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Cities: Skylines II

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Cities: Skylines II
Developer(s)Colossal Order
Publisher(s)Paradox Interactive
EngineUnity
Platform(s)
Release
  • Windows
  • October 24, 2023
  • PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S
  • TBA
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 October 24, 2023. A release for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S was previously planned for October 2024,[1][2][3][4] but was later indefinitely delayed.[5][6] Critical reception praised its gameplay but criticized its performance requirements and other technical flaws.

Gameplay

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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 outward by purchasing additional tiles with city funds as they achieve milestones. Whereas the first game was limited to nine tiles covering 33.1776 km2 (12.8099 sq mi) of area (81 tiles with user modifications) and the remastered edition to 25 tiles covering 92.16 km2 (35.58 sq mi),[a] Cities: Skylines II allows players to build out to 441 tiles representing 171.33 km2 (66.15 sq mi) of area, meaning each individual tile is substantially smaller.[b][7][8] With a third-party modification, this can be increased to 529 tiles, which increases the available area to 205.52 km2 (79.35 sq mi).[9] 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.[10] Each city can earn up to 2 billion currency units.[citation needed] 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.[11] Like its predecessor, Cities: Skylines II operates in a compressed time fashion.

Cities: Skylines II improves and expands upon the robust city building mechanics of the prequel, including fully realized transportation and economic systems, enhanced construction and customization options, including American and European styles, and advanced modding capabilities.[12][13][14] 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 or city they are placed in.[15] 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.[16] Services like police and fire stations can also be assigned to specific districts to improve their response times, in contrast to the first game.[17] In addition to public safety services, deathcare, education, and waste management, Cities: Skylines II also adds in services for telecommunications and welfare. These services can now be expanded through upgrades of existing locations rather than having to build a separate service building.[18] 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.[19]

Development

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Cities: Skylines II was revealed on March 6, 2023, as part of the Paradox Announcement Show 2023.[20][21] 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 three Radio Stations in the Ultimate Edition option on the Windows, Xbox and PlayStation online distribution apps.[22] According to Colossal Order, the game had originally been planned to be launched in late 2020, however various issues encountered in development delayed the release.[23]

Cities: Skylines II continues to use the Unity engine, like its predecessor.[24] Unlike the first game, Cities: Skylines II was originally targeted to launch on both computers and consoles at the same time,[25] but on September 28, 2023, Paradox Interactive announced that the console versions would not ship as expected on October 24th 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.[2] 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.[26] According to Paradox Interactive, they have struggled with optimizing the game to a playable level for console, they have stated that they are hopeful April will demonstrate sufficient progress to continue with a release candidate, and continue work on optimization for a targeted release in October.[4] In July 2024, Paradox announced a delay for console versions, due to stability and performance problems.[3][27]

User modifications

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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.[26] A user modification in Cities: Skylines II can add content or change the game's behavior by overriding the code. This allows users to tweak settings and mechanics which otherwise cannot be changed in-game, as well as add more maps or more assets. At least eight building style packs, developed by popular content creators from the first game, will be made available for free through Paradox Mods.[28] This modification support was not offered to everyone at the time of initial release, per the publisher's announcement.[29] Third-party mod managers, such as r2modman,[30] allows one to install mods from third-party mod repositories. One such mod is Realistic Density, which increases city density to real life levels by increasing demand, staffing and occupancy.[31] Paradox Mods was released on March 25, 2024.

Downloadable content

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Name Release date Notes Availability
Landmark Buildings October 24, 2023 Introduces 9 new landmark buildings and the Tampere map. No longer available. Was available only during the pre-order period.
San Francisco October 24, 2023 Includes the Golden Gate Bridge, Muscle Car Garage, and San Francisco Map. Only for Ultimate Edition users and also available with an Expansion Pass (currently available for Limited Premium Edition)
Beach Properties March 25, 2024 Includes many waterfront styled buildings. Initially sold as DLC, but was integrated into the base game following backlash.
Deluxe Relax Station March 25, 2024 Introduces 16 new music tracks. For purchase on Steam and Microsoft store.

