Cities: Skylines II

The number of meticulous innovations that have been added to Cities: Skylines 2 are far too many to even begin to cover in this review. The game feels very similar in some ways to its predecessor, while also having many noticeable improvements. There are some performance issues, and it doesn't have as many extras as Cities: Skylines currently has, but as a foundation, this sequel is exactly what it should be. It lays a foundation for many exciting things to come and is a stunning example of what a city-building simulation game should be.

Despite the technical imperfections (which Paradox has acknowledged), Cities Skylines 2 is still a masterfully crafted jewel in the crown of the city-building genre. There isn't anything else that can match it for breadth or depth right now. This is still the best way to build the city of your dreams.

Cities Skylines 2 is the city builder we've been waiting for: beautiful to look at, complex in its systems, extraordinary in the construction and planning tools offered. The genre has never offered anything better, and this is just beginning...

Cities: Skylines II is a city-building experience of epic proportions, filled with complexity and creativity. Its immense ambition in city design is complemented by an intricate web of services and an intelligent population. It may stumble under the weight of technical performance and a few bugs but the series still continues to redefine urban strategy in games. Colossal Order have truly delivered a living, breathing, dynamic city management game.

Despite its few peculiarities and performance issues, Cities: Skylines II successfully upholds the legacy of its predecessor and raises the bar for the city-building genre. Whether you’re a seasoned city planner or a newcomer ready to embark on an urban adventure, Skylines II offers endless possibilities and countless hours of creative enjoyment.

Overall, Cities Skylines 2 is a worthy successor to the long-standing original city builder.

It's like SimCity on steroids: a marvel of a simulator game, even without the community mods that will undoubtedly follow the release.

Cities: Skylines II is a game that's ahead of its time in terms of both gameplay and hardware demands. It has taken significant steps forward in terms of quality, gameplay, and detail compared to its predecessor, although this comes at the expense of very demanding system requirements. In an era where city-building simulations are becoming increasingly scarce, Cities: Skylines II remains the top choice for fans of city-building simulation.

Cities: Skylines 2 meets most of the expectations, it is addictive and gives you incentives to keep coming back. It’s an impressive new standard for the genre, essentially an ultimate city builder with a great potential to become even better. However, there’s a fly in the ointment, namely some graphical glitches, poor optimization, and balance issues involving a couple of features.

I had sky-high expectations for Cities: Skylines 2, and they were largely met. The larger scale, satisfying progression system, more realistic cities, improved AI and an extremely well-reformed road system have me completely hooked by this game. Unfortunately, there are also some negatives, which fortunately did not hinder my enjoyment. This will definitely be a regular on my PC for the next five years.

Cities Skylines 2 offers a myriad of great, all-round, quality-of-life improvements over the prequel. Whereas the game faces technical challenges at launch, it seems well set to become a worthy successor of the original, being much more sleek and accessible as well as bringing a bunch of fun novelties.

The new city builder is a perfect example of a sequel, with its complex systems and many improvements compared to the past. However, if on the one hand there is a renewed graphic sector to admire, on the other hand a vast range of features from the first chapter have been lost (for the moment). The game's cities are bigger, denser and more alive than ever, but achieving the same amount of content as its predecessor will take time.

While it does struggle under the weight of its own ambition a little, Cities: Skylines II is still a super addictive, easy to pick-up city sim, and if you enjoyed the first game it’s an absolute must-have. It’s also the perfect anathema to all the soulslikes and roguelikes we’ve had recently. It’s a game that demands nothing but time and creativity, and pays it back in dividends.

Cities: Skylines 2 is a very good city builder with a few marked improvements over its predecessor and is huge in scale. It is, however, let down in (arguably unfair) comparison with the original due to the countless free content (and paid DLC) that went into that, making this feel comparatively light.

It's a good update of the original, but needs a lot of optimizing.

Cities: Skyline II expands, refines, simplifies and complicates where necessary the legacy of the first chapter, but right now it is above all a vision. It is the vision of what could be after the dev patches for technical problems and the community mods to increase the content, the two premises on which the foundations of a fortune rest that, hopefully, will accompany the days and nights for a long time of a large group of city builder fans.

