Cities: Skylines

 PC
User Score
8.7

Generally favorable reviews- based on 2115 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,829 out of 2115
  2. Mixed: 202 out of 2115
  3. Negative: 84 out of 2115
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  1. ihateuselesssof
    Jan 27, 2020
    0
    5 years after release paradox interactive decided that its a good idea to release a new launcher that does absolutely nothing, steam couldnt do for years.
    Also they install their bloatware on hidden locations without asking the user for permissoin.
    Neither deleting Cities nor the launcher removes everything from it (the launcher). On top of that you cant reach their support wihout    5 years after release paradox interactive decided that its a good idea to release a new launcher that does absolutely nothing, steam couldnt do for years.
    Also they install their bloatware on hidden locations without asking the user for permissoin.
    Neither deleting Cities nor the launcher removes everything from it (the launcher).
    On top of that you cant reach their support wihout creating an account and using their confusing ticketing system.    … Expand
  2. DarkTl
    Jan 23, 2020
    0
    So Paradox decided it's a good idea to release a launcher for Skylines. Which does absolutely nothing useful but just wastes your time. And even worse, doesn't even work on linux and mac, making the game quite literally unplayable there.
  3. iampakky
    Jun 2, 2015
    3
    I can see why this game is well received among leisure players. They hate SimCity so much that they vote for Cities in which provided what they asked for. But seriously, this game inner system is quite shallow. I said this after playing over 100 hrs on both games. There are so many things that you can't really make logical senses out of the system. All transportation system, policies,I can see why this game is well received among leisure players. They hate SimCity so much that they vote for Cities in which provided what they asked for. But seriously, this game inner system is quite shallow. I said this after playing over 100 hrs on both games. There are so many things that you can't really make logical senses out of the system. All transportation system, policies, zoning are meaningless and not contributed to efficiency, wealth or growth of the city.… Expand
  4. Wiebe
    Feb 26, 2020
    4
    Building is too non-intuitive and complex, building a pretty functional city is being hindered by non intuitive mechanics and bad UI.
  5. AllNewSuperfake
    Mar 23, 2020
    4
    It really depends what you are looking for when you play a city builder- Cities:Skylines gives you all the tools to build a beautiful city with fantastic vistas and a shear endless pipeline of mods to make really impressive screenshots. Should you however search for something that requires strategy, planning and management, you might get bored and/or frustrated really fast.It really depends what you are looking for when you play a city builder- Cities:Skylines gives you all the tools to build a beautiful city with fantastic vistas and a shear endless pipeline of mods to make really impressive screenshots. Should you however search for something that requires strategy, planning and management, you might get bored and/or frustrated really fast.

    Unfortunately the developers focused mostly on the cosmetical aspects and added a number of DLCs and patches that more or less forgot about the simulation and instead had you plop down buildings like in the long (and rightfully) forgotten "Sim City Societies", producing large sums of money until you literally have no use for it anymore, while clogging up your streets to the point where the 5000 inhabitants of your little paradise need a network of highways and public transport like the kind of metropolis that it will never be for that very reason.

    The traffic has been a disaster since day one, and up until this day cars will calculate their path based on their goal, not the avaiable space, so you will have to use workarounds that, while not really fixing anything kill any kind of immersion or realism, which I was really looking forward to. This will slowly cause a meltdown of the whole city since most "agents" that control the simulation are dependent on traffic. But it doesn't matter anyway- people are always happy, as long as they have electricity, water and a road to wait on. And so should you: As long as the game starts - with ridiculous loading times - and you found the button to mute the subpar music, this is still the best 3D-city-builder out there.

    The development team has been riding on the wave of hate against EA and their indeed inferior Sim-City-Not-Five. Even these days people seem to think that they are dealing with an indie developer that really needs every penny since they saved the genre, but five years later they have become exactly what they swore to destroy (insert Obi-Wan screaming at Anakin here).

    If you don't care for your rights as a consumer and have too much money, you can add 2 points to my rating: I deduced one point for the terrible DLC-policy and one more for the changed license agreement that was forced onto me years after my purchase.    … Expand
  6. CartoonHead
    Jun 28, 2015
    0
    Waste of money. Game is only about a quarter finished with many missing features. The Devs have given up and opened up the steam workshop to let the community finish the game. The Devs on Steam are overzealous and ban for even the slightest criticism, like I asked why there is no Paint feature for tree's because it hurts my wrists clicking each individual tree in for hours. On theWaste of money. Game is only about a quarter finished with many missing features. The Devs have given up and opened up the steam workshop to let the community finish the game. The Devs on Steam are overzealous and ban for even the slightest criticism, like I asked why there is no Paint feature for tree's because it hurts my wrists clicking each individual tree in for hours. On the official map there are tones of bus like water running inland from the sea and one map there is no water current or alternative to wash away was water so you end up with a bay full of **** that just spreads and doesn't go anywhere.

