances/police cars/fire trucks.
Adding the relevant department to your city hall will give you more options for upgrades and buildings. (While we are on the subject, you can add departments to city hall to get further upgrades for relevant items - plop the Department of Transport to get access to train stations, for example).
There is little to say against the game in this respect really. It all works as you'd expect it to.
UTILITIES This is one of my favourite parts of the game. All utilities are handled by roads - no laying pipes or power lines. Dealing with sewage is a new and interesting aspect to the game. I enjoyed listening to the gross sounds the sewage outlet pipe made when I first placed one.
Waste collection has been improved immeasurably in this new release. You place a city dump (which you can expand), and are given a few garbage trucks, which will make their way round the city collecting trash from each trash generating premises. If you open the data view, you will see the trash level at each property lower as a garbage truck visits. Once their rounds are complete, the trucks return to the dump to offload the garbage and await the next collection round. This system is absolutely excellent and very rewarding when you've got a well managed system.
Water and power work as very similar systems. You place a source at the best location (a windy hilltop for a wind power station, or a high part of the water table for a water tower, for example), and the power/water is distributed along the road network. Consumers are served on a first-come-first-served basis, so homes and businesses closest to the stations have the most reliable supply. When demand outstrips supply, those at the furthest reaches of the network are the first to lose their supply. The supply recedes along the road network, until capacity is increased. You can add further wind turbines to your wind plant, for example - or secure a supply from another city in the region (as you can also do with police, ambulances, fire service, garbage collection and other services).
Again, its very hard to fault this system - it works brilliantly. My only complaints here would be that the range of these systems are very poor. It might be an idea for substations to increase the range, for example.
STABILITY Not so good here, but we are talking about beta software. Occasionally, I've had problems where on trying to load a city the game states there has been a problem, and I am returned to the main menu. When this happens, the game must be rebooted or the game will hang at the loading screen when trying to boot a different city.
I've had one crash to desktop error, too, which was a .NET problem.
There are still a number of graphical glitches throughout the game, most prevalant are missing road textures on some intersections, and how terrain can 'cover' roads when zoomed out.
LOOK AND FEEL Feels a little strange at first, and I've only just started to get into the swing of it. Feels homely, though. Some reused sounds from SC4 as well as Simlish speak and Maxis humour reminds you that you are playing a SimCity franchise game.
Once you have become accustomed to the game, it hooks you in and is very playable - much like SC4. You can play by laying a grid pattern city, plopping down power/services as and when demanded, or you can play the game to its full potential and run a city to its full potential - so its accessible and engaging at the same time.
I particularly like how you can zoom into region view on the fly, to be able to setup neighbour deals, etc, and instantly zoom back into your current city.
However, a major problem here is city size. Whilst Maxis keep saying how cities are the equivalent of a medium SC4 city, it in no way feels like this at all. I'd certainly say that cities need to be at least double the size. I understood points made about restrictions on city sizes being dictated by computer performance benchmarks - but I don't buy this at all. I have been playing quite happily at 30fps on my low-spec system on low settings, and 15fps on high settings (in developed cities). I think it should be up to the player how large his city should be. For example - I avoid large cities in CXL due to performance issues.
This aside, the game runs beautifully. I run a low-spec system and the game runs upwards of 30fps (if you are prepared to sacrifice the gorgeous lighting effects). The game still runs to an acceptable level on a low spec system with decent settings if you don't mind sitting below 20fps. It looks beautiful - camera zoom effects when you move about are really nice, and the overall look is excellent. Being able to set a colour tone to match the city is a nice touch, too. I can't say too much about tilt shift as I've set it to minimum.
The music really ties it all together - you already know about this system but it really does feel better in the flesh.
MULTIPLAYER I've not played about with this yet, but I can certainly say that as a single player game, this works absolutely fine. You can play by yourself in your own region - and if you hash a city or a region up, just abandon it and start afresh.
Just as long as there isn't a network issue - which could be a problem in the future. I hope that there is an API or something so people can host their own SimCity servers if/when EA can't be bothered to anymore.