Cities: Skylines 2 is shaping up to be a masterpiece. The systems have been expanded to a point where losing an hour to planning power grids is commonplace and, best of all, fun! Building a sprawling city from nothing is as enticing a concept as it has ever been, especially coupled with the multitude of new features and layers of detail to rifle through. It will be interesting to see how the game develops in the future but if it continues the trend the developers set with the original game, well… This game will be a fantastic city-building powerhouse! Highly recommended!

Cities: Skylines 2 has a bright future ahead of it. The core city building is solid, a well-rounded new take on the city building genre that already covers a lot of bases, but has plenty of room for expansion and further ideas to come through to it. Sure, you might miss the creature comforts of old DLC and mods, but given time Cities: Skylines 2 will be a bigger and better city builder.

Perhaps the most complete and realistic experience we've enjoyed in the City Building Sims genre so far, the prestige of which in its early state is sadly marred by poor optimization in the graphics department.

Cities: Skylines II is a gripping experience and a perfect follow-up to the first game. Sadly, all of that is really dragged down by myriads of technical problems. For now, we can only hope that Colossal Order will fix most of the issue and gets the game to the state it deserves to be.

To move forward, sometimes you first have to take a step back. Colossal Order is laying a foundation that it can build on for years to come, but currently has its own predecessor as its main competitor.

Cities: Skylines 2 is not a huge revolution for the genre, but it represents a step forward that I think the vast majority of fans of both the original game and the genre in general will enjoy.

Cities Skylines II does its best to become the best city builder on the market and this first step surprises for how many things Colossal Order managed to improve. Of course it still needs more time to build (pun intended) on this foundation, but the ambition of this game was surely delivered with the right amount of love and care for even the little details.

A good sequel which provides a better interface and lots of freedom for building your own cities. Too bad the game lacks in modes and optimization.

Even in this subpar technical state, Cities: Skylines 2 is a potent and captivating sandbox that’ll see the hours fly by as you engage with it. It’s a worthy successor to the title that dethroned the mighty SimCity and will define the genre for the years to come. Official as well as modded content will surely supply players with even more toys and tools in the future.

As far as world-building games go, Cities: Skylines II is second to none. The sheer volume of capability is staggering and the possibilities are endless for what you can create.

Cities Skylines 2 is more of the same in the best possible way, giving players an abundance of quality-of-life improvements and new adjustments to keep the city-building fun going for years to come. While it doesn't quite have that one new blockbuster feature, nor does it revolutionise the genre in the same way that the original did back in 2015, it is still a brilliant game that you should not miss out on. Unfortunately, it does come with a barrage of performance issues that dampen the experience in a number of ways and only get worse the bigger your city grows.

What Cities: Skylines 2 is, though, is the perfect foundation. Colossal Order has supported Cities 1 for almost a decade. It’s a game with a thriving community. There’s no doubt in my mind that Cities 2 will receive the same sort of care from its dev team. Patches, DLC, content packs, better (maybe?) mod support. It’ll all arrive at some point. It’s just not here yet. The game isn’t unfinished, it’s just unpolished, unhoned, unrefined. It’s still a gem, though.

The fact that I’m willing to part ways with the original game even in the face of early performance woes and the fact that ultimately Cities Skylines 2 has a fair bit less content than the original, with its oodles of expansion packs and DLCs, says a lot. This is an excellent sequel, and an exciting foundation for what I’m sure will be a bright, addition-packed future. For those with weaker machines or a focus on performance, you may very well want to wait. But in this initial release we can see the foundations of a generational classic. It just might take a few more years to reach that full potential – just like its predecessor.

There’s still work to be done, but Cities Skylines 2 is an impressive improvement over the original. Its systems work together seamlessly, and you have more control over how your city develops without it feeling overwhelming or intimidating. It's a shame some features like green building are gone, but I'm looking forward to seeing how Colossal Order keeps building Skylines 2 in the future.

