Cities XL Platinum

 PC
User Score
5.5

Mixed or average reviews- based on 75 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 27 out of 75
  2. Mixed: 24 out of 75
  3. Negative: 24 out of 75

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  1. keefbaker
    Oct 27, 2013
    8
    This isn't bad at all, if you enjoy city builders and think there's not enough sim cities in the world then you can do a lot worse than pick this up. I haven't seen the "broken" elements myself but it's possible I just haven't reached them at this point.
  2. Jecht_342
    Dec 1, 2013
    10
    This game is a strong successor to the old SimCity games. It's considerably better than the current SimCity reboot. It's pretty much what you are looking for if you liked those games. It allows you to build beautiful cities that function well. The one caution I would give people is that there is less customization than some city simulation games. You zone areas instead of buildingThis game is a strong successor to the old SimCity games. It's considerably better than the current SimCity reboot. It's pretty much what you are looking for if you liked those games. It allows you to build beautiful cities that function well. The one caution I would give people is that there is less customization than some city simulation games. You zone areas instead of building most buildings, but the results are still very detailed. It feels like your city is a real city.… Expand
  3. Verencius
    Mar 17, 2013
    8
    It isn't all that bad. You can buy it 85% off on steam if you own and old version (2011 or 2012), so you can quickly catch up on new developments. What's good in it: you get much bigger maps than in SimCity (huge, at 50,0000 citizens you have barely covered 10% of the map, so there is a potential to grow). Nice zoom you can get to street level and look up at your city. Plenty of maps.It isn't all that bad. You can buy it 85% off on steam if you own and old version (2011 or 2012), so you can quickly catch up on new developments. What's good in it: you get much bigger maps than in SimCity (huge, at 50,0000 citizens you have barely covered 10% of the map, so there is a potential to grow). Nice zoom you can get to street level and look up at your city. Plenty of maps. Living economy (specialize your cities and trade). Very good zoning tool
    What it is bad/missing: it is a memory hog, does crash from time to time, lack of self developing zones (density growth, but on the other hand you have control over the city and the looks of it).    … Expand
  4. Darth-Apple
    Jan 7, 2014
    9
    I suppose I'm pretty late in joining with the Cities XL crowd, but I recently purchased it, hoping for the best. I will say that I was pleasantly surprised. Now of course this game isn't Simcity, so if you are looking for a larger scale Simcity-like game, Cities XL may not necessarily be for you. The game is much more in-depth than many of the Simcity games were, and features many uniqueI suppose I'm pretty late in joining with the Cities XL crowd, but I recently purchased it, hoping for the best. I will say that I was pleasantly surprised. Now of course this game isn't Simcity, so if you are looking for a larger scale Simcity-like game, Cities XL may not necessarily be for you. The game is much more in-depth than many of the Simcity games were, and features many unique challenges (such as resource management and advanced trading) as well. Unlike Simcity 4, when you don't zone farms, the food doesn't just pop up out of nowhere. The unique challenge is to balance everything as much as possible so that all of your residents and businesses alike will thrive. The game does certainly have its flaws, but for those who are looking for a large-scale, virtually limitless (to a reasonable extent) sandbox city simulator, Cities XL is a fantastic game.

    First, Cities XL has a much wider variety of content than many similar "city-builder" games do. The platinum version has over 1,000 buildings, and so far, I haven't seen a whole lot of repeats of the same building in my cities yet. Cities XL's large set of content makes for very diverse cities, which is a unique advantage to the game. It also has a large array of options as far as transportation is concerned. It is a bit lacking in terms of mass transit, but the included bus and metro lines are usefull, and there is a mod that adds additional options as well. I actually think there are probably a few too many road options in the game, so there is definitely a lot of room for creativity in the system.

    The gigantic maps are also a huge advantage to Cities XL. Unless you happen to have a one-of-a-kind machine, you will likely experience quite a bit of lag as you begin to pave over the entire map, but one of the nice things about Cities XL is that it doesn't place a whole lot of hardware related restrictions on the game. Simcity 2013 limits city sizes in order to improve performance on low end machines, whereas Cities XL gives you a giant map, and lets you build it up as much as your machine can handle. The lag with larger cities is partly due to the single-core architecture, but I haven't really noticed much lag yet, despite my relatively low end machine. To be fair, I haven't built a "big-city" yet, but the performance problems really aren't as bad as many people make them out to be, and they don't detract much from the enjoyment of the game.

