Still the king of City Builders, but better have a PC from the future | Review - Cities Skylines II
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✨Overview
Cities Skylines II city-building simulator with elements of urban planning, economic management, and creativity on an unprecedented scale. This follow-up title from Paradox Interactive and Colossal Order builds upon the success of the original Cities: Skylines while introducing a host of new features and improvements. With the promise of a five times larger playable area, enhanced building tools, overhauled progression systems, and much more, Cities Skylines II aims to redefine the city-building genre once again.
🟩Pros
+Addicting and immersive city building experience
+Expanded map size
+Improved city building tools
+Complex simulation of traffic, economy, and citizens
+Dynamic climate and seasonal changes
+Mod and gamepad support
🟥Cons
-Massive performance issues that may make it unplayable for 99% of players
-Not as feature-packed as the first game with its DLCs
⭐️Score: 7/10
🎨Graphics
The graphics and art style of Cities Skylines II have undergone a significant upgrade, further enhancing the visual appeal of the game. Building upon the charm of the original, the sequel retains its signature top-down perspective but presents it in a more detailed and refined manner.
One of the most noteworthy additions in Cities Skylines II is the inclusion of Cinematic and Free Camera modes. These modes allow players to appreciate the beauty of their cities from new angles. In Free Camera mode, players have access to various lenses, filters, and the ability to manipulate weather and time of day. This enables them to capture stunning snapshots of their city's development, a feature that caters to the creative minds who want to share their creations with the world. The Cinematic Mode takes it a step further, offering detailed tools for video recording, making it an excellent addition for those who want to create videos showcasing their cities or even documenting natural disasters.
Immediately after starting it, the soundtrack brought me back to the good old days of SimCity 4, with a cheerful and lighthearted melody that captures the essence of the game's playful simulation tone, which is also in line with the soundtrack of the first game.
🎮Gameplay
The game begins with the creation of your city, a blank canvas waiting to be transformed into a bustling metropolis. The initial phases are where you'll lay down the foundations, setting up roads, power, water, and sewage systems. These elements are the lifeblood of your city, and their efficient design is crucial.
Zoning plays a pivotal role in shaping your city's character. Residential zones will house your citizens, commercial zones are where businesses will flourish, and industrial zones provide the backbone of your economy. Balancing the distribution of these zones and the services they require is a delicate task. Over time, your city's skyline will evolve, and you'll witness the birth of towering skyscrapers, bustling shopping districts, and sprawling industrial complexes.
🏢Manage your city
Effective city management goes beyond roads and zoning. To keep your citizens happy and your city running smoothly, you must provide essential services. These include schools to educate the youth, healthcare facilities to ensure well-being, and fire and police stations to maintain safety. New to Cities: Skylines 2 is the ability to upgrade these services, reducing the need to clutter your city with multiple variations of the same building.
Moreover, the game introduces modern services such as internet and cell towers. These are vital for keeping your citizens connected in the digital age. The inclusion of these services adds a layer of realism to your city and reflects the modern challenges faced by real-world urban planners.
One of the most satisfying aspects of Cities Skylines II is watching your city grow and evolve over time. From the humble beginnings of a small town, you'll witness the emergence of towering skyscrapers, bustling commercial districts, and sprawling industrial areas. The game's expansive map size allows for endless possibilities, from creating multiple small towns to a sprawling mega-city.
🌍 Five times the fun... or stress?
The most obvious difference with the first game is the massive increase in map size. While the first game had a 5x5 map tile area, Cities Skylines II boasts a colossal 441 map tiles, providing players with a canvas five times larger. This expansion empowers players to create sprawling cities or multiple smaller towns within a single city system, enhancing creativity and customization.
💵Economy Simulation
The ripple effect of your economic choices is a captivating aspect of gameplay. Shortages of resources can lead to economic downturns, which, in turn, affect unemployment and citizen happiness. This realistic economic modeling encourages players to think strategically, considering the long-term consequences of their decisions.
🚦Traffic management
Efficient transportation is the lifeblood of a thriving city. Just like the first game, road systems and public transportation networks play a pivotal role. The game offers an enhanced road-building experience inspired by popular player-created mods from the first game. These tools make planning and managing roads more intuitive, even for complex layouts. The tools are more granular and can make better adjustments now.
🌤 Weather effects
Cities: Skylines 2 stands out with its dynamic climate and seasonal changes. Each available map is inspired by a real-world location and features a specific climate, such as a Finnish town with snowy winters or a location in Shanghai with distinct seasonal patterns. These weather patterns are deeply tied to the city's climate and affect energy consumption, citizen behavior, and city aesthetics.
🏯Architectural themes
The game allows you to personalize your city like never before. You can choose between European and North American themes, which influence everything from road markings to architectural styles. It’s only two themes for now, but it sets the foundation for future mods and DLCs to take advantage of this feature.
🚶Citizen Simulation
The games goes the extra mile with its improved AI for NPC citizens that adds a personal touch to city management. NPC citizens now have lifepaths, you can follow individuals, tracking their daily routines and life events. Over time, your citizens age and pass away, leaving a lasting impact on your city's history. It's a feature that adds depth and emotional connection to the citizens who call your city home.
📰The literal noise of radio and social media
The city feels alive with two radio networks to listen to, GTA-style. We also have Chirper, a Twitter-esque feed back from the first game that sends continuous updates on the city's daily affairs. However, the radio networks quickly became repetitive even after just a few hours, and it became increasingly annoying as I played more with repeating bits and lines. On the other hand, Chirper feels disconnected from what is actually happening in the game. For example, citizens will complain and constantly chirp about health problems, whereas I have essentially overwhelming healthcare coverage for all my citizens.
⏫Progression
The progression system in the sequel has evolved, with Development Trees and Expansion Points replacing traditional Milestones. This change allows players to have more control over their city's development and offers a more customized experience. I like this change better and it results in varied playthroughs and playstyles.
📊Technical Performance
When I started the game, performance hit me in the face with around 10+ FPS even in the main menu. I quickly adjusted the settings to prioritize performance, and immediately experienced a better-performing game, running at around 40-60 FPS on my aging i7-8700k processor paired with an RTX 3080. However, as I grew my city to over 30,000 citizens, my performance took significant hits, dropping below 30 FPS, accompanied by heavy frame drops and freezes. Sometimes, it even becomes a slideshow. This is a game that clearly requires optimization work, or it might be take the Crysis route, where we simply just wait for newer, more powerful hardware to handle the game.
One notable feature I do like though, is the controller support. Since the game is also coming out for consoles next year. It’s nice to have this already implemented in the PC version, as strategy games are usually notorious for strictly adhering to having only mouse and keyboard control schemes.
⚖️Conclusion
Cities Skylines II successfully builds upon the strong foundation laid by its predecessor. The game offers a vast and visually engaging canvas for players to unleash their creativity and urban planning skills. With an expanded map size, improved building tools, a deeper economic system, and an overhauled AI, Cities: Skylines 2 delivers a robust city-building experience that caters to both newcomers and veterans of the genre, that is if you have a PC from the future that can run the game comfortably.
It is already a good game and is better than Vanilla Cities Skylines in many ways. Content-wise, it still lacks some DLC and expansion features from the first game, but, as far as basic city-building gameplay goes, it doesn't feel like I was deliberately deprived of features just to sell them to me later. Of course, the foundation for adding DLCs is always there; this is Paradox we're talking about. However, given that the game still suffers from performance optimization issues, it might be wiser to wait until the game matures with updates and more DLCs if you genuinely want the best Cities: Skylines II experience.
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