Cities Skylines 2 Review - From Hype To Horror
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- Опубликовано: 2 июл 2024
- Cities Skylines 2 is a broken mess. And today's review holds no punches. It's yet another release that is unoptimized, full of broken promises, lacks any meaningful content changes and simply plays off its previous success. How this is not an early access title is beyond me. How they have the audacity to release this at full price is audacious. The performance alone makes this game an avoid, but there is still so much else that lacks or has taken a step back.
So go grab a cuppa and let Reggie explain all in today's review.
#citiesskylines2 #citiesskylines #colossalorder #paradoxinteractive
00:00 - Intro
00:42 - Performance Woes
01:30 - Graphical Settings
03:13 - Defending The Indefensible
04:37 - Gameplay
05:26 - Building Mechanics
06:16 - Building Modifications
07:07 - Zoning
07:43 - Connection Issues
08:43 - Additions
10:22 - A great Game Underneath
11:04 - Development Points
12:22 - Graphics
13:16 - Bland Assets
15:02 - Sound
16:17 - Final Thoughts & Score 
Игры
Fun fact: someone on reddit discovered that one of the prime examples for the performance issues is because the models for the citizens don't have LODs, this means they theyre rendered at FULL resolution no matter what distance your camera is from them. It also seems that nobody properly vetted the models before release because for some ungodly reason the citizens each have *individually modeled teeth*
So in a city of 30k people, that's 30 teeth per person, that's 300k teeth being rendered at once no matter the distance from the camera
Hair as well. Lots of polygons for the hair.
Lol do they trow up after the Rollercoaster
Teeth ... teeth everywhere!
that's so funny, why the f are they focusing on that. They should improve the textures of buildings, roads and trees, this sin't a sims 4 game.
@@21preend42 Not only textures of buildings, roads and trees, Colossal Order should improve on AI traffic behavior and smoother lane changing/merging.
Instead all traffic make sudden lane change, just like all motherfuckers on the road in real life.
The reason why they blocked ALL early reviewers to talk about performance was the key everyone needed to take away... They knew the sh*t wasn't ready and they demanded reviewers to not talk about it. They wanted your money and they got it.
Oh they didn’t get my money. Saw this coming from 2 miles away. Even their highly edited marketing videos couldn’t hide the bugs and performance issues (from me). Meantime people were losing their mind because the cars turning their high beams off when there’s oncoming traffic
I'm disappointed in many of the big-name C:S reviewers. They know reviewing C:S is their bread and butter so they went along with the performance mess. Even now many of them are still acting like everything's fine, making videos like "optimizing your industry!" when it's been proven that all the economy numbers are fudged.
They did NOT get my money. Why? Because I don't pre-order and I don't buy on release anymore.
Well I suppose I'll just download City Skylines 1 and wait a few months for this game to go on sale.
Probably the best recommendation of all! That’s a proper game plan.
Even better idea. Don’t buy it at all. Don’t reward this company for releasing trash, promising to fix it later. This is becoming a trend in gaming, let’s not approve of it anymore.
@@Tetarkall I love how people were excited for the game and then start fucking calling it piece of shit game. Why do people always call out every game after release, but never call out every newborn after birth?
People: **Excited for Cities Skyline II**
Also people: **Fucking calls the game out and wish death on Colossal Order**
Maybe people are upset that we are promised a working game and instead keep getting screwed by greedy companies. Now in a perfect world no one would preorder a game and it'd be released in perfect working order. Sadly we live in the land of preordering games which means the company already has your money so they don't care about making a working product. Death threats are idiotic but the anger and frustration I can relate to.
I'm gonna throw this out there. The traffic accidents. What's the point? It honestly just seems like a gimmick to show off the new AI, but in a huge city I'd say they're gonna get really annoying really quickly. IMO a much better option to show off the AI diversions would be road works. They could have tied it into the road maintenance / conditions and if a road was in bad condition then that road is closed off and a maintenance crew is sent out to fix it, setting up road blocks and diversions for a few in-game days at a time. It does the same basic thing, but just has a much better connection to the actual management side of the game rather than random traffic accidents happening because there's a pot hole in the street.
And I just can't believe they went with the same shit tiled zoning mechanic. It was outdated and clunky nine years ago and here it is again. I love having big fuck off gaps of grass in between my houses on a curved road that I have to fill in with trees and bushes just to hide the shit terrain. There's a small indie village building game called Ostriv that actually has a mechanic that makes the garden fences of each house automatically snap to the next and it looks amazing. That would have worked wonders in this game, joining the foundation of each lot to the next.
LOVE your idea about roadworks and closing off roads instead. Simple, but would really strain your transit system. The accidents were one of those things that were smart in the concept stage but very messy when implemented. They all just drive through each other and it looks a glitchy mess.
And couldn’t agree more on zoning. Thank you for the excellent idea mate!