As of September 2024, there are four DLCs for the game. More will be released in 2024 and 2025.[32] In April 2024, Colossal Order and Paradox Interactive released a joint statement addressing the backlash from the release of the Beach Properties DLC. In response, the DLC was pulled from the Steam storefront, and its owners were offered refunds. In addition, Ultimate Edition purchasers were offered three additional creator packs and three more radio stations. The statement pledged to focus on improving the base game and modding tools, focus on free patches and updates before spending more time on paid content, and put together an advisory meeting with player representatives.[33]

Reception

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Critical reception

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Cities: Skylines II received "mixed or average" reviews from critics, according to review aggregator website Metacritic.[34] The game was nominated for "Best Sim / Strategy Game" at The Game Awards 2023.[45]

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."[38] 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."[46] Smith compared Skylines II to SimCity (2013), saying that both games experienced similar playability and performance issues.[47] In an April 2024 retrospective, Rock Paper Shotgun said the performance had improved to tolerable levels but still needed more work. Despite issues with stuttering, their tests showed a two-fold improvement of frame rates in some cases.[48]

The first DLC to be released for Cities: Skylines II, called Beach Properties, received near-universal negative reviews from players. Only 4% of the Steam reviews were positive three days post-release.[49] Many of these reviews cited the lack of beaches and high price-to-content ratio as reasons for disappointment. In response, the Cities: Skylines II team apologized and announced plans to make this content a free add-on, issue refunds, and pledged to focus on gameplay issues before releasing more DLC.

Technical issues

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In the days following the launch, the game received "mixed" reviews from players, with the majority of the reviewers criticizing the game's various performance issues and noticeable bugs.[50] Since its release in 2023, Paradox has failed to shift public perception regarding the game, with the majority of community reviews in 2024 being negative on Steam. In the eighth edition of the Cities: Skylines II developer diary, Philip Hallikainen of Paradox said that "feedback has risen to toxic levels".[51] The Beach Properties DLC received negative reviews from players who criticized its lack of meaningful additions and the studio's focus on creating paid expansions instead of improving the state of the game.

One issue that the community noticed was that each simulated citizen has their teeth rendered in full detail. Due to the fact that the citizens never open their mouths and the camera is usually positioned far away, the teeth are never visible.[52] Developers confirmed this fact and stated that this does not contribute to the performance in any significant way.[53] Colossal Order plans to address the performance issues, including those related to characters' teeth.[54]

Sales

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At launch, the game reached more than 100,000 concurrent players on Steam.[50] In February 2024, Paradox revealed that the game had sold more than 1 million copies.[55]

Response

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Colossal Order apologized to players in April 2024 in response to the backlash of both the main release and the Beach Properties DLC. They pledged to issue refunds to all players who had purchased the DLC pack, to compensate Ultimate edition owners with additional content, and promised that the studio would focus on fixing the game's various technical issues before working on future expansions.[56]

Notes

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  1. ^ In the original Cities: Skylines, each map tile represents an area of 3.6864 km2 (1.4233 sq mi).
  2. ^ In Cities: Skylines II, each map tile represents an area of 0.3885 square kilometres (0.1500 sq mi).

