Cities: Skylines 2

Let me start by saying I have almost 2K hours on this game and had many more on CS1. I will choose this over CS1 everytime. After using the road and infrastructure tools in this game, I can no longer go back unfortunately. Also the graphics on this game are amazing.
With that said, I heavily modded CS1 as well as CS2 and probably would not play as much without mods. Here is my take so far with this game:
1. Change the Camera Settings - the default settings are not optimized and I hate the motion blur, changing these will make it look so much better and keep your game running well if you don't have the fastest PC
2. Use a few necessary mods to fix functional bugs which still remain and/or ones to make building easier or better looking, my favorites:
- Move It
- Traffic Lanes Mod
- Find it (better then developement mode)
- Many other surfaces/RICO type assets
3. Play sandbox with unlimited money and unlocked assets or Easy mode as the Normal mode seems to bug a bit on Economy for some reason - hope this will be fixed soon. If you are struggling getting going, I have found that using the Geothermal Energy plant over groundwater is a huge export of Energy and Money and will help you early on if you are struggling to balance your budget.
4. As you start building constantly check different popular mods as you will find there may be some aspect missing and mods will fill that hole
As for what I would like to see in upcoming updates:
- I want the economy issues to be ironed out as sandbox is fun but having to balance a budget is also a huge favorite of mine in these simulation games
- I have found that the cities (although mugh nicer looking) dont have the same energy and life to them with people using our assets as we saw with CS1
- Stadiums and Sports Arenas need to be more like CS1 where there was a game scheduled and this creates traffic to that arena with people coming to the game and/or leaving the game
- We need bikes as this is a huge part of infrastructure (bike lanes) in almost any city and am wondering why this is missing
Overall I have seriously been enjoying this game (hence 2k hrs) but there is still so much opportunity for this to be an even more amazing game. I really hope they continue to improve it and that people stop hating on it so much.

This is a complicated review for me to write as a prolific city builder player since I could use a computer.
The PROS of CS2:
- The roadbuilding and other infrastructure tools are top-notch and easily the best in any city builder. Certain mods make it even better, like lane direction tool.
- The mod library is growing weekly and it is making the experience better.
- If you have a half-way decent PC, this game is technically better than CS1. Graphics, sounds, simulation, etc... and you can grow larger cities per amount of PC horsepower used... CS1 came out in the quad-core CPU era, and this game is in the 6 - 8 core mainstream PC era and if you have those resources, this game will use all of it.
- The simulation is more in-depth than CS1, but it is half-baked because Colossal/Paradox needed more development time for this game. There are a lot of nuanced characteristics which dictate how citizens own houses in the game, for example, but Colossal/Paradox are always tweaking those variables in each patch because of how unprepared it was.
The CONS of CS2:
- This game needed easily another year of development time. Like I mentioned, the simulation has more variables to it, but they weren't properly implemented. Each patch tweaks these variables to make the game better, but the devs are kinda playing a game of whack-a-mole because each change they make has cascading effects.
- If you have a low-end PC, don't bother running the game. Like I stated in the PROS section, if your PC has some oomph behind it, you can and will be able to build BIG. If you're on a PC from the CS1 era - quad core, GTX 1060, 16GB RAM era, this game will run like poop. The game picks up very well when you give it a Ryzen 2000+ 8-core CPU (or Intel 9700k 8-core CPU), 32GB RAM and an RTX 3060/6700 XT or better GPU. I run this game on a Ryzen 6900HS/RTX 3070 Ti/32GB RAM laptop and it's pretty good.
- The specialized industries are half-baked at the moment. They were a DLC in CS1. They come with the base game here. The devs needed more time to flesh this aspect of the game out properly.
- Most of the statistics the game shows you are nebulous and inconsistent. This is because of all the tweaks they make in each patch, and what the devs decide to present to you. You can't really trust them and instead should use common sense and classic querying/watching/observing to get an idea for how your city is flowing. If you go based on what the game's stats tell you, you'll run out of money pretty quick.
TL;DR:
Technically better than CS1. Needed another year of development time to actually be better than CS1.
I recommend and don't recommend it at the same time.

Well, the game is certainly in a better state than it began in. It doesn't crash every other minute. So in that sense, the devs are certainly making progress in calling this a finished product.

We're still awaiting many critical features that the first game had. Namely traffic light interval controls. So, I guess until we get that, just avoid using traffic lights all together because they almost always make traffic worse lol.

I'm giving this a thumbs up because it truly IS improving with each update. And although I don't like this recent recurring game dev strategy of releasing games way too early, as long as it they do eventually finish the game, then I'm happy. I just won't purchase the game until it reaches that state. Which is what I recommend doing with this game.

