Cities: Skylines II Reviews

The game needs mods to be playable, yet mods tend to break the game after every update. Countless cities started, then have had to be abandoned as I can't load them anymore. There is so much potential in this game but it remains a buggy mess. And finally, and most importantly, I cannot build a city with cycle lanes!!! Massively frustrating after almost 2 years after release. You should play CS1. Or maybe wait for CS3.

I am writing this review not out of hate, but because I want something to change, because I care about this game's future. I really wanted to write a positive review one day but today is not the day as I am fed up! First things first, I love Cities Skylines.... The first game. I've spent there 700+ hours. When devs announced the second game I was blown away by devs' diaries, screenshots etc, etc. Then when it released, I closed it in under an hour, it was horrible, I even nearly had an epilepsy because of lags, random pixels, rendering and other unpleasant stuff. So I waited and waited TWO YEARS for what? For constant game crashes? Lags? Some crazy matrix shit/ appearing on my screen? To be honest game itself got better but WTF?! It is TWO F-ing years since the release and I still have to be bombarded by crappiest perfomance, lack of models for regular houses (feels like my cities consist of the same type of building, like some regional cheap and disgusting russian district). As many players said on the release we will have to wait a few years to play a normal game we were promissed. And the devs did and are doing everything in their power to make it as long as possible and the worst way possible. And the second game does not offer even a little bit of planning or building mechanics like the first game does, like park, airport or industrial zone planning. Modders do what they can to smooth the edges but that's not helping too much, cause base mechanics are just wrecking everything up. Not gonna even comment on Steam Workshop removal... just ... no words... In game modding platform is just garbage and not user-friendly Devs, please finish the game in my lifetime

I like that the economy is better modeled in this as compared to CS1 The road and layouts are more flexible The Demand/Supply of Goods is also quite interesting

Apart from all the bugs when first launched, that mostly have been fixed at this time. Colossal Order seem to be busy fixing bugs and adding content. While it can be played in vanilla mode fine, mods are where CS2 really comes to life. While many people will say you need a beast of a PC to play if your patient with load times it will run fine on a 5 year old PC with a 1080 Ti. If using mods you will need allot of ram if you add tons of assets. With a great dev community and heaps of ideas from YouTube you can build almost anything.

Please do not buy this game. It is incomplete despite after 2 years of release.

can't get the game to run after quay update. I've tried many suggestions from forums with zero luck. The frustration from having zero support from Colossal Games is makes this purchase a Colossal Waste of Money. I'm not very computer savvy, so I am at a dead end trying to get this game to launch. ugh

I just can't bring myself to be impressed by this. Sure, its an improvement over the base game of CS1, but now that it's been out for almost two years and feels completely stagnant I'm just disappointed. I invested a lot of time into the original, and I can tell this game has good bones, but it just feels like there's been no motion. For one, the mod manager is just horrible. The steam workshop is a far superior system. I don't have to boot up the game (using it's terrible proprietary launcher btw) just to even access the menu for it. The mod menu is clunky and takes absolute ages to load. It's just a poorly optimized, incomplete mess. I mean, it's been almost two years and we still don't have a complete map editor or asset importing. Most mods are insanely primitive compared to the first game. It's just a mess, and I can't recommend it over CS1 in its current state.

The game basically released without any real features. Everything you loved from the first game is now missing. 2 years later and nothing changed. No cool features, bad perfomance, bad traffic AI. Everything "cool" comes from the modders. I'll be back in another two years to see what changed. But i am not expecting anything anymore from Paradox and Collosal Order.

My biggest complaint with this game is the way the grid shifts for no reason. I can drag out a single straight road and the grid will randomly alter and skip spaces. I build my roads with only the right-angle snap enabled. I end up having to spend money building roads and paths to get the grid to align in a way that should be default. I've spend 250hrs trying to like this game. I grew up on city sims. I played the original SimCity in 90's when I was in my early teens. Complete disappointment.

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.