    One disappointment is how the memory leak issue (among other bugs) still exists in the game after several revisions. This was apparently a bug that was discovered in the early beta versions of Cities XL, and why exactly it hasn't been fixed confuses me to this day. However, simply exiting out to planet mode and reloading the city every 30 minutes or so seems to solve the issue. While it is an inconvenience, it isn't that difficult to reload a city every 30 minutes, so I don't think I can complain too much. In fact, the easiest way to save a city is to exit out to planet mode anyway, so it's really not that inconvenient as a workaround.

    Platinum doesn't add very much to the existing 2012 version, and 2012 basically is the 2011 version with modding compatibility and 300+ extra buildings, plus a few maps. It is basically the same game as 2011, so if you didn't particularly enjoy 2011, Platinum probably isn't going to win you over. However, for what it is, despite the game's flaws and its rather small (and somewhat disappointing) revisions, I have enjoyed it quite thoroughly, and its advantages certainly outweigh its disadvantages. Anyone with a fairly robust PC who is looking for a powerful, in-depth sandbox city simulation game should definitely give Cities XL a spin.    … Expand
  5. Vayra
    Jul 15, 2013
    8
    Cities XL has been running for quite a while longer than its 'Platinum' update. This review will focus on the game itself, and less on the issues surrounding the actual Platinum release. There is one simple reason for this: many issues have been solved, and the game has been improved, by an active mod community.

    To start, Cities XL Platinum should not be played without mods. The mod    Cities XL has been running for quite a while longer than its 'Platinum' update. This review will focus on the game itself, and less on the issues surrounding the actual Platinum release. There is one simple reason for this: many issues have been solved, and the game has been improved, by an active mod community.

    To start, Cities XL Platinum should not be played without mods. The mod community found at XLnation.net has created workarounds and additions to the game that help it overcome its flaws.

    CitiesXL had every potential to be the greatest and most detailed City Sim on the market. It offers a staggering range of build options and a build menu that seems to expand to infinity. With all that, the game still has a pleasant learning curve and introduces the new options slowly as cities grow. This is a major achievement, something similar games like Sim City have not managed to do on a similar scale.

    The freedom in terms of construction is stunning the placement grid is so incredibly fine, that everything can be placed pretty much anywhere on the map. And the map, in general, is massive, allowing for cities with millions of inhabitants. As the game progresses further, world monuments and other iconic buildings (called 'Megastructures') enter the arena, and prove to be massive, cost-intensive projects that force you to open trade with neighbouring cities. This trade system is slightly sub-par, but usable and has been modded so that it no longer poses a serious strain on gameplay.

    All this freedom in placement and construction also comes with some drawbacks. One major issue the game has, is that it suffers from serious performance drops when games last for longer than a few hours. Large cities require some pretty serious PC horsepower, too. But even on high-end machines, this game will slow down to a crawl in terms of FPS after a while. A game restart will alleviate the issue, but the framedrop will return. This issue has not been solved, but one can still play the game fine if an occasional restart is not seen as a problem.

    Overall, CitiesXL offers the largest scale City Sim you can find. It is very healthy to treat CitiesXL like an Alpha of a game that you play with the knowledge not everything works perfectly well. Save at regular intervals, and mod the game to your liking, and CitiesXL becomes brilliant.    … Expand
  6. ghaaa
    Feb 11, 2013
    8
    It is all true that cities Xl have memory leaks and only use a single core. However, I have to disagree with negative opinions posted here. Despite the problems the game has almost cult-like following and there are many reasons for that. Pros:
    - Vibrant online community (XlNation.net) provides hundreds of add-ons, mods and fixes
    - Memory leak issue is simply circumvented by periodic    It is all true that cities Xl have memory leaks and only use a single core. However, I have to disagree with negative opinions posted here. Despite the problems the game has almost cult-like following and there are many reasons for that. Pros:
    - Vibrant online community (XlNation.net) provides hundreds of add-ons, mods and fixes
    - Memory leak issue is simply circumvented by periodic restarts of the game (go back to the menu and load the city again)
    - I have built cities of up to 2.5 million using this simple trick.
    - While it only uses a single core, my Athlon II X4 635, 4gb RAM, HD 7750, which is an economy rig handles it just fine with medium-high details.
    - nice and complex simulation of traffic, quality of life and transport
    - you can build truly beautiful stuff:
    http://xlnation.net/content/new-coast-city
    http://xlnation.net/content/tayra
    http://xlnation.net/content/seaside-city
    http://xlnation.net/content/scalabis

    Here is an example of a city with 15,000,000 inhabitants built despite the memory leak issue:
    http://xlnation.net/content/empire-jet-city

    Cons:
    - memory leak
    - uses a single core
    - no feature of filling a zone with single type of a building    … Expand
  7. oldbrokenlink
    Jun 21, 2013
    10
    i increased my score a couple point to try to offset the trolls and griefers that wrongfully malign this otherwise great game. and while its not worth a 10 its definitively not a 0!. i would say about a 7 and with all the stuff on xlnation.net perhaps an 8!