There's two directions I can take this review. One is "I recommend, but ..." and the other is "I don't recommend, however ...", and they're both probably going to say the same things. Strap in, and grab a cup of hot chocolate, daddy's gonna tell stories again:
If I compare my experience playing the first game on release to this one on release, this one is much, much better. But how?
The original Cities: Skylines was a relief from the crushed dreams of SimCity fans. It came in as the rightful conqueror of the city building genre, and built a huge community of gamers, designers and modders that have influenced the growth of the game since. It refined the SimCity style beyond expectations, it broke the gridded city building style, it introduced gamers to urban design and planning ideas that they have never thought of before, and a whole sub-genre of urbanist YouTubers rose up from this. However, when you compare the two vanilla games, without the mods and DLC and hundred of YouTube content creators, the first game is great, but a bit empty. It didn't start with a day-night cycle, that was added in After Dark. It didn't start with many of the best transit options, they came in later DLCs. Inland water treatment plants didn't exist until 2020 with Sunset Harbor.
Cities: Skylines 2 starts with everything that the base game should have. It doesn't only have a day-night cycle, it has seasons. It doesn't just have different zoning densities, it has mixed use zones. You don't just place down industry building and print money, the game has a diversified economy, hearkening back to SimCity2000 when you could individually manage tax rates for different industries, but here you can do that to the entire economy. You can encourage and develop an economy based on retail and services, or primary industries, or manufacturing of any kind. You don't just have buses, trains and planes, you have the option to use taxis, buses, trains, trams, subway metros, planes and boats to transport your people and cargo outside cars and trucks. To build the city you don't just lay down roads, you can plan curves and bends and intersections using the various feedback that it gives you, create clean interchanges and intersections, and use a variety of tools to limit turns and eliminate traffic conflicts. You can even obverse traffic accidents affect your roads and disasters affect the city, pollution affecting the environment and a myriad other things that you didn't even think of when the original was released in 2015.
Compared to that, yeah, no questions.
So why is everyone saying "Yes, but ..."?
I won't repeat it in detail, you've already read the other reviews. Basically, expectations for the game's performance and delivery were misaligned between the developers, the publishers and the consumers. Performance issues were a huge problem right off the bat because most people do not have systems that meet the requirements of the game, but the developers have been tasked with making the game suitable for console. Misaligned expectations. The game's economic system was too opaque to clearly understand what was going on, to the point that unsubstantiated rumours began spreading that the economy was fake (it's not). Feedback to the user was not adequate to completely understand what was going on, and many players assumed things were bugs when they were not. Misaligned expectations.
However, the performance issues and opaque UI feedback aside, none of this was helped by the myriad of bugs that have since seen six major patches to clean up, with more work to come out after the Christmas holidays.
Finally, to nail the point home about misaligned expectations: content. I came in to the original game in March 2015, right on release. I was with it the whole way through. I was there when the beacons were lit and Gondor called for aid. I didn't even bother using mods until 2019, because that's when they were interesting and mature enough to really make a difference in the game. By the time the Great Plague of 2020 hit, the original was primed to receive huge interest in the game. Content on the workshop exploded. YouTubers exploded. Everything exploded. It was wild! So when, in early 2023, the new game was announced, a host of gamers came in with huge content expectations and none of the context. YouTubers speculated on the most insane speculations, people were having meltdowns about the new engine staying on Unity instead of hopping over to Unreal Engine. Wild.
And so on release, despite having literally been released with more tools and content than city builders have ever had, with all of the good ideas from everywhere in the broader community being incorporated into the base game, the chief criticism was a lack of content. The game felt empty. Grey (UK)! Gray (US)! Graey (WTF)! Critiques went from blasting CS1 for being too cartoony to blasting CS2 for being too realistic with its browns and concretes. At this point, I stopped listening to shameless and pointless, often contradictory criticism and looked for genuine concerns.
These are easy to list:
- the game is still in need of more performance fixes
- the game's UI needs more obvious indicators of what's going on with underlying systems
- the game is a resource H-O-G
- tools still feel a bit unrefined
- there are missing options that would make things so much nicer (props, prop tools, decorative tools, etc)
- no mods at the moment, we want mods
- no editors, no map editor, no asset editor, none of that yet
- console version still needs to be released
- the bug issues have delayed the Ultimate Edition's Q4 and Q1 DLC releases
- there are still some major bugs that require further investigation
To be frank, though, my stance is straightforward: bugs can be fixed, and these issues will be ironed out over time. The devs have repeatedly shown that they intend to see this through.
So yes, "I recommend, but ...", be mindful of the things that are still to be fixed, and you may enjoy the game. "I don't recommend, however ...", set your expectations appropriately and you will realise this game has enormous potential to be the definitive game of the city simulation genre. The first game rightfully conquered the crown. This one will keep it, even it has to fight for it.

