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 4233
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.
Steam User 2133
This game has received a crazy amount of negative reviews due to the poor performance, which is justified. However, this seems to be primarily due to a bugged Depth of Field Quality.
This is with everything else on medium quality:
Depth of Field Quality on high = 21 fps.
Depth of Field Quality on low = 78 fps.
Depth of Field Quality disabled = 132 fps.
Game itself is otherwise great, so if you just disable DoF, you should be fine, and the game is worth it.
Steam User 733
I'm gonna try to be genuinely honest here. The situation for the game is pretty nuanced, and that can be difficult to express in a time when everything needs to be a meme and/or the worst/best thing to ever happen. In short: you can buy the game right now and have a heck of a lot of fun, but the game might have gotten off to a better initial reception had it been delayed for another 6 months or so.
Pros: The game is a lot of fun at this stage, and I am so happy we already get to play it whenever we want.
1. What is here now is definitely enough to call this a "full release."
2. You can do a LOT, and you have much better tools out the gate compared to the first game. It's less finicky, while also more powerful, so it's a heck of a lot easier to reach a higher baseline of cool-looking cities. Can't overstate how much of an evolution this is. Examples: road tool is insane, zoning (and the way assets are categorized) gives you much more control, as well as more types of zoning.
3. Performance issues aside, the game is an insane visual upgrade. The game can look frankly shockingly impressive. This ties into the first point to make cities better-looking by default. In the first, you'd need several mods to start making cool cities. Not here.
4. The simulation is really hecking cool. There are some bugs, but in general the way the city works with individually simulated agents makes for a city that has sort of its own life independent of your decisions - all of a sudden, you might notice a lot of people have educated themselves and consequently want different places to work and live so you now have a bunch of other options to build different stuff. Cool! So, it needs a little bit of work, but it's absolutely mostly there.
5. Since everything is simulated, traffic is a lot better. Mostly, you're fine, and at rush hour you get some backup. That's pretty much it now.
Cons: there are pretty good arguments it could have been a) delayed for like 6 months or b) released as an Early Access product.
1. Quite a lot of small bugs. Whether it's education being unbalanced, commercial having weird import/export stuff, or garbage being handled oddly, there's stuff in the simulation that isn't working as intended, or is in need of further balancing. Most of the stuff is simply down to not having played the game enough before to notice, or not having enough time to fix it. I guess it's annoying if you sit and think about it, but not a single one of the bugs have really bothered me in a meaningful way.
2. Performance is bad, but Colossal Order have been very upfront about that from before the game was released. Some of the reporting on it post-release, however, makes it seem like they just didn't have enough time to finish all the work. For instance, the reports on wild amounts of polygons being rendered, the acknowledge (more-or-less) by Colossal Order about LOD work simply not being finished, or the broken effects (you pretty much need to turn some of them off.) You can ABSOLUTELY run the game - just check out the posted performance guides on which effects to turn off.
3. Compared to a very kitted up Cities Skylines 1, with all DLC and mods, you might feel a little restricted. If you've played it a lot you'll come across situations where you go "what a great spot this would be for a custom park," or whatever feature from the first game's 10-year life cycle. If you've never played that version of the first game, you might come across situations where you're like "so I just build more of mostly the same type of district?" And...both yes and no. There is some challenge to be creative, but on the other hand that forces you to familiarize yourself with the tools at hand to get the most creativity out of what IS here. Your mileage may vary.
4. Bluntly, some things just make it seem like the game is like 3/4 finished. Why are there no unlocks past the half-way point of the development roadmap (small city-big city etc)? Room for future expansions, or planned but cut features? Who knows. Don't get me wrong, these are non-essential things, but the feeling is there after almost 70 hours in the game.
Taken as it is, you could argue they should've delayed 6 months or released into Early Access instead. But you can also argue that releasing it will ultimately make the game much better much faster by both a) making the developers accountable to the players rather than some arbitrary release date and b) giving them more feedback than they could ever need to improve the game. Is it a little cynical? Maybe. Did they coldly calculate that the short-term reputation loss would be offset by the longer-term improvements of both what the bottom line looks like for the fiscal quarter as well as the game itself? Also maybe, but don't they have a right to do that, and do we need to be maximally dramatic about it if that is what they decide to do? Looking at it coolly, it is a complicated situation for a company, and either way they would have gone there would have been pros and cons. I won't presume I'd know so perfectly well what would be the right thing to do for players, employees, publisher, and the company itself.
Furthermore, you could argue that the Early Access label brings with it certain connotations - a never-ending cycle of waiting for when the game is no longer "almost finished" and developers who just abuse the concept to avoid accountability or expectations of quality. Also, is it maybe not allowed to release something as Early Access, when it's already been marketed as a "full release" sort of thing? Heck if I know - I'm not a lawyer!
To sum it up: Issues notwithstanding, I'm super glad I'm playing the game now rather than in 6 months. I'm glad I get to play it in a state where I can expect what is there to be enough for a release, and don't have to think about what's a month or two down the line. As for the rest of it, I might feel a way about it, but ultimately I'll leave up to Colossal Order because it's their product in the end.
Steam User 407
im too lazy firing my wood stove so i got this to heat the room with 900 Watts
Steam User 594
As of 11/24/2023
---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☑ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS
---{ Gameplay }---
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't
---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☑ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf
---{ Audience }---
☑ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☑ Grandma
---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☐ Decent
☐ Fast
☑ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer
---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls
---{ Story }---
☑ No Story
☐ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life
---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☐ Average
☐ Long
☑ To infinity and beyond
---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☐ Worth the price
☑ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money
---{ Bugs }---
☐ Never heard of
☐ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☑ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs
---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☑ 8
☐ 9
☐ 10
Steam User 1287
We got on and off ramps and all we had to sacrifice for were our FPS.
Found a solution for the moment though:
Performance part:
Went from 15 FPS with massive stutters while everything on high to 60 FPS with only occasional stutters through setting dynamic resolution to "constant" (dont set it to dynamic). Messes with the anti aliasing a bit though but could be worse.
Additionally, you can change the anti aliasing method to TAA under the advanced tab (top right) to get rid of the messy edges introduced this way. Game gets a bit more blurry but it's ok.
Furthermore, you can increase the "minimum resolution percentage scale" to values above 50% and together with TAA, the game looks decent.
If it looks super blurry, you need to lower the overall graphics quality and try again.
Review part:
Having played for about 7 hours and loving the game so far. New street building tools are great as they have incorporated some of my favorite mods from cities 1, I love that they added modular buildings as well as new zone types that let you combine commercial and residential districts and there has been a lot of improvement regarding attention to detail. For example, if several cars are driving behind one another, at night only the first car uses their high beams, which I think is neat. I also like the addition of a "research tree".
Have fun, I hope this helps and you guys can enjoy the game as much as I do after the initial hassle to get it running :)
Steam User 239
Best way to heat your house,
keeps me warm in the winter