    please understand that this game has a bit of history. over 4 years ago a small company named monte cristo developed and released    i increased my score a couple point to try to offset the trolls and griefers that wrongfully malign this otherwise great game. and while its not worth a 10 its definitively not a 0!. i would say about a 7 and with all the stuff on xlnation.net perhaps an 8!

    please understand that this game has a bit of history. over 4 years ago a small company named monte cristo developed and released it as massively multiuser online game. unfortunately less than a year after they went broke due to low subscription rate and were unable to finish the game. soon after focus acquired the writes and reworked it as a single player offline game and released it. since then making minor fixes and about once a year they have been releasing new content dlcs.

    as you can imagine the people who originally purchased and subscribed to cities xl unlimited edition, the mmo version from the now bankrupt developer, are pissed off that they got stuck with a dead game after only being able to play with it for such a short time.

    so they troll steam forums and even this site complaining about the long defunct developers and about long ago fixed bugs and basically spooking people away from buying the game.

    many do not even own or play this game, they just own the other game and since the servers have all been shutdown for that game long ago can't no longer play it. yet they refuse to upgrade to this game, basically wanting the new developers to basically give them the new game.

    here check out the facts for yourself
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cities_XL

    i own and play just about every city sims/builders that is out there

    this is great game, loads of fun, runs great, have played it for hundreds of hours.

    even better if you go to xlnation.net you will find hundreds of mods for it, everything imaginable and a very active community over 40,000 members!

    i also want to say that there is no serious memory leak or programming issue like some people are posting. what issue that people are having is that the game allows you to build huge i mean huge cities, ive seen some with population over 90M and basically they do not set limits other than the hardware you have. so as you add more and more buildings and roads and the cities get larger and more complex sure its going to use more and more memory until you run out of memory and until your cpu/gpu cant handle the size of the cities and complexity and the framerate goes down. It's hard to put in words just how large and complex your cities can get, they can look so real that you can't distinguish screenshots from real world images of some of the worlds largest cities. in fact i cant think of a real world single city that has a population of over 90M. so what you have a people with low end hardware trying to build cities they can't support. and since its a 32-bit application, like most games, the cities can only get so large and complex before you hit the 2-3gb limit that windows imposes. the trick is to balance city size and complexity and not try to build cities that don't make sense and would not be practical even in real life.

    so yes the game is a 32-bit game with the game logic running in a single thread, but most other games out there have the same limitations. the only difference between those games and this game is that this game does not impose limits on you like simcity or tropico or anno does. also this games lets u pack the density of the cities to real world levels and beyond. in this way its more a city builder than a sim i would say.

    having said that the game, like all other games and software, does have bugs and issues, but luckily they are for minor and can easily be ignore of worked around.    … Expand
  8. Korsferd
    Mar 13, 2013
    8
    Cities XL is a very good game. A game that have been worked and improved sistematically over the years. Of course it have flaws (and some very serious ones!) but the game is showing progress. Since the death of Simcity franchise, this game becomes the corner stone of city building/simulation avaiable, and I trusting in his improvement.
    Its not perfect, but is getting better and better.    Cities XL is a very good game. A game that have been worked and improved sistematically over the years. Of course it have flaws (and some very serious ones!) but the game is showing progress. Since the death of Simcity franchise, this game becomes the corner stone of city building/simulation avaiable, and I trusting in his improvement.
    Its not perfect, but is getting better and better. And most important, the producer has respect for his clients.    … Expand
  9. NickSlick
    Oct 20, 2013
    10
    Cities xl is actually the most AWESOME city builder yet! but the thing is, people don't know there is MODS to make the game more awesome, they just go like: oh wow, the game's highway is boring, there isn't a lot of buildings in it, blah,blah,blah like that. Well did you know there was actually mods to make things better?
    are you just too lazy to Google" does cities xl have mods?" But    Cities xl is actually the most AWESOME city builder yet! but the thing is, people don't know there is MODS to make the game more awesome, they just go like: oh wow, the game's highway is boring, there isn't a lot of buildings in it, blah,blah,blah like that. Well did you know there was actually mods to make things better?
    are you just too lazy to Google" does cities xl have mods?" But yes, I have to admit, the memory leak is really annoying, but once you get a PC with a better Graphics card, it shouldn't be a problem    … Expand
  10. thanaton
    May 15, 2014
    10
    This is the best city builder on the market right now, it offers a lot of verity of buildings, super massive maps and is a lot of fun to play and highly addicting.

    I highly recommend this.