Rock Paper Shotgun Review

[Hardy]

"Skylines 2's Steam page boasts that “If you can dream it, you can build it”. Well, I’d like more than one (hideous) university model, please. I’d like more than one type of industrial zone. I’d like nature reserves. I’d like markets, public libraries, fishing docks, canals, and industry-specific policies and bans. I’d like a city that doesn’t charge fees to collect bins (what?), and a dozen other things that most towns I’ve lived in had, and that several recent city building games have done. Of course that line is marketing hyperbole, but when you’re saying that and "the most realistic and detailed city builder ever" to push a sequel to a game whose complete DLC set goes for £320 even with a discount, that was still being added to as recently as this May and abandoning Steam's mod workshop to boot, it's a line you ought to be able to back up.

I haven't had the performance issues everyone's been fretting about, for what that's worth. It ran absolutely fine on “medium” with my usual anti-blur options, until I put everything up to "high" again for screenshots and it became both uglier and much slower. Colossal Order have been quick to issue acknowledgements and a second review build of graphical fixes, and “intend for these performance improvements to be delivered at or very shortly after launch”. But glitches that only happen in fancy mode matter little to me, and will probably come out in the wash.

A bigger issue is that if you've already played Skylines, especially if you picked up a few slices of DLC, I'm not really sure what you'd be buying this for. All this leaves me feeling like Cities: Skylines 2 is an engaging city builder of that particular SimCity stripe that I enjoyed a lot despite myself, but one that I can recommend only if you don't own the original."

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/cities-skylines-2-review

[internetgrout]

Good to hear about the performance fixes coming. That is what I was afraid to hear about not having new mechanics/content though...

[internetgrout]

Although obviously we'll get the original mechanics and stuff back over time in the form of DLC. Lol.

[Jack Greedy]

It is great news about performance fixes incoming.