Cities in Motion 2

 PC
User Score
7.2

Mixed or average reviews- based on 159 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 87 out of 159
  2. Mixed: 48 out of 159
  3. Negative: 24 out of 159

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  1. steevm
    Aug 25, 2013
    4
    A promising game ruined by poor programming and design.

    The UI is unusable it took me about 2 hours to be able to build a metro line that actually works. Unhelpful error messages during the process don't help. Nor does the fact that you can misclick by one pixel and not realise meaning you're bankrupt and have a line that doesn't work. Other examples of the terrible UI include lists of    A promising game ruined by poor programming and design.

    The UI is unusable it took me about 2 hours to be able to build a metro line that actually works. Unhelpful error messages during the process don't help. Nor does the fact that you can misclick by one pixel and not realise meaning you're bankrupt and have a line that doesn't work. Other examples of the terrible UI include lists of vehicles that use the same icon for every vehicle yes, you really have to mouse over each entry in the list to tell them apart, and even then you still need to know the capacity associated with each vehicle name, because even when mousing over, only the name is actually displayed if the vehicle is currently in a depot. Very helpful and well thought out...

    The tutorial is as clear as mud it consists of telling you to do things that are self evident such as place some stops and connect them but DOESN'T tell you how the game actually works or what to look out for. The end of the tutorial is supposed to be you building a metro line, but the only info you're given is "build a metro line". There's no info on how to actually place metro tracks so they're not red (i.e. unplaceable), or more importantly, how to build the metro underground. So it's click click click, that's not working, click click click, god this is frustrating... click click click, you know what I give up.

    Once you've finally surmounted these unnecessary issues, you're left with a game whose core mechanics are flawed. City growth can at best be described as "random" and more truthfully as "broken". Industry spreads like cancer all over a city, especially to high value areas with high traffic where high rise offices and housing ought to be. Build a new road and the "intelligent" game plonks 3 schools right next to another. Then, 3 minutes later, it removes the schools and build something else for nor apparent reason. Passengers would rather walk for 30 minutes than go another stop on the bus they're already on. Ticket prices require changing every couple of hours, but this again seems random rather than due to anything related to your network and quickly becomes boring and repetitive.

    Unfortunately, the game is already in that stage where DLC is being released regularly, so chances are the core mechanics aren't going to be fixed. What the devs really need to do is take the best parts of CiM 1 and the best parts of CiM 2 and weed out the serious flaws in both games. If they actually got their act together, they'd be on to a winner. As it is they've released 2 games that are halfway there but have such serious issues that you begin to wonder if the series is ever going to go anywhere.

    At any rate, my advice to anyone still considering buying CiM2 would be to wait for the next game. This one doesn't cut the mustard and ends up being an exercise in frustration rather than fun.    … Expand
  2. Corwin86
    Dec 1, 2013
    2
    Half of the reviews on this page are fake rubbish...

    I'm surprised as any spammer can register, give a vote (usually 0 or 10) and leave undisturbed, his vote untouchable... Ok, check out my account as well, at least this review was written by a "serious" person (I hope) :) The game: - dripping with promises, intriguing, tempting... - and so poorly executed in some CRUCIAL    Half of the reviews on this page are fake rubbish...

    I'm surprised as any spammer can register, give a vote (usually 0 or 10) and leave undisturbed, his vote untouchable...

    Ok, check out my account as well, at least this review was written by a "serious" person (I hope) :)

    The game:

    - dripping with promises, intriguing, tempting...
    - and so poorly executed in some CRUCIAL mechanisms, that one wonders if the developers have ever actually played a management simulation game!

    I focus on the main point that make me literally "scream": manage the speed of the game...
    Also setting MAX speed, the game is soooooo slow that take ages only to finish a stupid working week...

    Oh, ok, I can change it through the settings, right? You mean these incredible and stupid list of about THREE hundred voices?
    Ok, can I just set time to be more... "fast"? No problem, but, if you want to change also "how" the world go fast meanwhile, you have to change these other settings... and this other... and find an improbable balance (yeah, I know it's difficult to understand, but this is HOW it actually works the game!).

