Yes the game is fine now. All the people that whine over it still are whining by the problems it was suffering mostly from the first couple weeks and have hardly played since. Unfortunately their sickness about the game got so great that they have fooled themselves into thinking the game is still messed up despite the game has been working fine for several months now and getting better with each patch (another patch due in August). There are still a small handfull of glitches that I come across but they are really not that big of a deal. If something tends to not be working right, I find another way to do it or sometimes reloading the city kicks things back into gear.
The other group of whiners is only about the DRM connection and wanting bigger maps. To have those two things being the only reason you hate the game is pretty silly. Yeah the DRM thing sucks but how often is your computer not connected to the internet? I am not going to let the fact that I am unable to play the game on a plane or when traveling stop me from playing a game Ive always loved. For those times, Ill play Angry Birds or something on my phone.
And yeah the maps feel a little small once you really start building up but what people havent realized is Maxis's goal when making the game is that you and friends, or you yourself occupy several cities in the same region and make them work together to make all your cities get bigger. I find myself going between several cities in the same region to send money, services or supplies to each other for things to build up. So instead of having one big mega huge map, you get a number of smaller maps that you can make all work together. Although I think this was Maxis's intention, I feel they were pretty bad about marketing the game to be played this way
If your still worried about getting the game because of those problems, its still a great deal at this price and very worth it. My only problem is that my computer doesnt support the game in the full awesome detail that I see from video and screenshots
Also if it helps, look at the reviews for it. The more recent the reviews, the better rating they gave the game in most cases. They all started out bad but as they put out fixes, the game became more playable and better and people were taking notice