I don't get the traffic accidents either, it's a neat gimmick, but that is all it is.
They could have used the perimeter drawing system from the farms and landfills for zoning instead of tiles.
Yeah, what's the fucking point of traffic accidents when vehicles can just phase through each other?
If you want traffic accidents in games, then fucking add eliminate vehicles phasing through each other. Vehicles phasing through each other was fine in 2003, but shouldn't even be in thing a 2023 game.
Why do game developers still make cars phasing through each other?
Very interesting and thorough review thanks! I feel most betrayed by the big content creators who tried to convince everyone this game was some work of genius. Meanwhile the majority of fans will never have the hardware to even run this if they wanted to...
Just turn down depth of field and you can run the game on a potato, all these youtubers are just hopping on the hate bandwgon
@@FinlandForceTeam this is just factually untrue.
@@DokisKalin1 nope
What did you expect from the guys with early access?! To bash apre-released game, they had no idea how would turn out, in the final release?
What if they had given poor reviews, and the game performance turned out to be great, in the release version?
Most, if not all of them, have made videos post release, to give their honest opinion. Thats the opinion you have to go by, not some earky access comments.
Btw. I get +30 FPS, on medium settings, on my RTX 3060 12GB. Thsts mire than enough, for a decent experience, in a city builder game.
@@FinlandForceTeamStop this bs 😂 I know what i had to change to get playable results and that was much more and my pc is not an potato
You can probably hear the frustration in my voice on this one and that's because I loved Cities Skylines. But this one has to be called out for what it is - a broken mess where greed has come before quality. And I implore even the most hardened of fans to not accept mediocrity. You worked hard for your money so let them work hard for yours. As always, play nice in the comments xxx
EDIT: A hotfix is out for Steam (not gamepass as yet which is what this has been reviewed on). So I can't comment on performance upgrades as yet but I see some positive and some negative feedback so definitely check it out once the patch is platform wide.
I took a look at this the day it dropped on an RTX 4090 / Ryzen 7800X 3D rig at 3440 X 1440 and was getting 35 FPS in the main menu which is just a still image! Anyway, going through the settings the first thing I turned off was depth of field from the default Physical to OFF and immediately FPS went to 135. In game its not as big a difference but it does make a difference.
This is unacceptable.
@@TerraWare spot on mate. That’s another thing that’s been driving me mad about the defence of the game. People saying “oh it works great if you disable X and put these settings on very low”. You have to kind of remind them that it’s not acceptable for that to be the ok solution, that your game has to look like tripe whilst they have your money.
Could not agree more.
Colossal Order and Paradox made 100s of millions of dollars on CS1. Though, they only scaled their studio x1. I am baffled. I think THATS greed too. They could easily scale up to 100 artists and developers, at least. Which is still the size of the original Simcity 4 team.
@niquedegraaff really good point this. When I call out CO, you have to feel for the poor sods who are on the development team. I bet they worked their socks off to get it to this stage and were probably mortified when management said they were going ahead with a release. Appreciate you sharing raising this up, because corporate greed shouldn’t reflect on those in the people who actually made this.
Poignant remarks reggie. I had a vision of CS2 years ago before it was announced, and it was completely different. More photorealistic, more varied themes, more dyamism in the look of the city. I mean these devs are in Finland, their cities look nothing like this! I had enough generic American grid cities in the last game!
And good point about the game engine, certainly seems like the game is not a good fit for the engine tbh, and considering the optimization issues the devs cant possibly have a solid understanding of the engine.
Cities Skyline (original) was absolutely fantastic. But after almost a decade, the vision you have is certainly not far fetched. When I consider the graphical prowess of other games these days, I don’t think it’s unfair to expect some polish. I can only dream of a Unreal Engine 5 version of this game. Thank you for taking the time to comment too, love to hear other thoughts and you are spot on!
As i said in my own reply the engine is a let down. As for the graphics, i personally didnt expect too much change especiall with how the simulation is pushing the simulation already (new engine would def help) and yeah i expected some more themes/buildings on release but hey thatd mean less dlc sales (boo corpos) otherwise ive found it to be a good improvement of the first game despite its flaws and honestly a better launch than most games have had recently. obviously saying that doesnt excuse it but they gave more effort than most.
@@RUH1G really good write up this with some great balance seeing both sides. Thank you for commenting!
I think the biggest problem is with the publisher, with Paradox and wanting the game to become a hit with the mainstream gamer, not so much the old fans. Something publishers keep doing, a game in a certain niche becomes a hit, and now they want a wider amount of gamers to play it (read: buy it). Their whole add campaign was set to lure in none CS gamers. A bit complaint from the CS channels was that all these outside channels were invited to expensive press events that had nothing to do with Cities Skylines and was way to expensive to justify. They had their focus on the wrong crowd and it's believed that this caused the rushed PC launch instead of delaying it cause Paradox already put a lot of money in promoting it to the wrong crowd. The Cities Skylines fans would have understood a delay to optimize the game better and such. Heck they did delay the console version with months, why is that? Why is the minor version delayed but the main version not? Cities is a PC game, city building is a PC genre, what freaking idiot decides to push out the one version that will sell the most, completely broken, while delaying the version not many will play and give that all your focus?