    And so it's practically impossible to change game speed... because, also if you manage to find an "ideal" setting, the game is NOT BEING BUILD to change ANY of these settings and make it work, so you'll find innumerable errors, that make this game look as a business simulation game like a Barbie(TM) game would look like!

    And why the city are so small and grow so slowly? Why my commuters return at home (from work) at 11 of evening? Why some bugs don't let me set a normal ferry service?

    It's a game that brings many "why"...

    But the first, surely is: WHY I have spent 30 euros (game expansion), many restart, and 60 hours of my precious time to play on it, waiting and hoping for the next patch?    … Expand
  3. Admetes
    Sep 19, 2013
    3
    First Cities in Motion was one of the finest sim experiences I ever had. I pre-ordered CIM 2 but I regret I did as I was quite disappointed. The biggest drawback that it feels like the game could have been more polished.
    I deeply dislike their DLC policy to make the game more complete and they are very expensive for just few models.
  4. Kluge
    May 21, 2013
    3
    This was a pretty big let-down for me, personally. I love just about everything which comes out of Paradox, love economic sims, and I love complexity. Heck, I still follow and play openTTD.

    Unfortunately, while the game is very complex, there's just not much depth in CiM2. There's no real progression, poor balance (just take out a massive initial loan, build a metro going over most of    This was a pretty big let-down for me, personally. I love just about everything which comes out of Paradox, love economic sims, and I love complexity. Heck, I still follow and play openTTD.

    Unfortunately, while the game is very complex, there's just not much depth in CiM2. There's no real progression, poor balance (just take out a massive initial loan, build a metro going over most of the city, and you're done), the challenges are mostly waiting games (in city "revisits," you frequently need to do absolutely nothing to win just wait for money to accumulate from lines you set up in earlier levels), and you're stuck with maybe 15-ish vehicles total for 6 different types of transportation (three of them operating effectively the same way). The non-story challenges are just silly, with many people asking you to build a line somewhere already covered, but they want direct (and unprofitable for me!) passage from point X to point Y instead of needing to use multiple lines. There's another which pops up every now and then which offers cash for purchasing x vehicles, which is just really lazy on the devs' part it's not fun and quirky, it's lazy and uncaring.

    The game gets particularly tedious in designing lines, where you're just going along roads clicking a mouse button over, and over, and over. That's just to set stations up. Then you need to click the same 50-200 objects all over so vehicles know where to move. -No, you can't just have the game go linearly through the stations you just set up (station 1, then station 2, then station 3, etc) that'd be too "simple." Micromanagement gets worse when you're constantly changing ticket prices back and forth because "there's an economy." This is supposed to be what's keeping you engaged while you wait for more money, but these are really the times the game annoyed me because I knew I had to keep switching to the CiM2 window to babysit my company. It adds complexity, but not depth there's no meaning, or feeling of accomplishment, it's just there to take time up. The people in the city aren't interesting, there aren't interesting problems to solve, designing lines wasn't interesting after the first few, and it just really lacks the engagement I expect out of econ sims and Paradox games. In games like CK2, you CREATE an engaging narrative, facilitated by the game. In CiM2, there's just no narrative to create. "Today, I made lots of money and moved a lot of people I have no reason to care about. Tomorrow, I will move more people because a dialogue box told me that's what I'm supposed to do."

    Occasionally (after 1-3 hours of play, generally), it'd CTD, and that'd annoy me, but I kind of expect that out of sim games.

