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Cities: Skylines II

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Cities: Skylines II
Developer(s)Colossal Order
Publisher(s)Paradox Interactive
EngineBespoke, using a heavily extended Unity as a base[1]
Platform(s)
Release
  • Windows
  • 24 October 2023
  • PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S
  • Q2 2024
Genre(s)City-building, construction and management simulation
Mode(s)Single-player

Cities: Skylines II is a 2023 city-building game developed by Colossal Order and published by Paradox Interactive. The game is a sequel to 2015's Cities: Skylines and expands upon many of its simulation factors such as simulated city and population sizes with improved traffic AI and management schemes. It was released for Windows on 24 October 2023, and is planned to release to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S in Q2 2024.[2][3][4] Critical reception praised its gameplay but criticized its performance requirements and other technical flaws.

Gameplay

See also: Cities: Skylines § Gameplay

Like its predecessor, Cities: Skylines II gives the player a virtual plot of land to create a city within. Players can lay down roads, zoning, utilities, and city services to bring in residents and businesses. The player can set city policies like tax rates and ordinances to influence how the city grows, from which they also receive funds to continue to expand the city.

Initially the player is limited to nine tiles of space to build on but can expand out by purchasing additional tiles with city funds as they achieve milestones. Whereas the first game was limited to nine tiles covering 36 km2 (14 sq mi) of area (81 tiles with user modifications) and the remastered edition to 25 (100 km2 (39 sq mi)),[a], Cities: Skylines II allows players to build out to 441 tiles representing 159 km2 (61 sq mi) of area, meaning each individual tile is substantially smaller.[b][5] Unlike the previous game which was limited to around 65,000 citizens, the number of citizens that can be directly simulated in Cities: Skylines II is limited only by a player's computer or console specifications.[6] Each map included with the game is based on a preset climate that influences weather behavior. Both the weather and the behavior of the city population follow annual and diurnal cycles, with each in-game day/night equivalent to one month of simulation time. Depending on the climate, the winter months may bring snow and other cold conditions, while summer weather may bring excessive flooding and tornadoes. Such disasters can be mitigated with additional disaster response facilities and services within the city.[7]

Cities: Skylines II improves and expands upon the robust city building mechanics fans know from the original, including fully realized transportation and economic systems, enhanced construction and customization options, and advanced modding capabilities.[8][9][10] Players have more fine-tuning control of residential, commercial, and industrial zones, including more zone types such as low-income residential and mixed-use residential/commercial. Signature buildings can be unlocked by reaching specific milestones and can impact the land value and other properties of whatever zone they are placed in.[11] Rather than purely distance as in the first game, the simulated citizens use more intelligent methods to determine traffic routes, using route length, costs, comfort, and agent preference.[12] Services like police and fire stations can also be assigned to specific districts to improve their response times, in contrast to the first game.[13] In addition to public safety services, education, and trash management, Cities: Skylines II also adds in services for telecommunications, welfare, and death management. These services can now be expanded through upgrades of existing locations rather than having to build a separate service building.[14] Passenger and freight transport options are more flexible, allowing for importing and exporting to other virtual cities, and rather than unlocking certain transport options based on city size, Cities: Skylines II has a technology tree on which players can spend development points to advance and unlock desired transport options.[15]

Development

Cities: Skylines II continues to use the Unity engine, like its predecessor.[16]

Cities: Skylines II was revealed on 6 March 2023, as part of the Paradox Announcement Show 2023.[17][18] Adding to the base game, eight separate downloadable content packs are already slated for release, including the San Francisco Set, Beach Properties Asset Pack, two Content Creator Packs, the Bridges & Ports Expansion, and 3 Radio Stations in the Ultimate Edition option on the Windows, Xbox and Playstation online distribution apps.[19]

Unlike the first game, Cities: Skylines II was originally targeted to launch on both computers and consoles at the same time,[20] but on 28 September 2023, Paradox Interactive announced that the console versions would not ship as expected on 24 October and that their release had been delayed to spring 2024. They further announced that preorders for the console releases would be closed and that all existing preorders would be refunded to the purchasers. Colossal Order explained that they were delaying the release to improve the quality of console gameplay and the optimisation of both console and Windows versions. Alongside the delay, they also announced an increase to the minimum specifications of the PC version of the game.[3] In the week prior to the PC release Colossal Order further stated that the performance of the game may not be up to expectations at launch, but that they had planned a series of patches to improve this.[21]