It's a shame that Cities: Skylines II has performance woes because it is undoubtedly the best of the year in its genre.

Cities Skylines 2 is a well-loved home that picks smart renovation over a sweeping revolution. With incredible visuals and immaculate detailing, few cities can eclipse this colossal effort in terms of sheer freedom and choice.

Maybe it isn’t fair to compare Cities: Skylines II to its predecessor, which has had years of updates and addons. Setting aside some technical issues, Cities: Skylines II has some interesting new systems, some welcome mechanical improvements, and lots of potential. But it’s missing some content that long time players have probably come to expect, and it’s in need of optimization, bug fixes, and the sense of life and fun that characterized the first game.

The city builder sequel is packed with big improvements but a fair share of disappointments.

City Skylines 2 is a great management and city creation game, with a bright future ahead thanks to updates, mods and user-created content. It already has a wide range of interesting options, although the whole is weighed down by a poor optimization that still needs a little time to fully deploy its potential.

Skylines II is a good strategy builder that meets today's standards, but could have delivered a little more. You won't find anything in the management that you haven't seen in the previous game or in other city building games. We appreciate the opportunity to build a really huge megalopolis with a complex structure.

Skylines 2 can be a great game, but with the current amount of content and its questionable performance, it’s a bit hard to recommend.

Quantifying the nuance of Cities: Skylines II isn’t easy. As I dig deeper into its complicated systems, more and more exciting features are still coming into focus. The sequel is ambitious and wants players to juggle hundreds of considerations as they build towards Elysium, and it delivers in that aspect. Yet, unfortunately, the game’s consistent technical problems tend to mire that calculated success.

Cities: Skylines 2 doesn’t rebuild the genre nor its identity, instead choosing to go bigger and deeper without losing sight of what made its predecessor work. With no better alternatives on sight, this will do.

Cities Skylines 2 is an outstanding transportation simulation, but as a city-building game it still doesn't feel as polished as its predecessor.

Cities: Skylines II is a modest improvement on its predecessor, integrating a good amount of features and content to feel like a worthwhile sequel. The underlying design remains great and should eventually reach its full potential, but a lack of structure and poor technical performance mean that it's not yet time to make the switch.

A successful city-building simulation that builds on the strengths of its predecessor, but is dragged down by terrible performance.

In what was either a glitch or a very strange design choice, Cities: Skylines II sometimes insisted new businesses and residences were open even though construction cranes still occupied their footprints. At one point, I had an entire neighborhood of cranes supposedly occupied by productive citizens. Some combination of reloading, graphical tweaks, and waiting solved the issue, but it was a jarring oddity. So were my attempts to build farms that vanished into thin air upon being placed, forcing me to reload and try again.

In many ways, Cities Skylines 2 is addictive, but the word 'addictive' should be taken subjectively. The game has good addictive potential, like the runner's high after intense exercise or a delicious cup of coffee. But it also has bad addictive potential, like a narcotic, as you grind through the performance issues because you know it'll get good again soon, and you know your rig can totally handle it, as you promise to your friends.

My overall impressions of Cities Skylines 2 at launch are that it’s a fun game that makes some head-scratching decisions at times. It doesn’t feel like a whole step forward, leaving a lot by the roadside on its journey to 2.0. Invariably, there will be loads of DLC, and modding is coming sometime after launch. This city will grow, just as our old hometown did over time. Though I’m having a lot of fun with Cities Skylines 2 and learning these new city streets, I can’t help but long for my old stomping grounds while playing it. At least right now.

Even with some of its shortcomings, Cities: Skylines 2 delivers an extremely deep and content-rich city simulator that genre fans will definitely want to check out. It should once again remind fans why Colossal Order is the perfect studio to lead the urban city-building genre after the failings of the SimCity franchise. However, it is also hard to look past the fact that this game is launching with less content than the original game currently has. Couple that with the limitations the districts have and the lack of the custom-building tools that players loved in the original, and the game feels like it is being held back a bit at launch. Much of this may be fixed with post-launch updates, but right now, it feels like a pretty glaring omission.