    I went through the entire game, thinking there was going to be something new introduced or some exciting game mode if I kept slogging through levels, but there wasn't. I finished the last level, a dialogue box popped up saying I won, and depressed me by having me wonder what else I could've done with my time. Quite honestly, I preferred traffic management in SimCity4, and SimCity4 has many, many more mods, much more depth to gameplay, and just more content all-around.    … Expand
  5. Const
    Jun 1, 2013
    1
    Spent many hours and ~10 retries, unable to make any substantial profits on the 1-st level. The UI is unusable. There's no e.g. "close all windows" hotkey. No way to move windows. Every window has its own unique close button in different parts of it. The construction UI is extremely hard to use. The "Tickets price" UI is hard to use, it sometimes require about 100 clicks on differentSpent many hours and ~10 retries, unable to make any substantial profits on the 1-st level. The UI is unusable. There's no e.g. "close all windows" hotkey. No way to move windows. Every window has its own unique close button in different parts of it. The construction UI is extremely hard to use. The "Tickets price" UI is hard to use, it sometimes require about 100 clicks on different small "up" buttons, very entertaining.… Expand
  6. gamenutt5
    May 19, 2013
    2
    Darn it Paradox.

    I love your games, I love CK2 and I adored the first CiM. I have 41 hours in it and loved every bit and was so excited for the new one, but it is just too buggy. I get random crashes every 15, and I can't find any solutions. If they fix it, I will change my review but until then, it really isn't worth buying. So frustrating. The game is fun, and that's what makes me    Darn it Paradox.

    I love your games, I love CK2 and I adored the first CiM. I have 41 hours in it and loved every bit and was so excited for the new one, but it is just too buggy. I get random crashes every 15, and I can't find any solutions. If they fix it, I will change my review but until then, it really isn't worth buying.
    So frustrating.
    The game is fun, and that's what makes me so angry. You are busy enjoying the game and then it crashes, and you lost your progress.    … Expand
  7. Jursan
    May 19, 2013
    3
    Big fan of city building, i like depth in a game and this is an ok game if it would work. But it's buggy, very buggy. Getting fatal errors every 20 minuyte (seriously) and being left in the dark by support is too much to win my heart with an no more than ok game.
  8. debigman
    Jun 11, 2014
    4
    This is the worst city sim ever. I have never played such a boring game, it looked so bad that I quit after 5 minutes. The only thing it was good for was to leave playing in the background to get my playing cards which I could sell to recoup some of my money that I foolishly wasted on this game. Also, no tutorials, so when you play be prepared to constantly be looking at Youtube to learnThis is the worst city sim ever. I have never played such a boring game, it looked so bad that I quit after 5 minutes. The only thing it was good for was to leave playing in the background to get my playing cards which I could sell to recoup some of my money that I foolishly wasted on this game. Also, no tutorials, so when you play be prepared to constantly be looking at Youtube to learn how to play.… Expand
  9. magicmwt
    Feb 18, 2014
    1
    The system is great. The time table is great. The vehicles are pretty good. But why a bad rating?
    When you closely observe what your passengers are doing, you get mad. They get out of Line A, (sometimes walk a pretty long distance to) struggle to get on Line B, take a few stops and get out, now guess what? They continue on Line A. Yeah, some direction! This make all the good ideas    The system is great. The time table is great. The vehicles are pretty good. But why a bad rating?
    When you closely observe what your passengers are doing, you get mad. They get out of Line A, (sometimes walk a pretty long distance to) struggle to get on Line B, take a few stops and get out, now guess what? They continue on Line A. Yeah, some direction! This make all the good ideas designing this game meaningless. And worst of all, make all my ideas designing my trans. system meaningless. I'm like, couping with a crowd of insane CO made passengers.
    You make a big network, you observe, and you know how terrible and broken the AI path-finding is.
    What's even worse, CO(producer of this game) denied this problem, several times. They said it's working good according to their design. Now I can give the negative rate. I won't vote low just because the game has a problem. In fact, I allow developers find and fix problems because I gave them feed-backs.
    Now that they said the path-finding is OK in their opinion. Well, then their game deserves a 1 out of 10 voting.    … Expand
  10. kupeczekjan
    Jul 19, 2014
    1
    Cities in Motion was great but this version is awful. Can't fathom it out even with the tutorial. Try to build a line and the screen gets covered in boxes so you can't see the map.
    UTTER RUBBISH!! I will stay with the original game
  11. nexussays
    Mar 31, 2014
    3
    This game is a huge disappointment. If you are interested in this concept, play Cities in Motion 1 instead, for all its flaws, CiM1 is a far superior and more enjoyable game.