@@Jorendo Solid points about marketing and i believe that and the xp based progression were def geared for the mainstream. the more in depth mechanics for cs2 have me being a bit more careful and methodical which when it comes to this type of game which i see as the challenge. Imo they marketed for the mainstream and made it more accessible while adding depth so it still feels good for the established community
The thing that makes very, very sad is the fact that the paramedics and the police won't hop out of their cars to enter in the houses. I don't understand why they removed this which was crucial in my vision. I really hope they could bring it back, even though i know it might be impossible. And didn't see too many people talking about it.
I know it’s only tiny… same with fire and cops… but I don’t get why you’d remove these little features Vs add to what you had. It’s those little thing that made the city feel alive, they all add up to sum of their parts.
@@cockneygamer Exactly! Maybe some people might think i'm bragging without any reason. But for me, this is what fill up my eyes, literally. In C.S 1, i had a city going down, a lot of traffic, people overcrowded in the bus stops, but it had plenty of life in everything. I can't say how many minutes i would lost just by observing people around the town.
This more ''realistic'' behaviour of this new game is interesting, but it became less alive in many aspects. Now, like i said, taking out very solid ''tiny'' aspects of the game makes it look worse, even if it gets better in the future.
I miss this as well!
The lack of animation for me is a sein of lack of love for the game. Same with graphics. What a difference to CS1. So sterile and boring.
@@kml9166 Because of that i came back to CS1 and it's another thing! It's funny to just stop and watch the vehicles and people moving. Even CS for Quest 2 is funnier than that. Even there i can see people and cars moving around.
They sold a very unfinished game and wanted you to believe that the patches were just a correction thing. But it's the base game they were still adding. It's sad, cause the trailers i followed up along those months told me a different story.
i was one of those disturbed people who preordered the 89 dollar version. can't even play it, keep getting an error that says hardware valve not supported. i don't follow the blogs or forums or watch streamers so had no clue it had problems leading up to release. lesson learned, never preorder and never fall to hype.
I’m sorry for calling you disturbed :-( But thank you for sharing your experience, you shouldn’t be punished for showing loyalty to a company based in their first game.
The developers are overated to be completely honest and their perception of how much money they can charge for their game is far in excess of how much it is actually worth. They have, in other words a VERY high opinion of themselves. They truly think they are great and, are able to charge whatever money they want for their 'game'.
As an aside, Unity is a proven game engine for 2D mobile/tablet games, but has no place as a 3D DX12Ultimate/Vulkan games engine. UE5 would have been a much better choice, and, they could have afforded the licence for it, but, I suspect they would rather not pay for a licence and instead buy themselves nice jewellery and pretty dresses for themselves...maybe a new Mazda MX5...
Ue5 looks better than this, and, that would be using marketplace free assets...makes you think....
It is really sad that if I say something negative about this game on forums that I am the problem 😅
Why don’t I have the patience to let them fix the game? Why am I not happy that they try to fix it? Why am I not happy that they made another game for us?
PC gamers just accepted that they buy unfinished and underperforming games. They handle a full release like it is a early acces and that it is normal to take months to get fixed and trust them that they will do that
People get what they deserve
Sad but so very true. I blurred out names in the section of this video where I post the Reddit posts of those who defend this and actually blame the player. It’s such an odd phenomenon to have a company take peoples money with a broken product, and then hate in the people who are a bit upset by it.
Thank you for the comment, you are sadly spot on in your assessment here.
LOL! I started multiple threads on the CS2 asking about performance. They eventually lead to my accounting being ejected (granted after multiple bans). Hell, I even got banned for expressing how hyped I was about the game launch, writing "Im so fkn excited" as the pretext to asking for guidance about the best rig to build JUST to play CS2 . 90% of my posts were about system requirements. Now I see why the mods were so eager to get rid of me.
IMHO this is the very best time in history to start playing C:S1. CO very likely won't release any larger future content or DLC for C:S1 which means modded cities it will likely never be broken again by updates. That means you build without fear and have your city for years and years to come, taking full advantage of everything that has been added to the game. I've never been more invested in C:S1 in the six years I've been playing it than I am right now. C:S2 is completely off my radar. It doesn't hold a candle to the experience available to even humble gaming setups running a slightly modded C:S1. Freedom to create is what made the first game great and it has never been better than right now.