    There are only like 10 different vehicle models, which sounds fin expect when you get hundreds of thousands of childish looking doughnuts driving around your street. So yeah, with heaving modding thanks to talented people this game is acceptable, but Paradox and Creative Order once again prove they are the lazyiest Devs about by putting out featureless games and saying the hard part is working around that.    … Expand
  7. Zodiac_A
    Dec 9, 2018
    3
    Very overpriced, 30FPS on GTX 1070. DLS cost practically as a full game. But good abilities and graphic.
  8. eilhanz
    Feb 24, 2020
    0
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Language (Turkish):

    Arkadaşlar şöyle bir şey düşünün. Sistemin çok yeni ve oyunlara yetecek kadar sistemin olsun ama sadece bir oyunda affedersin y****k gibi çalıştığını gördüğünüzü düşünün, ne yapardınız? Bence kesin rage quit yapardınız sinirinizle. Optimizasyonu ETS 2'nin TruckersMP modundan bile beter. İllaki yüksek bilgisayar istiyorsa fazla mod için ben tek oyun için bilgisayar toplamam ya da yükseltmem asla. Bildiğin rezalet...

    Garry's Mod MetroStroi'de de optimizasyon sıkıntısı mevcut ama hiç bu kadarı olamaz. Benim şehir nüfusu 120 bin, 2000 tane küsür asset ve 25'e yakın modum var. 15-20dk'da açılıyor ve bilgisayar ağlıyor (sistemim de kötü değil bu arada). Benim sistemim bu arada 12GB RAM'e, RX 570 GPU'ya ve R3 1300X işlemcim var, diğer oyunlarda paşa paşa kaldırıyor. Sonuç gerçekten rezalet...

    Oyunun mod desteği ve gelişmiş teknolojilerini beğendim diyebilirim ama bu oyun modsuz da olmuyor. DLC'leri çok pahalı değil fakat hepsini almaya kalkışsanız çok pahalı oluyor. İçerikleri çok beğendim diyemem. Grafik ve detaylar muazzam gibi bir şey, çok beğendim ama yine de bazı yerlerde detaylar performans için kısıldığını görüyorum. Onun dışında harika.

    Simcity (2013) ile kıyaslandığında iğrenç optimizasyonu ve bazı eksiklikler dışında ezer geçer. Çünkü oyunda gelişmiş bütçe belirleme, şehir bölgeleri oluşturma gibi özellikler oldukça iyi yapıyor oyunu.

    Ek bir bilgi olarak optimizasyon için hala yama gelmedi. Yapacağım yapacağım demişsiniz nerede o yama? Bir de ben Paradox'u suç atmıyorum, bunu ben Colossal Order'ın suçlu olduğunu çok net bir şekilde söyleyebilirim. İşte oyuna puanım:

    Oynanış: 0/10 (Optimizasyon yüzünden)
    Grafik: 8/10
    Özellikler: 9/10
    Detaylar: 6/10    … Expand
  9. ZacharyE
    Apr 21, 2015
    0
    This game is fun. But there are huge issues with the save feature. Steam sync does not work. Saving to your computer does not work either. No point in playing a city building game when your cities all disappear over night.
  10. hamad1027
    May 12, 2020
    0
    Optimized Like Garbage !

    i have an i 7700 with an gtx 1060 and it runs about 14 fps
  11. ValetinGabaev
    Oct 23, 2015
    0
    Game is unplayable !!!
    The font is so small that it is impossible to use a larger TV screen. That 18 months has passed and this insane irregularity has not been dealt with by the dev is outrageous.
  12. rahulgomez2025
    Aug 30, 2015
    0
    No replayability, difficult to design cities, sandbox mode not highlighted, lots og bugs! I really regretted buying a copy of this game. It could have been great but was a nightmare. The interface is really different as well
  13. blackbird1
    Sep 2, 2015
    4
    Be aware of hyped games right? When this game came out I was in the middle of a SimCity 4 Lets Play and I will compare these two games. I will not list all the quirks and bugs but try to give you an overview of the gameplay:

    In a nutshell CS is a traffic simulator with added city builder while SC4 is a city builder / manager game. Budget controls in CS are simpler. You can't get a    Be aware of hyped games right? When this game came out I was in the middle of a SimCity 4 Lets Play and I will compare these two games. I will not list all the quirks and bugs but try to give you an overview of the gameplay:

    In a nutshell CS is a traffic simulator with added city builder while SC4 is a city builder / manager game. Budget controls in CS are simpler. You can't get a breakdown of your cost per department (like pipe maintenance, water pumps etc.). You can not change budgets for individual buildings (like a school in a low density district or vice versa). When you want to enact policies it does not estimate the costs for you. Tax control is less fine grained than SC4.

