Recent reviews by What a disaster

PDX and CO keep earning the hate. What a disgrace.

I have tried so hard to defend this game. I've been waiting for this release for years, and I was more hyped about this launch than any other game that has released in my lifetime. Yet, here I am, having not touched the game in months, finally convinced that the game is completely doomed. I was one of those people who was saying things like "it was just a messy launch" and "CS1 took years to get where it is" etc. but there is truly no reasonable justification for the state of this game.
Let me explain:

Let's temporarily look past some of the issues with CS2. Lets look past the abysmal performance, even on top end hardware. Let's gloss over the lack of modding/workshop support. Let's forget about the minimal library of buildings and assets. Let's try not to think about the missing tools and features present in CS1 for YEARS before this release. Instead, let's talk about this game's biggest practical issue: CS2 IS NOT A CITY SIMULATOR. The sad, tough truth is that this game in its current state is little more than a glorified city decorator/screenshot tool.

Arguably the most important core aspect of any city builder is the ability and in fact the requirement to "build for purpose." For example: Your main roads are backed up all the time due to heavy traffic, therefore you should build a subway line to ease congestion. Without this fundamental idea being incorporated into a city-builder, you end up with a sandbox "city painter." One of the reasons we enjoyed CS1 so much was that we really felt like the mayor of our city. Utilities, traffic, health, happiness, education, garbage management, policy, taxing, policing, and more all needed to be carefully monitored and adjusted to account for changing conditions and population. The planning and management game-play was the catalyst for becoming utterly absorbed in our cities in CS1. In my personal opinion, this idea of "mayoral" game-play is the single most important aspect in a good city builder.

In my mind, this is CS2's biggest issue. It's not a simulator and it's not really a management game. Despite what CO's marketing team would have you believe, the simulation in this game is so beyond broken that most aspects of it cannot even be considered functional at all. There are many reviews on here that go into very specific detail as to how the simulation is broken, but because this review is long already, I'll summarize a few of these things here:

-The economy is a complete lie. Many goods do not actually get transported by vehicles, citizens teleport to work, many types of industrial building do not function as intended, and much more are broken with the economy (specifics and details on this particular issue can be found with a quick search)
-Education system is broken. Citizens have trouble accessing schools even when they are literally across the street, and often refuse to travel even short distances to access education. You will often need to build WAY over capacity to get a reasonable level of education in your city.
-The traffic simulation is GENUINELY (yes seriously) WORSE than CS1, and let's be honest here, CS1 was almost unplayable without TMPE after a certain point in population. In CS2, the traditional 4-way intersection does not work. I spent a while studying the traffic and noticed several extremely detrimental behaviors. For example, drivers feel the need to change lanes mere meters away from major intersections, despite having had plenty of space and time to change lanes before hand. Changing lanes within intersections is also a major problem. Vehicles will inexplicably go out of their way and take the strangest detours to get to their destinations, regardless of traffic levels on their route. Vehicles literally straight up disregard turning restrictions and lane rules. There are literally dozens of other problems with the traffic AI at this point.
-Public Transportation is cosmetic. Yep that's right, the sequel to CS1 has no functional public transportation. I'm not even going to bother explaining this one, just try removing all the public transportation from your city and see if there is ANY change on traffic and pedestrian density. Then try adding a ton of public transportation to a city in need and see if the traffic gets any better at all.

Given that the simulation and management aspects of the game are completely busted, one would hope that more development time went into the other areas of the game, so that the end result might have some redeeming qualities. . . . right? Welp, not in this case:

-There is no graphics optimization. Even some of the most basic optimizations commonly found in video games are not present here, clearly, the game was not ready for release. Even with the performance improvements added in recent patches, you will struggle to run this game, and it will get even worse as your population grows.
-Due to the half-baked building mechanics, lack of modding support is even more painful.
-While I must admit, many aspects of the building have improved, especially with roads, the experience is still mediocre at best. Inexplicable collisions of objects that literally aren't even touching each other frequently have me BEGGING for Anarchy (overlapping objects bug). Adding decorations/modifications to roads is now extremely tedious.
-Props are a joke. No line tool? Unbelievable. And the new tree system (you can only place saplings that will later grow to full size) is just annoying and unnecessary.
-No route overlay. This is easily one of the most valuable built-in tools in all of CS1. Utterly unacceptable that it's missing.
-While certain aspects like realism were improved over CS1, there is very little variation with the buildings and houses.
-The game is still very buggy, we could talk about the bugs all day.

I could keep ranting about the issues with the game all day and all night, but I think it's equally as important to address the issues with the developer surrounding this release. Given the state of the game even to this day, I find it absolutely farcical that this game is not listed as "Early Access." It is at BEST an early beta. Throughout multiple followup communications, the developers have been very condescending towards the player base and have also blamed the customers for having realistic expectations. One of their you tube videos was essentially "pity us we tried our best" for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, DLC development is well underway again, despite CO saying they would focus on the base game until it was in a good state. Here's the worst part about all this: it was revealed in a corporate communication that Paradox Interactive deliberately expedited and very much rushed the release of this game to boost quarterly profits due to Lamplighters League failing so hard. So there you have it, CS2 is literally an unashamed corporate cash grab.

Is there hope for the future of this game? Despite what my heart wishes for I sincerely doubt it. Sure there was a quick influx of cash alongside the release, but the game is clearly doing poorly. Abysmal steam ratings will continue to dissuade potential customers (rightly so). Thus, the game will become less and less profitable, and in return will receive less and less funding for continued development. My best guess is that Paradox is already looking into how they can pull the plug on CS2 entirely. The chances of this game receiving the YEARS of development it still needs to become a worthy successor to CS1 are slim to none. My recommendation: DO NOT BUY!!! And furthermore, boycott future Paradox releases. The best way to let greedy corporate game publishers know that they cannot continue to get away with these despicable practices is to not give them your money. I admit I totally fell for the hype leading up to release, I even pre-ordered which I literally NEVER do. But to change the industry for the better, we must stop purchasing this corporate junk.

Bloody dog water

Got this game less than two weeks ago and look at my hours. Mashinky, what have you done to me!

Pretty Stupid 4

gg

waste of time

very good game i like very much

Golf It is much better and half the price . . .

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game crashes every 10 seconds