Cities: Skylines 2
If you can dream it, you can build it
Raise a city from the ground up and transform it into the thriving metropolis only you can imagine. You’ve never experienced building on this scale. With deep simulation and a living economy, Cities: Skylines II delivers world-building without limits.
Lay the foundations for your city to begin. Create the roads, infrastructure, and systems that make life possible day to day. It’s up to you – all of it.
How your city grows is your call too, but plan strategically. Every decision has an impact. Can you energize local industries while also using trade to boost the economy? What will make residential districts flourish without killing the buzz downtown? How will you meet the needs and desires of citizens while balancing the city’s budget?
Your city never rests. Like any living, breathing world, it changes over time. Some changes will be slow and gradual, while others will be sudden and unexpected. So while seasons turn and night follows day, be ready to act when life doesn’t go to plan.
An ever-expanding community of Builders means more opportunities to build a truly groundbreaking city with mods. They’re now more easily available in Cities: Skylines II.
The most realistic and detailed city builder ever, Cities: Skylines II pushes your creativity and problem-solving to another level. With beautifully rendered high-resolution graphics, it also inspires you to build the city of your dreams.
Deep simulation
AI and intricate economics mean your choices ripple through the fabric of the city. Remember that as you strategize, problem-solve, and react to change, challenges, and opportunities.
Epic scale, endless possibilities
Cities: Skylines II lets you create without compromise. Now you can build sky-high and sprawl across the map like never before. Why not? Your city is you.
Cities that come alive
Your decisions shape each citizen’s life path, a chain of events that defines who they are. From love and loss to wealth and wellbeing, follow their life’s ups and downs.
A dynamic world
Pick a map to set the climate of your city. These are the natural forces you’ll negotiate to expand your city amid rising pollution, changeable weather, and seasonal challenges.
Steam User 364
I've read a lot of negative stuff about this game, and I was one of these severely disappointed at the state when the game release. I held off for a year and a half before I bought the game and still several months before I finally dove in
What changed? Frankly the devs' commitment to making things better. I was skeptical at first but I have to say that despite there still being issues, the devs do care about fixing things. Colossal Order leaving and Ice Flake taking over seemed concerning but at least at the time of writing, the first update released by them seems promising.
So what about my actual thoughts about the game? I'll be honest, I got this game not as a replacement for Cities Skylines 1 but for Simcity 4. In my opinion, Cities Skylines 1 was extremely overrated because while you could build incredible things with it, you needed a ton of mods to do that. The base game was extremely ugly and nothing I built looked satisfying. I could never get all of the mods I wanted working and I was plagued with constant crashes to the point where I just stopped playing
In contrast, Cities Skylines 2 has been stable and looks amazing. It actually has a consistent design philosophy unlike CS1 which couldn't decide if it wanted to be cartoony or realistic. The amount of customization I have with just the base game itself is amazing and with just a few mods, becomes ever better. I've been making things I could never in CS1 without a ton of mods and a lot of instability
As for negatives, some people say the simulation is illogical. Maybe it is but its good enough for me. My biggest complaint is about performance. The game chews through framerates and zooming in makes it worse and I have a fairly decent machine. Its not unplayable by any means and I'm still having tons of fun
So there's my review. Its a decent game and I'm having more fun than I did in CS1 which in my opinion is overrated. The fact that the developers have stuck around and have addressed some of the most major complaints and are still working to make things better is what finally tipped my review in favor of it
Steam User 111
I've owned this game since release and always had mixed feelings about at.
But I still enjoyed it enough that switching back to Cities Skylines 1 wasn't an option.
Cities Skylines 2 has so many great features that I miss when I go back to Cities Skylines 1.
Obviously Cities Skylines 2 has some issues, but the game has massively improved over the years. (More assets, mod support, performance improvements, and bug fixes).
There are still some issues that remain, but I haven't experienced any issues that are significant enough to not be able to enjoy the game.
The game in its current state is very playable and enjoyable.
And currently there is no city builder out there that offers the same range of features as Cities Skylines 2. Other city builders either provide less depth or are more focused on a specific aspect of city building.
You do need a decent PC though, if you want to build a bigger city, so don't expect the game to run on a toaster.
The new development studio (Iceflake) really seems to care about the game, has massively improved the communication, and is adding & fixing things players care about.
Without Iceflake taking over, I probably wouldn't be writing this (positive) review right now. ❤️
Steam User 154
complacency, lazyness and undiscipline nearly killed this game and franchise, but now with a new dev studio that also contains ex colossal order staff, under new management that actually cares the future looks brighter than the past. Not everythings is fixed yet, some mistakes are still being made but theyre also being corrected a speed that seems like lightspeed compared to before. Problems are being adressed and new stuff added that has been requested for years now. all in all its going back uphill
Steam User 149
Finally Living Up to the Vision
I had huge hopes for Cities: Skylines 2. The original game consumed more hours of my life than I’d care to admit, so when this launched, I was ready to build my next masterpiece.
And honestly? It didn’t start off well.
Performance issues, confusing systems, and mechanics that felt half-baked made those first weeks frustrating. It felt like the foundation was there, but the structure wasn’t finished. I wanted to love it, but it just wasn’t ready.
Fast forward through patches, fixes, and a lot of developer updates — and I can finally say: the game is genuinely enjoyable now.
The simulation feels deeper than the original in all the right ways. Traffic logic is more interesting. Zoning and economy systems have more nuance. The scale and realism are impressive when everything is running smoothly. It finally feels like the ambitious sequel it was meant to be.
Is it perfect? No. There’s still room to optimize and refine. But it’s no longer the frustrating experience it was at launch. It’s become a city-builder I actually want to sink time into again.
If you bounced off early like I did, it might be worth revisiting. The foundation has turned into something solid.
Verdict: Rough start, strong recovery, and finally worth playing.
Steam User 139
I played 100+ hours on 1.0 launch and although it was fun for a while, there was a lot to be desired in terms of optimization, content etc.
With the recent "First Frost" update I am delighted with the trajectory of the game and I'm seeing a bright future ahead now after 2 years of near stagnation.
Steam User 158
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.
Steam User 104
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.