I do take your point, but my feeling is that a game - whether free or paid for - should be, well, fun. Whereas there are some aspects of this game that are extraordinarily frustrating, seemingly deliberately, and seemingly as a back-door way of charging players (many of whom, ironically, would probably be more than happy to pay upfront for a true mobile SimCity game).
I definitely recommend checking out 'real' SimCity; it's a wonderful game (I particularly like SimCity 4). I think if you play that for a while, you may start to see some of what people here are finding so frustrating about this game. Actual SimCity is incredibly complex and rich in terms of balancing all the different aspects of your city - you can lose yourself in it for hours without ever finding yourself twiddling your thumbs, and I think that's part of what people who have played and enjoyed it in the past are finding irritating about SimCity BuildIt.
