Nearly one year after its troubled release filled with mixed reviews, has Cities Skylines II become a worthy successor to the original?
Cities Skylines II had a troubled start
When it comes to city builders, one will probably quickly think of Cities Skylines. For almost a decade, the sandbox game has been a staple of the genre and is arguably the best city builder out there. Such being the reputation of the game, its sequel, Cities Skylines II, has quite a lot of work to do.
The game hit the market almost a year ago, but its launch wasn’t without its issues. It suffered from numerous bugs and glitches, suboptimized gameplay at times, and a relative lack of content, compared to its predecessor. Many fans complained, stating that the old game was simply better. This being the case, one might ask the question of whether Cities Skylines II is worth playing now that it has been out for almost a year.
Have the bugs been fixed? Is there more content now? What’s the building experience like? Here, we will try to answer these questions.
What’s the performance of Cities Skylines II like now?
Upon release in late 2023, the game suffered from a ton of issues regarding stability. Players reported crashes, visual bugs, and glitches. However, it seems that Colossal Order, the developers of Cities Skylines, have been hard at work fixing these problems. As a result, crash reports have drastically diminished in frequency.
However, one thing that players continue to complain about is the game’s performance. Don’t expect to be able to run Cities Skylines II on your run-of-the-mill office laptop. The game has many different things, like citizens, vehicles, lines, and so on to keep track of, so a decent processor is recommended.
CSII can still stutter on some lower-end PCs and is almost unplayable on things like a mini-PC fitted with an AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX and AMD Radeon 680M graphics. To be fair, even the older game was not super optimized, but the sequel comes with more detailed graphics and models, so it’s no surprise that it is heavier.
That being said, if you own a decent mid-level gaming PC, or even laptop, you should not have too many performance issues. However, be mindful that when your city grows into the big tens of thousands or even the hundreds of thousands, this will tax your machine, slowing the in-game time.
What about mods for the game?
Mods were and still are an essential part of the Cities Skylines experience. The game has a rich modding scene with new ones being added each month. These can range from fairly simple mods that add a few new vehicles, for example, to ones that improve the gameplay thanks to numerous quality-of-life features.
However, Cities Skylines II currently doesn’t have many of them. In addition, the few mods that the title has are somewhat prone to crashing the game. That being said, it seems that these issues have been steadily declining over the past months, indicating that both the game’s and the mods’ developers have resolved most problems.
One should also take into account that Cities Skylines II still has a much smaller variety of mods, compared to its predecessor. This should be expected as the older game had way more time on the market, allowing for many more mods to be created for it.
This also extends to the overall content for the two games. The first Cities Skylines has a myriad of DLCs available for players that can give a much more different vibe compared to the base game, Meanwhile, Cities Skylines II currently doesn’t have as many DLCs. Of course, this will likely change in time as, again, the first game simply had way more time to develop, compared to the new one.
What’s Cities Skylines II’s gameplay like?
Despite the numerous bugs upon launch and the relative lack of content, compared to the previous title, Cities Skyline II’s user experience seems solid. For example, traffic handling is now much smoother, with idiotic AI driving becoming less frequent. The default road building and traffic tools are much better in Cities: Skylines II than they were in its predecessor, meaning you don’t need to rely on mods that may crash.
Making roads, and other modes of transport seems a lot easier and smoother, compared to the previous game. In addition, deploying busses, trams, and trains also looks far easier in Cities Skylines II compared to the first title.
A recent economic update has also made the game much more challenging than it was previously. The rewards you’re afforded for reaching certain milestones are far less generous than they once were. Instead, players now need to build carefully and steadily to grow their city’s economy.
In general, Cities Skylines II players will have more of a challenge growing their city compared to the previous title. Of course, this might seem either a good or bad thing, compared to what you would like to see and play.
Conclusions
While the past few months have seen the game improve quite a lot, becoming more stable and optimized, it still seems to have a long way to go. Even the wider player base seems to agree, as Cities Skylines II still has a majority of mixed reviews on its official Steam page.
The game still experiences some performance issues and arguably still has a relative lack of content, both official and modded, compared to the older title. However, this is likely to change with time, as even Cities Skylines 1 also didn’t have the plethora of mods and DLCs it now has when it launched.
That being said, Cities Skylines II seems to have a better user experience. Both its building tools and AI are improved, granting a smoother playing experience. When once you almost always needed a road building mod, now things seem to be much easier to do with the default tools of the game.
Still, considering Cities Skylines II is rather pricy, usually running for about $50, you may want to wait for a sale to be announced. Meanwhile, the original Cities Skylines goes for around $30, and while this is only for the base game, you can choose among many DLCs to add to the game, which will still be cheaper than CSII.
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