This SSD-requirement page is more useful when it explains whether an SSD is merely an optimization or effectively close to a practical requirement, and how HDD users should set expectations instead of flattening the answer into one capacity number and a simple yes-or-no. For current players, the practical questions are whether they can tolerate longer loading, hitching during city transitions, and whether their real bottleneck is storage, memory, or graphics throughput.
A safer way to read it is:
- Treat an SSD as a major stability factor for loading, streaming, and smoother play, not just as a luxury upgrade
- An HDD may still run the game, but the difference becomes very noticeable if you are sensitive to load times and hitching
- Whether you 'must' upgrade should be judged against your tolerance for waiting, your visual expectations, and the rest of your machine rather than one hardware label alone
So this page now focuses on the judgment logic behind SSD-versus-HDD experience instead of preserving one fixed hardware recommendation as the only answer.