The game is a lot more enjoyable now and I can create cities over 60,000 population without the game slowing down to a crawl on max graphics settings like when it initially released. My recent city has 390,000 population with all the official mods and most of the popular contributor ones and the game is smooth and very playable.
If you download mods, you may want to use Skyve CS-II from the Mods store to review conflicts and issues. This has really helped me stabilize the game and prevent crashes.
Two areas I feel are really lacking right now. I wish for more custom buildings to download like in the original Cities Skylines' Steam Workshop on their own mod platform Cities Skylines II. Also the industrial infrastructure is very lacking. The CS1 Industry mod expanded that game's possibilities a lot. I still recommend the game, hoping it continues to get a lot better where it's lacking right now.

TL:DR: The game has improved since launch, it's very good. Performance is what you can expect if using something like a 1080ti in a modern game. And I 100% recommend it.
In 8/24/2023 this game was not worth it, it was buggy, it was poorly optimized, and considered incomplete. In 5/15/2025, this game is worth it. It is genuinely an overall improvement over the original. The game's bad quality on launch will forever haunt it, but don't hold that against it. I stopped playing the game after launch and decided to play the OG for a while to let the devs cook, and boy did they cook, now that I've come back I much prefer the sequel.
With that out of the way, let's talk about performance. My mid-range personal computer (though some may call it a low-range computer but they can fight me on that) uses a 3060ti and an I7-12700, and it runs this game beautifully. I can crank the graphics up pretty high and enjoy a mostly smooth experience at 1440p (the game stutters for a second when zooming into a super high dense area but it isn't constant stutters). When it comes to budget cards like the 1080ti, expect 50-60 fps on very low settings at 1080p when in heavy residential zones and potentially up to 80fps if you're in a less demanding area, but it seems a little CPU dependent so your mileage may vary.
Next up, graphics. Stunning! Even though I can't run it at max graphics it's still very beautiful and I find myself closing the UI and taking screenshots. I love the effect of looking into all the lit-up windows of offices buildings at night and seeing all the offices inside modeled, and I'd love to see more games do that. Seeing dozens of people walk around a busy subway station while heavy traffic flows next to them in the heart of my city is so nice to watch and gives a sense of scale to what I am building.
On to the simulation aspects of the game. The traffic is genuinely better but also worse(in a good/realistic way). People in cars behave like actual people in cars, they can be smart with their routes and choose paths that are not as backed up, they can not turn left when you specifically put a no-left-turn sign at an intersection so traffic doesn't get backed up, they can follow routines, get in accidents, and what's so realistic is they can also be impatient, 10% of them don't understand half the traffic laws, they'll pass all the backed up traffic in the left most lane then at the last second try to force their way in so they can exit and cause the traffic to get worse, they'll easily spin out in rain and cause an accident, and you get those special drivers that will 100% turn left when you specifically put a no-left-turn sign at an intersection so traffic doesn't get backed up. Besides cars, people are fun to watch live their lives, going through relationships, jobs, death, relocation, it's like you get to watch someone's life unfold, and you can realize that the change you made to your city affected someone you were watching negatively or positively. BTW just like with traffic, you get the special few that won't obey laws and will walk when the light is red and says "DON'T WALK" at crosswalks and cause traffic to stop for a second, and it's not a bug because they sprint across the road like they're aware of what they're doing. In terms of zoning, it's very important where and how much you zone, even things like parking areas can affect the success or failure of a business.
Bugs. This one is going to be a sore spot for a lot of people who got the game on launch, but, right now after playing 9.4 hours between 2 days I haven't noticed any bugs
Mods. The mod support is great, plenty of mods to choose from and tailor the game to your liking, and if there is a certain feature the game has that you don't like or a small but super in-depth feature that you feel is missing then there is probably a mod for it (seriously, there are entire mods dedicated to stuff like getting the colors of cars to match real life by using statistics from real life, pretty much making 80% of them black, white, or gray).
User Interface. This beautiful UI that has graced my computer is actually peak. Unlike the OG interface, I can actually easily navigate it and build things while barely conscious playing at 2 in the morning after my 28th 10 hour shift this month. And it fits the aesthetic of the game perfectly.
Finally, it's just fun. It's a game I can reliably sit down and play. It can be fun, satisfying, and a creative outlet, but also be challenging to the point where you almost quit but get that last second idea that just works and gives you 10000% dopamine. I'm no gaming/review professional, I'm no gaming genius, im not a dev, modder, coder, etc. I just play games, and I say this one is pretty chill.

Solid, but fairly poorly optimised game. Still lacks a lot of content we know from Cities I. What I don't understand is why we still need the same mods that devs could easily have implemented into the base game, such as traffic+, road builder, anarchy, ploppable growables, and so on.