    Here is the typical gameplay for CS: Build roads, level up, build more roads and buildings, level up, build more of the same, level up....you see a pattern here. The game practically forces you to build a "nice" and "green" city that satisfies all the citizens needs.

    In SC4 you are allowed to approach your citiy with different methods. You can build a high tech city, a business city, a gritty industrial town, a small farming community and so on. Plus all these cities can somehwat interact via the region mode. Of course in SC4 you build zones, grow, build more, add buildings etc. But you are challenged with more problems. IN CS you have to manage traffic, thats it, the rest is just grinding up. In SC4 you can get some persistant problems like unemployment, slums, pollution (air, water, nuclear..though not noise which is a nice addition in CS). I really miss the region mode where you can have a bustling metropolis and some suburb type communities around.

    Verdict: CS offers nothing more than SC4 except nice graphics if you are into bright colors. CS feels more like a sandbox city builder while SC4 is a proper city management and building game. Maybe CS gets there with mods and DLCs...but right now it is not recommended. If you enjoy building a nice looking city without too much difficulty..go ahead and buy CS...if you like a variety of challenges go for SC4.

    CS is not a bad game. It is a good game in fact if you like to build cities and manage traffic (where SC4 is far inferior without mods). But it just did not click with me. There is not enough management and too much building and tinkering with roads for my taste.    … Expand
  14. BFG-1337
    Apr 13, 2021
    3
    Most of the score 10 reviews are people rating this game because of the simple fact that its "Not EA" but let me brake this thing down:

    "Paradox" has gotten like EA (here come all the fanboys), they release micro DLC after micro DLC (that cost a lot of money, like 30$ a pop) while some glaring issues in the game never get fixed. This game is not better than SimCity 4, Its nowhere    Most of the score 10 reviews are people rating this game because of the simple fact that its "Not EA" but let me brake this thing down:

    "Paradox" has gotten like EA (here come all the fanboys), they release micro DLC after micro DLC (that cost a lot of money, like 30$ a pop) while some glaring issues in the game never get fixed.

    This game is not better than SimCity 4, Its nowhere near SimCity 4, it can't touch SimCity 4

    So what is it? Hype, delusion and marketing :)
    I don't think this game is worth playing at all, I think its very tedious actually. Fun for about 9 hours, then It becomes a grind and traffic fixing simulator.
    But don't let me steer you away from this game! Go ahead and buy It if the money is burning in your pockets.

    3/10 - Very underwhelming    … Expand
  15. Crimson9
    Dec 24, 2022
    4
    This is a city PAINTER, not a city simulator. The only thing it simulates is traffic. The economics are absolutely laughable.
  16. Parborway
    May 14, 2023
    4
    This game is potential wasted. It has great graphics, asset creators, and is almost perfect for those who just like to create cities to look at. If you want a city simulator, though, Cities: Skylines falls flat on its face.
    There is very little content in the vanilla game. To actually have a good experience, one needs to purchase a load of DLCs. The graphics, while better than some games,    This game is potential wasted. It has great graphics, asset creators, and is almost perfect for those who just like to create cities to look at. If you want a city simulator, though, Cities: Skylines falls flat on its face.
    There is very little content in the vanilla game. To actually have a good experience, one needs to purchase a load of DLCs. The graphics, while better than some games, are not optimized for all but the most high-end computers. Even with the lowest graphics settings, I struggle to get more than 5fps. To make this game playable, one needs mods, which is unfortunate for such an expensive game.

    The simulation is not realistic, and does not represent how actual cities work. It is very hard to go bankrupt, even on the hardest settings, and one spends the whole game fixing traffic around freight rail stations. Additionally, big deathwaves come through the city, and kill off half of your population every now and then for no reason. There is no mixed-use zoning. You can't have streets without cars. You can't have alleyways, or canals, or a lot of the things that make real-life cities good. Transportation is basically swept under the rug, and the way people get around shares no resemblance to real-life.

    There is a lot of potential here for the ultimate city-building game. Unfortunately, there are a few humongous flaws that hold it back.    … Expand

Awards & Rankings

19
#19 Best PC Game of 2015
13
#13 Most Discussed PC Game of 2015
37
#37 Most Shared PC Game of 2015

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
85

Generally favorable reviews - based on 60 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 58 out of 60
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 60
  3. Negative: 0 out of 60
  1. PCWorld
    Jan 21, 2016
    80
    Cities: Skylines somehow lives up to the unfair expectations heaped upon it, presenting one of the best city builders in years.
    Read full review
  2. Eurogamer Italy
    Aug 12, 2015
    80
    Cities: Skyline is the game SimCity should have been: a great game and a greater base for modders.
    Read full review
  3. DarkStation
    May 27, 2015
    100
    This game managed to be everything I had hoped it would be and then some, with all the wonderful attention to little details and customization options. Fans of the genre wont want to miss this one.
    Read full review
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