References

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  1. ^ Livingston, Christopher (March 8, 2023). "Cities: Skylines 2 coming this year: 'the most realistic city simulation ever created'". PC Gamer.
  2. ^ a b "Cities: Skylines II - Update on Console Release Window". Paradox Forum. September 28, 2023. Retrieved September 28, 2023.
  3. ^ a b Yin-Poole, Wesley (September 28, 2023). "Cities: Skylines 2 on PS5 and Xbox Series X and S Suffers Big Delay, Refunds Offered". IGN. Retrieved October 17, 2023.
  4. ^ a b "Console". Paradox Interactive. Retrieved May 7, 2024.
  5. ^ Yin-Poole, Wesley (July 8, 2024). "City Skylines 2 on Console Delayed Indefinitely as Developer Struggles to Hit Stability and Performance Targets". IGN. Retrieved July 8, 2024.
  6. ^ Bevan, Rhiannon (July 8, 2024). "Cities: Skylines 2 Console Port Delayed Indefinitely Over "Unresolved Issues"". TheGamer. Retrieved July 8, 2024.
  7. ^ "Features". Paradox Interactive. Retrieved June 11, 2023.
  8. ^ "Cities Skylines 2 - Map size". Paradox Interactive Forums. October 24, 2023. Retrieved January 1, 2024.
  9. ^ "UnlockAllTilesMod/Patches/MapTilePurchaseSystem_TileNumber.cs at main · Wayzware/UnlockAllTilesMod". GitHub. November 22, 2023. Retrieved January 1, 2024.
  10. ^ 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.
  11. ^ Smith, Ed (August 7, 2023). "Cities Skyline 2's new seasons system is confusing but beautiful". PCGamesN. Retrieved August 7, 2023.
  12. ^ Gould, Elie (March 9, 2023). "Cities Skylines 2 release date, trailers, and everything we know so far". TechRadar.
  13. ^ Conditt, Jessica (March 6, 2023). "Cities: Skylines II heads to PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S in 2023". Engadget.
  14. ^ Wales, Matt (March 6, 2023). "Cities: Skylines 2 announced and launching later this year". Eurogamer.
  15. ^ Smith, Ed (July 10, 2023). "Cities Skylines 2 mixed zoning is confirmed, delivering ultra realism". PCGamesN.
  16. ^ 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.
  17. ^ Smith, Ed (June 29, 2023). "Cities Skylines 2's new district tools are exactly what we wanted". PCGamesN. Retrieved July 1, 2023.
  18. ^ Smith, Ed (July 17, 2023). "How do Cities Skylines 2 services work?". PCGamesN.
  19. ^ Livingston, Christopher (July 3, 2023). "Cities: Skylines 2 is making an important change to how public transportation works". PC Gamer.
  20. ^ Plant, Logan; Paes, João (March 6, 2023). "Cities: Skylines 2 revealed for current-gen consoles, coming later this year". IGN.
  21. ^ Serin, Kaan (March 6, 2023). "Paradox announce 'revolutionary' Cities: Skylines 2 for later this year". Rock Paper Shotgun.
  22. ^ "Cities: Skylines II". Paradox Interactive. Retrieved July 10, 2023.
  23. ^ Colossal Order (December 18, 2023), The Journey to Launch | Cities: Skylines II, retrieved December 31, 2023
  24. ^ Livingston, Christopher (April 3, 2023). "Cities: Skylines 2 developer says multiplayer would make the 'core player experience' worse". PC Gamer. Retrieved July 9, 2023.
  25. ^ 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.
  26. ^ a b Wilde, Tyler (October 16, 2023). "Cities: Skylines 2 won't use Steam Workshop for mod sharing". PC Gamer. Retrieved October 17, 2023.
  27. ^ Kennedy, Victoria (July 8, 2024). "Cities: Skylines 2 console launch delayed again". Eurogamer. Retrieved July 8, 2024.
  28. ^ 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.
  29. ^ "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.
  30. ^ Ayres, Cade (December 16, 2023), r2modman, retrieved December 16, 2023
  31. ^ "RealisticDensity v0.14.0". Thunderstore. Retrieved March 17, 2024., as referred by "Brilliant new Cities Skylines 2 mod fixes problems across the entire simulation". PCGamesN. March 12, 2024. Retrieved March 17, 2024.
  32. ^ "Beach Properties Asset Pack & Modding Wavelet Patch Announcement". Paradox Interactive Forums. March 18, 2024. Retrieved March 25, 2024.