    I love Cities in Motion 1 and was excitedly looking forward to the sequel but it fails in every respect. Instead of taking the existing, functioning, and very fun CiM1 and improving upon it, it feels like the    This game is a huge disappointment. If you are interested in this concept, play Cities in Motion 1 instead, for all its flaws, CiM1 is a far superior and more enjoyable game.

    I love Cities in Motion 1 and was excitedly looking forward to the sequel but it fails in every respect. Instead of taking the existing, functioning, and very fun CiM1 and improving upon it, it feels like the developers started from complete scratch.

    What you're left with is an enjoyable experience that is more akin to literally working at your city's transit authority than playing a game which simulates it. Spreadsheets and boring route planning are the name of the "game" in CiM2.

    Here are some examples of ways this game is worse than its predecessor:

    ## The graphics are much worse, both in quality and art direction.

    CiM2 looks like the textbook definition of "generic." The colors are drab, the buildings are uninteresting, and all the cities look and feel identical.

    ## The UI is cluttered and incredibly confusing.

    This could have been an excellent area of improvement over CiM1 but instead the UI is just a complete mess. Dialog boxes litter the screen. Important information is buried or not shown. Icons convey little to no information and are reused over and over again providing no distinction between, for example, different buses.

    ## Instead of adding depth, they added layers of required and uninteresting micromanagement.

    For example, in CiM1 one aspect that I felt was severely lacking was the ability to space out vehicles on a route or provide an actual schedule for their arrival. If you had a long bus line, when you started it every bus would start from the same station; leading to an inefficient route where all your buses arrive at a stop back-to-back and then passengers wait for eternity until they all come around again.

    It would have been so easy to simply fix this issue by automatically distributing them evenly and providing a timetable scheduling as a more advanced option. Instead, CiM2 provides the most convoluted scheduling interface imaginable.

    ## You are required to build depots to support each of your transit routes.

    There is nothing wrong with this in concept, but in practice they take up such a huge footprint that the cities hardly look like they could support any residents. What city on earth has bus/tram/etc depots seemingly every other block?!

    ## Most of the provided cities DON'T ACTUALLY NEED PUBLIC TRANSIT.

    This was the killer for me. I loaded up one of the biggest cities the game offers, excited to tackle its transit problems. I switched to the heatmap to see areas of congestion, and literally, without exaggeration, there were absolutely no traffic problems in this entire huge city aside from a single highway off-ramp.

    So instead of needlessly building out a myriad of complex public transit options, I just demolished the onramp and replaced it with a larger multi-lane one with a left-hand-turn lane. Speed up game-time and after a couple months the problem went away.

    So... transit problems solved. That was fun.

    If this were real-life I suppose I could use my copious free-time as City Transit Manager to perhaps play some computer games. Since CiM2 (supposedly) IS a game I'm left wondering WTF the point of playing it is.    … Expand

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
72

Mixed or average reviews - based on 15 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 7 out of 15
  2. Mixed: 8 out of 15
  3. Negative: 0 out of 15
  1. PC Gamer
    May 21, 2013
    70
    Fiddly at times, and cursed with a lousy tutorial, the intricacy and scale of Cities in Motion 2 eventually shines through. [July 2013, p.74]
  2. Pelit (Finland)
    May 13, 2013
    86
    Cities in Motion 2 is great upgrade of the previous Cities. Bigger, better, but also much, much easier. [May 2013]
  3. CD-Action
    May 13, 2013
    50
    The biggest problem with Cities in Motion 2 is that this game is extremely user-unfriendly. Gameplay is sluggish even with the highest time compression and the interface contradicts ergonomics and intuition. [CD-Action 06/2013, p.80]
See all critic reviews »