Intricate, intuitive, and ambitious, Cities Skylines 2 successfully integrates all the major improvements that players might have wanted. Something personal is lost in its larger scale, while performance problems spoil the beauty, but this could one day become the superior city building game.

Through all the performance and optimization issues, all the problems with shading and rendering, I believe there's a good game waiting to be unlocked. However, as it stands, Cities Skylines II is a major disappointment that should have been pushed back to fix these issues. Instead, gamers are stuck dealing with yet another game that falls victim to a rush and will need multiple patches until we see what the final product actually is.

While the game shows promise, it is hindered by questionable decisions and plagued by stability issues. Cities: Skylines II might not change your life, but some fans could enjoy investing some hours crafting their cities, as long as the game does not crash and burn.

It is pointless to spend your time on Cities: Skylines 2 in its current state. Developers should decide what is really important — fixing the game or releasing DLCs.

The creators have taken the best of the modding community and completely, it must be said for the better, overhauled, for example, the transport system, unlocking new buildings or artificial intelligence. Once they manage to overcome the birth pains, I have no doubt that this will be the best building strategy of all time. [Issue#331]

If you’re a die-hard city fan of city builders, and the idea of a new Cities: Skylines that’s 10 percent prettier and 5 percent more interesting has you salivating, you might wanna hop on this one right away. But for the rest of us, we can probably just keep chipping away at some other 2000-hour video gaming time sink. It’s not like this franchise is going away any time soon, after all.

Cities: Skylines II bears a striking resemblance to its predecessor, but the developers have significantly deepened, expanded, and improved its mechanics in almost every aspect. While it currently offers slightly less content, its foundation is as solid as a rock, and from a gameplay perspective, we are treated to an outstanding city-building strategy experience. Unfortunately, the overall enjoyment and impression are mercilessly shattered by the dismal technical state.

Cities Skylines 2 can be engaging - expanding your city provides a lot of fun. Unfortunately, it cannot overshadow a vast sea of greyness, identical, levitating cars and ugly graphics that do not explain ridiculous system requirements.

Coming straight from the predecessor with several DLCs, it feels much emptier in comparison and because of the existing problems, it feels unfinished to a certain extent. Not the best way to release a game. I'm sure there will be more to come, but in the here and now, Cities Skylines 2 just isn't yet the evolutionary leap that makes me want to switch.

These points make playing Cities: Skylines 2 much more challenging than anticipated. On the one hand, there is much to admire about the simulation work and building options available to players from the start, but the many issues mean having to wait and see if things get better down the line. The original game benefited from years of community mods and prolonged support, but the sequel simply cannot wait for the same situation to develop, especially not with an experienced team at the helm. At this point, jumping into the game feels like knowingly driving towards a holiday destination, knowing there’s a pile-up somewhere in the distance. The end goal might be attractive, but getting there will be a pain.

Cities: Skylines 2 has exciting new ideas, introduces improvements in the right places, but tears down these advances with indisputable performance and questionable design decisions. You keep getting the feeling that the game was released too early.

Cities: Skylines 2 is not the best game in the lineage of Will Wright's original 1989 classic. The champion is still the original Cities: Skylines, at least for now. If Skylines 2 gets the same incredible post-launch support and additional paid and free content as its predecessor, and if the modding community is allowed to thrive, I think this sequel might come out ahead in the long run. There are so many enjoyable new systems and exciting additions, sadly encased in an awful-looking block of concrete that gets in the way of how much I know I could be loving them. It makes too many promises of realism that its most basic features like zoning can't deliver on. It feels like playing a beta, or a very early Early Access game. Frankly, Skylines 2 could have used another few months in the city planning office. For now, it's more of a fixer-upper.

In its current state, it is impossible to recommend Cities Skylines 2, as the game proves to be unplayable, even on a very powerful machine. The game has enormous potential and could score much higher after the necessary corrections. It is important to note that this is not an early access version, but a "final" version that is being sold for 49.99 euros. Players have the right to expect a smooth and complete gaming experience for this price, and unfortunately, Cities Skylines 2 does not meet these expectations in its current state.