Cities: Skylines - Nintendo Switch Edition

Cities: Skylines is one of, if not the premier city building sim on the market. The amount of detail it is able to cram into every facet of the experience can feel intimidating at first, but getting to know all of the features at their disposal will be both crucial and satisfying in the player's pursuit of the greatest city on Earth. Some performance issues place a damper on the experience, as does the absence of content available in other versions of the game. Regardless, for Switch owners wanting to get their fix of constructing their very own megalopolis would be hard pressed to find a better resource than this.

The depth on offer in Cities Skylines is staggering, which is why being able to pick that up and take it with you is so exceptional. There is a limit to how successfully the console version is able to emulate the PC experience, but it does a good enough job that I can’t recommend the game enough to the Switch owner hankering for a city building game for their favorite hybrid console.

Even with a few PC issues and a less-than-perfect Switch port, Cities: Skylines remains the best city-builder on the market right now. The game's presentation is stodgy, but it is all but guaranteed to provide you many hours of carefully crafting cities, laying out zoning, and establishing districts for specifics residential and industrial uses…all free from real-world mayoral headaches like 6 a.m. phone calls griping about snowplowing. Right now, there is no better way to take a peek at life as a mayor without filing your papers to run for office in the real world.

I ended up getting sucked in surprisingly quickly, and I can see myself spending a lot more time trying to build up my city. It’s essentially a game you can keep playing forever, after all. If the framerate can be improved at all and gyro + touchscreen controls can be added, then this will make for a truly stellar port. Nevertheless, it’s still a surprise that Cities has been brought to Switch at all, and it’s managed to be competent enough to be worth a try.

If the Switch is the only console you own or if you fancy the idea of having one of the best city-building games on the market at your portable convenience, I would definitely recommend the buy. It is as good as anyone can expect a game this busy to be on Nintendo’s travel-friendly console, and I can genuinely say I anticipate its company on many more plane rides and commutes to come.

Cities: Skyline is sometimes frantic, sometimes peaceful, and great fun to play, but performance issues plague it at almost every turn.