As we had the opportunity to explain to you previously on Gameblog, we were not able to publish our review of Cities Skylines 2 while respecting the embargo set by the developers. Faced with significant technical problems, we have made the decision to postpone the publication of our test. Despite the attractive promises in terms of gameplay, the game revealed shortcomings that seriously affected the user experience, particularly in terms of graphics. Even the developers of Colossal Order recognized difficulties with optimization. Faced with graphics that appear to be ten years out of date and persistent bugs, we recommended that players wait for an optimization update before considering a purchase. Our goal was to provide a complete and faithful analysis of the final gaming experience. This is ultimately what we were able to achieve thanks to the arrival of the Day One patch, although it proved to be ineffective. Now this is about content on sale, accessible to all, and it is therefore a question of evaluating what consumers can really experience. And it is clear that the result does not live up to expectations, to say the least.
A principle still as effective
Cities Skylines redefined the city-building genre following the decline of Sim City. For those who are already familiar with the series, the premise of the game is still based on creating areas adjacent to roads, observing the emergence of buildings and providing services to citizens. For novices, know that the objective is to build a city from scratch and manage your citizens. This sequel aims to be an in-depth and improved version of the original game, but that’s not necessarily the case, and you’ll quickly understand why.
As in the first opus, you start with a small square of land within a vast map. You lay out roads, mark off residential, commercial and industrial zones, and then watch as homes and businesses begin to emerge. The first moments of a game of Cities Skylines are always exhilarating, starting from nothing to building and admiring our constant progress. Then come the tricky moments of balancing budgets and costs, while moving from a small town to a thriving city to a megalopolis filled with skyscrapers, airports, ports and thousands of simulated citizens.
Very nice improvements
Big improvements have been made to Cities Skylines 2 early game over the first game, such as the ability to import electricity from another unseen city by simply connecting your power lines to theirs. Not having to immediately build a huge, polluting power plant not only saves money, but also preserves valuable space on your initial map. An even more appreciable advantage: later, when space allows, we can continue to import and even export electricity to or from other cities. A beneficial idea in many ways.
It is immediately clear that the developers have devoted a lot of effort to creating improved road tools. Drawing and assembling roads is smooth and easy, and so is upgrading those roads later with new features. Rows of trees, decorative strips and tram lines for public transport can be added directly to existing roads without any problem. There are options to draw parallel routes and even create entire grids with perfect angles and spacing. So even less experienced players can easily design an attractive new neighborhood or city center in no time, making the game significantly more accessible.
Cities Skylines 2 is full of qualities
The game also excels at communicating its systems to players, effectively guiding them in building and managing their city. Revisiting old neighborhoods to improve and perfect them can be the most laborious part of a management game, but in Cities Skylines 2, it turns into one of the most entertaining moments. Going back to the first hastily assembled areas, adjusting the infrastructure to make it fully functional is extremely rewarding. We truly feel a constant improvement in our city, and the feeling of satisfaction is global and omnipresent.
The progression in the game is also well structured. Instead of relying solely on population milestones, you accumulate experience (XP) by building, attracting new residents, and increasing the happiness of your citizens. Each XP milestone automatically unlocks new features for the city and also grants you development points that you can use for further unlocks. If you want to improve your power plant options by switching from coal to solar early on, it’s possible. Just like investing points in the city’s electric options, or attracting tourists by building a huge observation tower by investing points in the parks department. The system is logical and encourages planning and strategic thinking, giving you control over what you can add to your city and when, reminiscent of a tech tree in a strategy game. Very intelligent and well done.
Intelligent city management
Spread across the map, different resource nodes are available for agriculture, livestock, mineral and oil extraction, giving a sense of immersion in the Conquest of the West. By unlocking new map tiles, we can acquire land far from the city center in order to develop mines or even farms, feed our population and boost our economy.
Moreover, it is good to know that specialized industries generate increased demand for housing and businesses within the city and, above all, having a surplus of materials and products means that these can be sold at other regions outside of the map, which is very rewarding. This requires us to think about our city strategically to integrate the industry harmoniously and ensure total cohesion. A lack of housing can prove fatal for an industrial area, just as an excessive concentration of industry can literally push out citizens and cause a massive rural exodus.
But too many faults spoil the party
The scale of the maps subtly encourages us to build our city realistically, providing great satisfaction. However, Cities Skylines 2 is not without its flaws. Although the maps are large, they are also mostly empty. There are miles of forests and mountains, but few real points of interest around which to build. Despite a wide variety of map tiles available with different terrain and resource types, they all come off as quite generic and interchangeable.
Additionally, the game is still prone to bugs, just like its predecessor. We observe buildings mysteriously disappearing, citizens walking in the air, and delivery trucks caught in an endless hellish circle. And things get even more complicated when we look at optimization issues…
A disaster as it stands
Let’s be frank: Cities Skylines 2 launched in one of the most catastrophic technical states ever seen for a major title on any platform, and has been for a long time. It’s riddled with technical issues and performance bugs that overshadow almost everything else. The more the city grows, the more glaring the performance issues become, with frame rate drops and constant stuttering making the gaming experience extremely unpleasant, particularly above a certain population size (from of 30,000 inhabitants, to be precise). Even on a high-end PC equipped with an i9 10900k and an RTX 3080 Ti, it is necessary to reduce the graphics settings to their minimum to hope to achieve a decent frame rate. And this, even after the application of the day one patch, supposed to correct some of the problems.
In reality, the game suffers from constant stuttering and freezing, which intensifies as the city expands. This makes using basic controls, like the camera, frustrating. The game is heavily impacted by these performance issues, so much so that it is enough to make you angry. In fact, because of these issues, we weren’t even able to experience some of the game, especially anything related to running a big city, because Cities Skylines 2 is simply unplayable and unbearable in its current state. It’s a real scandal.
Too bad for Cities Skylines 2
This is all the more unfortunate because, despite these performance issues, the game offers impressive visual details that help create an immersive experience for players. You can actually watch citizens go about their business, and it’s always so satisfying to be able to zoom into the middle of a major street to see what’s going on. Additionally, some key features previously added via DLC in Skylines 1, such as industrial zones and trams, are now an integral part of the base game. Artificial traffic intelligence is significantly more efficient and uses all lanes on the roads, providing realistic traffic and traffic jam management.
No more inexplicable traffic jams: from now on, citizens take other routes if the situation becomes complicated. Note also that the seasons change on each map based on real climate data, and that the weather and time of day realistically influence citizen behavior. There are therefore many positive aspects to highlight, but it is unfortunately difficult to take full advantage of them as technical problems are omnipresent. For now, it’s a huge waste. In all honesty, the weather system and natural disasters impact the game’s performance in terms of frame rates so much that it’s best to avoid them at all costs. A simple rain will totally ruin you. The icing on the cake is that the game crashes often and for no reason, often while building a simple road.