Colossal Order also stated in October 2023 that while the game would support user modifications as with the original, mods would only be made available through the Paradox Mods library, which allows for cross-platform support, rather than through the Steam Workshop that the first game had used.[21] At least eight building style packs, developed by popular content creators from the first game, will be made available for free through Paradox Mods.[22] This modification support is not offered to everyone at the time of initial release, per the publisher's announcement. [23]

Reception

Cities: Skylines II received "generally favorable" reviews from critics, according to review aggregator website Metacritic.[24] At launch, the game reached more than 100,000 concurrent players on Steam. It received "mixed" reviews from players, with the majority of the reviewers criticizing the game's various performance issues and noticeable bugs.[35]

Leana Hafer from IGN said that although it has new enjoyable systems, the game can get better with post-launch content, stating "it feels like playing a beta, or a very early Early Access game."[28] Ed Smith from PCGamesN describes how initial peaceful gameplay gave way to "supreme frustation and rage". In his Cities: Skylines II review, which scores the game seven out of ten, he concludes: "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."[36] Smith compared Skylines II to SimCity (2013), saying that both games experienced similar playability and performance issues.[37]

The game was nominated for "Best Sim / Strategy Game" at The Game Awards 2023.[38]

Notes

  1. ^ In the original Cities: Skylines, each map tile represents an area of 4.0 km2 (1.5 sq mi).
  2. ^ In Cities: Skylines II, each map tile represents an area of 0.36 square kilometres (0.14 sq mi).

