A game like Cities:Skylines gets an amazing score like 9.6 <--- how many people left criticism or negative opinions and how many had been deleted to keep up the artificial good score? Now you know HOW and WHY games get such amazing scores, because someone is rigging results.
Do I think Metacritic is a reliable site? No. Do I think rigging happens? Absolutely. That said, have you stopped to consider maybe most people do think Cities:Skylines is that good? I plan on starting it back up as soon as I get home, but I can tell you so far I'm quite pleased with it. Is it perfect? No. But no game ever is, however that in and of itself makes for higher reviews.
I also played the old SimCity's and loved them. But EA succeeded in completely destroying the franchise. SimCity 5 was such a complete disaster that fans of the genre are desperate for something to fill that niche. So, when you set the bar that low, it doesn't take much to get glowing reviews. I won't lie, just the fact that I was able to install it and immediately start playing almost made me cry with happiness. That's going to artificially inflate early reviews.
I agree the UI needs some work, things definitely aren't as clear as they should be. However, lets look at the things it does FAR better than it's competition:
- It doesn't rely on overloaded servers.
- It didn't take a week to actually be able to play.
- No performance issues (that I've run into so far)
- It has a save button
- Far larger map size
- It doesn't depend on an online economy
- It runs stable (I haven't had any crashes anyways)
I find it funny that you mention you liked the older Sim City's then complain about the game coming to a halt while you build power lines and lay pipes. I distinctly recall having to do that in nearly exactly the same fashion in SimCity 2000. In fact, so far the game very much feels like an older SimCity to me and I mean that in a good way. All I'm missing is a tornado ripping through my town.
Most of your comments so far make it sound like you simply don't like city builders. Or at least that's how they sound to me. And if that's how your review sounded, I probably would have deleted it too.