32 people found this review helpful
1 person found this review funny
Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 86.9 hrs on record (74.8 hrs at review time)
Posted: Feb 2, 2016 @ 7:31pm
Updated: Feb 2, 2016 @ 7:32pm

For those who come from the newer game from the devs, Cities: Skylines wondering what this previous games of theirs is like: In short, CiM2 is [still] the best public transport simulator out there.
In Cities: Skylines you get a way bigger map area, better and faster engine, more possibilities for building a city - but its public tr. system is simplified, whereas CiM2 is completely built around that with lots more options.

Pros:
  • Schedules: Creation schedules is incredible, you can tailor each line to demand. Also worth setting different lines from a same depot to leave with a delay (e.g. fist buses leaving each line at 4:30,4:35,4:40 respectively, for instance) to avoid queuing, jams, etc on the roads nerby. Don't forget to buy enough vehicles for every depot, for servicing. Don't buy too many either because they won't fit in and just deteriorate over time, waiting on the streets.

  • Street types:: Building roads is incredible, you can curve the range of different types (avenues, one-way streets-bus lanes, and a large combination of these) at any angle and arc, more diversely than in Cities:Skylines.

  • Vehicle parameters: Acceleration, capacity, maintenance cost, fuel consumption, attractiveness.
    You can choose to invest in attractive vehicles early on to increase usage. You can choose smaller capacity vehicles running more frequently, or big ones running paced out.

  • Finances: You can set driver/reparimen/inspector wages (and nr. of inspectors). The sweet spot for inspectors tends to be 11 credit wages, and an amount so that they catch ~33% of freeloaders. This yields maximum income. The income from inspection nicely balances the loan payment amount usually

    Cons:
  • Loans: This is almost like cheat. will have almost unlimited money: You take a huge loan, and set a long nr of installments. It means you can build an infrastructure of metros straight away and guarantee decent income while never actually repaying it (as it may take ~50 in-game weeks or more). Have the decency to work with the 100k starting money, and also don't burn it on metros or trams. Start with buses and replace them later with trams/metros.

  • Campaign: The game jumps you into "Berlin", a huge city with a lot of tasks to do. It should start with a small village. Also the campaign scenarios are short, and not really diverse. Custom, free, Steam workshop user-created maps are great to try but offer no missions. Still it's fun to play this game as sandbox, like Cities: Skylines is also, basically.

  • Performance: On larger maps or a large nr. of lines the game likes quite a bit. It is actually caused by the overlay (floating icons for vehicles, stops, lines, depots) which can be turned off but cumbersom (individually).
    Also it is heavily CPU based, so even an 8-core AMD 8350 struggles on 3x speed (you don't play on 1x usually). When the CPU can't handle more, 3x feels like 1,5x. Not necessarily FPS drop but simulation speed is sluggish.

  • Vehicles: While there is a nice selection of vehicles, there is one ultimate one in each category, meaning I never actually tried most of the buses/trams as they are inferior.

  • Gameplay: While I put some 100+ hours into the game (therefore safe to say it is addictive) it is a grind sometimes. Also can't seem to change the default schedule to something better (2 hour frequency is really bad).

  • AI: The citizens very rarely glitch into circling some vehicle at a crosswalk when too many of them want to cross the road.

  • Road upgrade: Unfortunately, as good and diverse the road types are, you cannot upgrade them, but need to demolish and rebuild.

  • Ticket prices: The game allows you to set ticket prices for vehicle type vs zones, and for single ticket and passes. While this is great to be flexible, it also becomes a grind. Basically a huge table of 6*5*2 cells that you continually need to monitor and update because as you build new lines, demand changes and hence the prices (really complicated system, you will see. The game gives you hints whether a price is below or above the normal. Per cell. With an alert at notification bar every time there is a single cell (ticket combination) that deviates moderately. Ouch.)

  • Stop interest: The circle area of a stop that you place (which attracts only the buildings inside) is a little disappointing. A better solution would be the method in Train Fever where citizens will decide how much they need to walk, and they still choose a stop even if it's far, if it means they still get from A to B faster (that game starts from horse carriages are though).


    Overall I greatly recommend the game, with its flaws there is still a ton of plus, and is a fantastic simulation for anyone loving traffic, public transportation, or just plain management games! Support a small company :)
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1 Comments
Smgd Feb 5, 2017 @ 9:05pm 
Anyway, I played this game some time ago, found the concept very interesting but the actual result very poor: The clock ticks so fast, simple bus lines take a whole day to complete, changing the ruleset still doesn't fix it, there are problems on the demand simulation overall, the 'fast forward' is not fast, it's very slow (a lot of waiting for nothing), and the vehicle stats are so unreal. Having played Skylines and enjoying it, I decided to come back and see if they fixed things up. By the reviews, I see they didn't, unfortunately. Skylines suffers from many of the same flaws, but as it's not a public transport simulator, but a city builder, I didn't care much about it (I did search if I could change the length of the days or the day/night cycles, though, to no avail). I think I'll just go back to Skylines and forget about this until they release a decent sequel. If they catch up on these things.
Thanks for the review