For what it's worth, I have a machine with less than the recommended specs, and as long as you don't mind spending a little time downgrading settings to Medium/Low, I have a fairly playable framerate, usually between 30 and 50. I've only built a couple cities up to 25,000 population, but it's still been fun.

You won't be disappointed by the road tools, they are everything they promised and more. In 15 minutes I can make interchanges that look like I pulled them out of a mod pack. It's obscene. Traffic control is decent for vanilla, but if you were a power user of TMPE in CS1, you might be a bit underwhelmed.

Overall though, there is a desperate shortage of maps and unique assets. As for the game's systems - economy, education, land value, industry - I can see how they were intended to work, but it seems like a lot of boilerplate was added to make the game playable at release. With time - and mod support, Dear Lord - I think it will greatly improve.

Edit: Infrastructurist is a great showing of how the game still has legs.