Game Information

Game Title: Cities: Skylines 2

Platforms:

  • PC (Oct 24, 2023)
  • PlayStation 5 (Oct 24, 2023)
  • Xbox Series X/S (Oct 24, 2023)

Trailer:

Developer: Colossal Order Ltd.

Publisher: Paradox Interactive

Review Aggregator:

OpenCritic - 76 average - 67% recommended - 29 reviews

Critic Reviews

Attack of the Fanboy - J.R. Waugh - 3.5 / 5

In many ways, Cities Skylines 2 is addictive, but the word ‘addictive’ should be taken subjectively. The game has good addictive potential, like the runner’s high after intense exercise or a delicious cup of coffee. But it also has bad addictive potential, like a narcotic, as you grind through the performance issues because you know it’ll get good again soon, and you know your rig can totally handle it, as you promise to your friends.

But Why Tho? - Matt Donahue - 9 / 10

Cities Skylines 2 is a worthy successor to the long standing original city builder

CGMagazine - David Walters - 8 / 10

As far as world-building games go, Cities: Skylines II is second to none. The sheer volume of capability is staggering and the possibilities are endless for what you can create.

Checkpoint Gaming - Omi Koulas - 9 / 10

Cities: Skylines II is a city-building experience of epic proportions, filled with complexity and creativity. Its immense ambition in city design is complemented by an intricate web of services and an intelligent population. It may stumble under the weight of technical performance and a few bugs but the series still continues to redefine urban strategy in games. Colossal Order have truly delivered a living, breathing, dynamic city management game.

Game Informer - Sarah Thwaites - 7.5 / 10

Quantifying the nuance of Cities: Skylines II isn’t easy. As I dig deeper into its complicated systems, more and more exciting features are still coming into focus. The sequel is ambitious and wants players to juggle hundreds of considerations as they build towards Elysium, and it delivers in that aspect. Yet, unfortunately, the game’s consistent technical problems tend to mire that calculated success.

GamesRadar+ - Dustin Bailey - 2 / 5

It’s going to take a lot of improvement to get this sim into an acceptable form

God is a Geek - Mick Fraser - 8.5 / 10

While it does struggle under the weight of its own ambition a little, Cities: Skylines II is still a super addictive city sim.

IGN - Leana Hafer - 6 / 10

Cities: Skylines 2 is an ambitious sequel that might have bitten off more than it can chew – be prepared to do a lot of terraforming if you don’t want your metropolis to look like a nightmare.

IGN Italy - Stefano Castelli - Italian - 8 / 10

A good sequel which provides a better interface and lots of freedom for building your own cities. Too bad the game lacks in modes and optimization.

LadiesGamers.com - Paula Moore - Loved

Cities: Skylines II has much to life up to, and you. know what? This is a fantastic start to a fabulous game. I’m excited for the future of city building. The game will take off once the modders get to work and Colossal Order pushes out the usual updates.

If you buy Cities: Skylines II, you can expect unfamiliarity, familiarity, surprises and the occasional frustration. But once you settle into it, plenty of new gameplay mechanics will keep you on your toes.

I love it, and I can see that Colossal Order love their game, too. I predict Cities: Skylines II will be even more successful than it’s predecessor.

Noisy Pixel - Colin Buchanan - 9 / 10

Despite its few peculiarities and performance issues, Cities: Skylines II successfully upholds the legacy of its predecessor and raises the bar for the city-building genre. Whether you’re a seasoned city planner or a newcomer ready to embark on an urban adventure, Skylines II offers endless possibilities and countless hours of creative enjoyment.

PC Gamer - Christopher Livingston - 77 / 100

The city builder sequel is packed with big improvements but a fair share of disappointments.

PCGamesN - Edward Smith - 7 / 10

Intricate, intuitive, and ambitious, Cities Skylines 2 successfully integrates all the major improvements that players might have wanted. Something personal is lost in its larger scale, while performance problems spoil the beauty, but this could one day become the superior city building game.

Polygon - Cameron Kunzelman - Unscored

Skylines 2 appears to be the distinct result of a dev team looking out at other places to find beauty and, more importantly, designing with an aim toward getting players interested in thinking of themselves as people making aesthetic choices. It’s thrilling.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun - Sin Vega - Unscored

An engaging zone-based city builder that balances simulation with ease of play, but offers little that feels substantially new or improved enough to warrant a sequel.

Saving Content - Scott Ellison II - 5 / 5

Colossal Order offers an intricate deep simulation of a city builder. Aside from the taxing performance, it’s simply amazing to see in motion. For the price, you get a metropolis-sized game full of options. It’s also one of those things where I can’t wait to see what this game is like eight years from now. Cities: Skylines II offers the next-generation of the city builder that constantly impressed and amazed.

VG247 - Alex Donaldson - 4 / 5

This is an excellent sequel, and an exciting foundation for what I’m sure will be a bright, addition-packed future.

VideoGamer - Antony Terence - 8 / 10

Cities Skylines 2 is a well-loved home that picks smart renovation over a sweeping revolution. With incredible visuals and immaculate detailing, few cities can eclipse this colossal effort in terms of sheer freedom and choice.

  • @[email protected]English
    1•8 months ago

    Paradox published games are so often great gameplay-wise but technically incompetent lol, wouldn‘t surprise me if it utilized like 2 CPU cores tops to simulate a whole metropolis

    • @MarzepansionEnglish
      6•8 months ago

      It’s using unity game engine. I’m a graphics programmer in the industry and at my current and last workplace I made tech for games studios (i.e. I dealt with performance of easily 100 games a year at one point). Unity by far was default the worst to deal with due to the limited tools to fix issues that were inherint to the engine. Note don’t take this as me saying unity is a bad engine, it’s just that it isn’t a performant one. Its focus is elsewhere (accessibility and ease of development, things it excels at).

      So yes, you can definitely assume that, in fact I’d assume one core for the simulation unless they wrote an entire new architecture to replace unity’s functionality (you’d still be locked to single thread sync points, but that’s manageable). It’s a hassle most don’t deal with as it’s a lot of work to struggle against writing code like unity wants you to write it.

      I worked in a studio that exactly did that a decade ago, and it was painful and frankly a huge upfront dev cost that takes a long time to pay off.

      • @[email protected]English
        -1•8 months ago

        Sklylines 1 was on Unity, but Skylines 2 is using Unreal as its engine this time.

        I stand corrected. Must have been confused by the tech demo and hearing about “the new engine” from some CS content creators and making assumptions. It is indeed made in Unity, which is a shame. I used to love that engine, but it really hasn’t kept up with the times. I was so excited for it being in UE5.