References

  1. ^ Huhtala, Paavo (November 5, 2023). "Why Cities: Skylines 2 performs poorly - paavohtl's blog". blog.paavo.me. Retrieved November 6, 2023.
  2. ^ Livingston, Christopher (March 8, 2023). "Cities: Skylines 2 coming this year: 'the most realistic city simulation ever created'". PC Gamer.
  3. ^ a b "Cities: Skylines II - Update on Console Release Window". Paradox Forum. September 28, 2023. Retrieved September 28, 2023.
  4. ^ "Cities: Skylines 2 on PS5 and Xbox Series X and S Suffers Big Delay, Refunds Offered". IGN. September 28, 2023. Retrieved October 17, 2023.
  5. ^ "Features". Paradox Interactive. Retrieved June 11, 2023.
  6. ^ Randall, Harvey (June 29, 2023). "Cities: Skylines 2 has no cap on the number of people it can track, and it's basically the Matrix". PC Gamer. Retrieved July 2, 2023.
  7. ^ Smith, Ed (August 7, 2023). "Cities Skyline 2's new seasons system is confusing but beautiful". PCGamesN. Retrieved August 7, 2023.
  8. ^ Gould, Elie (March 9, 2023). "Cities Skylines 2 release date, trailers, and everything we know so far". TechRadar.
  9. ^ Conditt, Jessica (March 6, 2023). "Cities: Skylines II heads to PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S in 2023". Engadget.
  10. ^ Wales, Matt (March 6, 2023). "Cities: Skylines 2 announced and launching later this year". Eurogamer.
  11. ^ Smith, Ed (July 10, 2023). "Cities Skylines 2 mixed zoning is confirmed, delivering ultra realism". PCGamesN.
  12. ^ Smith, Graham (June 29, 2023). "Cities: Skylines 2's traffic simulation includes car crashes, better pathfinding, car parks". Rock Paper Shotgun. Retrieved July 1, 2023.
  13. ^ Smith, Ed (June 29, 2023). "Cities Skylines 2's new district tools are exactly what we wanted". PCGamesN. Retrieved July 1, 2023.
  14. ^ Smith, Ed (July 17, 2023). "How do Cities Skylines 2 services work?". PCGamesN.
  15. ^ Livingston, Christopher (July 3, 2023). "Cities: Skylines 2 is making an important change to how public transportation works". PC Gamer.
  16. ^ Livingston, Christopher (April 3, 2023). "Cities: Skylines 2 developer says multiplayer would make the 'core player experience' worse". PC Gamer. Retrieved July 9, 2023.
  17. ^ Plant, Logan; Paes, João (March 6, 2023). "Cities: Skylines 2 revealed for current-gen consoles, coming later this year". IGN.
  18. ^ Serin, Kaan (March 6, 2023). "Paradox announce 'revolutionary' Cities: Skylines 2 for later this year". Rock Paper Shotgun.
  19. ^ "Cities: Skylines II". Paradox Interactive. Retrieved July 10, 2023.
  20. ^ Partis, Danielle (June 12, 2023). "Cities: Skylines II is a Truly Enormous Sequel - and It's Built as Much for Console as PC". Xbox Wire.
  21. ^ a b Wilde, Tyler (October 16, 2023). "Cities: Skylines 2 won't use Steam Workshop for mod sharing". PC Gamer. Retrieved October 17, 2023.
  22. ^ Bolding, Jonathan (October 27, 2023). "Cities: Skylines 2 has 8 packs of regional buildings on the way, for free". PC Gamer. Retrieved October 29, 2023.
  23. ^ "Cities: Skylines II: Modding and Performance FAQ". Paradox Interactive Forums. October 16, 2023. Retrieved November 8, 2023. Modding is currently in a beta phase and will be available to PC players soon after release. Console users will get access to modding too, and we will share a timeline later on.
  24. ^ a b "Cities: Skylines II for PC Reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved October 19, 2023.
  25. ^ Thwaites, Sarah (October 19, 2023). "Cities: Skylines II Review - Utopian Thinking". Game Informer. Retrieved October 20, 2023.
  26. ^ Bailey, Dustin (October 19, 2023). "Cities: Skylines 2 review: 'Its promise is completely overshadowed by its technical problems'". GamesRadar+. Retrieved October 20, 2023.
  27. ^ Deppe, Martin (October 19, 2023). "Cities: Skylines 2 im Test - Das könnte die beste Städtebausimulation werden! Mit Betonung auf werden". GameStar (in German). Retrieved October 20, 2023.
  28. ^ a b Hafer, Leana (October 19, 2023). "Cities: Skylines 2 Review". IGN. Retrieved October 20, 2023.
  29. ^ "Cities: Skylines II - Recensione" (in Italian). Retrieved October 20, 2023.
  30. ^ Livingston, Christopher (October 19, 2023). "Cities: Skylines 2 review". PC Gamer. Retrieved October 20, 2023.
  31. ^ Smith, Edward (October 19, 2023). "Cities Skylines 2 review - bigger, not better". PCGamesN. Retrieved October 20, 2023.
  32. ^ Broadwell, Josh (October 19, 2023). "Cities Skylines 2 review: Building a better sequel". Shacknews. Retrieved October 20, 2023.
  33. ^ Terence, Antony (October 19, 2023). "Cities Skylines 2 review - just shy of a milestone". VideoGamer.com. Retrieved October 20, 2023.
  34. ^ Dammes, Matthias (October 20, 2023). "Cities: Skylines 2 im Test - Miese Performance macht diese Stadt zur Großbaustelle" (in German). Retrieved October 20, 2023.
  35. ^ Yin-Poole, Wesley (October 25, 2023). "Cities Skylines 2 Launches Big on Steam, but Suffers Complaints Over Performance". IGN. Retrieved October 30, 2023.
  36. ^ "Cities Skylines 2 review - bigger, not better". PCGamesN. October 19, 2023. Retrieved November 1, 2023.
  37. ^ Smith, Ed (October 25, 2023). "Cities Skylines 2 feels like the new SimCity 2013". PCGamesN. Network N. Retrieved November 4, 2023.
  38. ^ Spangler, Todd (November 13, 2023). "The Game Awards 2023 Nominations: Alan Wake 2, Baldur's Gate 3 Lead the Pack With Eight Noms Each (Full List)". Variety. Retrieved November 18, 2023.
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