  33. ^ Yin-Poole, Wesley (April 18, 2024). "Cities Skylines 2 Dev Refunds DLC, Admits It Rushed It Out, and Apologizes to Disgruntled Players". IGN. Retrieved April 19, 2024.
  34. ^ a b "Cities: Skylines II for PC Reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved October 19, 2023.
  35. ^ Thwaites, Sarah (October 19, 2023). "Cities: Skylines II Review - Utopian Thinking". Game Informer. Archived from the original on October 19, 2023. Retrieved October 20, 2023.
  36. ^ Bailey, Dustin (October 19, 2023). "Cities: Skylines 2 review: 'Its promise is completely overshadowed by its technical problems'". GamesRadar+. Retrieved October 20, 2023.
  37. ^ 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.
  38. ^ a b Hafer, Leana (October 19, 2023). "Cities: Skylines 2 Review". IGN. Retrieved October 20, 2023.
  39. ^ "Cities: Skylines II - Recensione" (in Italian). October 19, 2023. Retrieved October 20, 2023.
  40. ^ Livingston, Christopher (October 19, 2023). "Cities: Skylines 2 review". PC Gamer. Retrieved October 20, 2023.
  41. ^ Smith, Edward (October 19, 2023). "Cities Skylines 2 review - bigger, not better". PCGamesN. Retrieved October 20, 2023.
  42. ^ Broadwell, Josh (October 19, 2023). "Cities Skylines 2 review: Building a better sequel". Shacknews. Retrieved October 20, 2023.
  43. ^ Terence, Antony (October 19, 2023). "Cities Skylines 2 review - just shy of a milestone". VideoGamer.com. Retrieved October 20, 2023.
  44. ^ Dammes, Matthias (October 20, 2023). "Cities: Skylines 2 im Test - Miese Performance macht diese Stadt zur Großbaustelle" (in German). Retrieved October 20, 2023.
  45. ^ 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.
  46. ^ Smith, Ed (October 19, 2023). "Cities Skylines 2 review - bigger, not better". PCGamesN. Retrieved November 1, 2023.
  47. ^ Smith, Ed (October 25, 2023). "Cities Skylines 2 feels like the new SimCity 2013". PCGamesN. Network N. Retrieved November 4, 2023.
  48. ^ Archer, James (April 16, 2024). "After six months of renovations, Cities: Skylines 2 performance is considerably less terrible". Rock Paper Shotgun. Retrieved April 19, 2024.
  49. ^ Domeradzka, Zuzanna (March 28, 2024). "Cities: Skylines 2 DLC Receives Lowest Steam Reviews. Players Lose Hope and Patience for City Builder". Gamepressure. Retrieved April 22, 2024.
  50. ^ a b Yin-Poole, Wesley (October 25, 2023). "Cities Skylines 2 Launches Big on Steam, but Suffers Complaints Over Performance". IGN. Retrieved October 30, 2023.
  51. ^ "CO Word of the Week #8". Paradox Interactive Forums. January 15, 2024. Retrieved February 22, 2024.
  52. ^ Dustin Bailey (October 27, 2023). "Cities: Skylines 2's individually rendered teeth aren't responsible for the game's performance issues - at least not all of them". gamesradar. Retrieved January 10, 2024.
  53. ^ Stanton, Rich (October 27, 2023). "Cities: Skylines 2 developer: 'Yes, our characters have teeth. No, the characters' teeth are not affecting performance'". PC Gamer. Retrieved January 10, 2024.
  54. ^ Hallikainen, Mariina (November 1, 2023). "CO Word of the Week #1". Paradox Interactive Forums. Retrieved February 18, 2024. The patch included optimization for LODs, or Level of Detail, which means that the game renders fewer details when the camera is far away from the object. Finding optimal LOD levels is a balancing act between visual fidelity and performance, and we'll be addressing this in future patches. Yes, including the characters and their teeth!
  55. ^ Parijat, Shubhankar (February 7, 2024). "Cities: Skylines 2 Has Sold Over 1 Million Units, Developer "Working Hard on Improvements"". GamingBolt. Retrieved April 20, 2024.
  56. ^ Velocci, Carli (April 18, 2014). "Cities: Skylines 2 devs apologize for state of game: 'We let you down'". Polygon. Retrieved April 20, 2024.
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