Exactly. I downloaded CS2 as it is part of my GamePass subscription. I have a 13900k, 128GB of DDR5 ram, and a 4090 GPU - ran like dog crap unless you crank down the visual settings so that it looks worse than CS1 base. Immediately uninstalled - even if it didn't cost me anything, its just taking up hard drive space.
Here is the thing: I have no doubt that with several years of patches, combined with technological advancements - the game will become better than CS1 is now. The problem is, that is at least several years away. You cannot even do 1/5 the stuff you can do in CS1 with all the expansions. Yes, it's nice that they upgrading the traffic system and have car crashes now and weather, but these are all things that can either be made to work pretty well in CS1 (traffic manager mod for better AI traffic and parking), or that just arent that important right now (weather and car crashes) that I would choose those features over every other more useful feature in CS1.
I don't really fault them. It's a new game, starting from the ground up. CS2 is basically CS1 on release date, with a few improvements.
Not to mention, with the FPS Booster mod in CS1 I can get 30fps at worse on a city of 300,000 people or more. And yes, I do agree - CS1 is in its best state right now, as mod makers can finally refine all the mods knowing the mod-breaking updates are basically done.
@@landonp629So you didn't even soend 10 minutes on optimizibg the game?
I get +30 FPS on medium settings, at 1440p, on a RTX 3060 12 GB. Looks way better, than C:S.
But hey! Its your loss, not mine.
@@akyhne First, I WAS able to get it play, but with low to medium quality settings. The base CS2 doesn't look any different from a base CS1 to me at these settings. Beyond that, its not up to me to optimize a game for the game developer. That is there job, and what they are getting $60 a head for.
Second, CS2 might look way better than CS1 vanilla, if you can manage it on high settings - but it doesn't look any better than a heavily modded CS1 with beautification mods. The difference is, CS1 actually runs at a playable frame rate AND looks nice at the same time.
Game play wise, there is little point. There is little that CS2 can do that mods can't already do to CS1. Want better traffic AI and get rid of pocket cars? Traffic Manager. Want to change to and from winter? You can do that. Want mixed-use buildings? Block services.
These things might require mods to make happen, and might not be as plug-and-play as CS2 - but that trade off is worth it for the sheer amount of content CS1 has.
Just some things CS1 has that CS2 does not: More transit options, modular airports, modular parks, modular universities, sea walls, and a workshop filled with 50,000+ realistic assets.
The bottom line is this: CS2 doesn't bring anything worthwhile new to the table, not yet anyway. Launching up CS2, even if it could be playable on low/medium settings, was like launching up CS1 base/vanilla with a couple of the features of the expansion packs... It's unfulfilling. Perhaps in 1-3 years when there is DLC available to bring the current CS2 up to CS1 feature wise it'll be a great game, even better than CS1... But its not there yet, and anyone who says it is either: a) has never played a modded CS1, b) is looking to make excuses for paradox's botched launch of an 'early access' game at best.
@@akyhne I can say, without question, I'm glad I didn't pay for the game yet. Will I? Most certainly, when its at the level of CS1 with all the expansions. Even if the game ran like gold, it lacks almost all of the features that CS1 had with all the expansions. It doesn't really 'fix' anything. It's like EA with their "Sims" releases, where every version number is a complete start-over and you have to wait for all the features of the previous games to release on DLC. It's the same reason I played Sims 3 until just about 6 months ago when I finally bought Sims 4, which it was finally up to scratch with Sims 3 feature-wise.
Might as well wait 7 years until they add all the -content- DLCs and then use a “DLC unlocker” to actually get the true $60 game experience.
It just looks so bland. Remember the first few scenes on the first trailer, hobos walking around, graffiti, puddles. Everything looks like empty mid-town USA. No urban blight, no challenge, no chaos that you see in many of the world's cities. Why do industrial areas have big factories and hundreds of chimneys when your city has about 150 people in it?
I've had a bit of fun with the game with settings dialled down, but I think 4 is a good score.
I’m glad you called this out. When I uploaded the video I always like to rewatch to make sure it’s not corrupted etc. But what I did miss was mentioning how much the assets repeat. Like factories look identical and repeat and and over. I just wish they added so much more variety. This is hopefully where mods can fix it up.
I want a bit more danger too. In my city there are people living in tin shacks about 10 miles from where they filmed Made in Chelsea in a mansion. It's so sterile.
@@cockneygamer
@richardhingston6073 haha!
When I saw the graphics I lose my mind. I expected a city skyline 1 with mods all in one. Also they could have improved the gridding , maybe get in some of that AI tech, to solve the textures when the building is not square. You'd think AI would have a huge role in these types of games, since you don't want a building to look the same a billion times.
I have been playing sc1 for 7 years...
I can't agree more. I played v2 and everything feels rushed and basic. I don't like the new school assets and all the buildings look the same. I'm done playing after two days. It runs terrible on my new pc. (Which I bought with sc2 in mind). They need at least one more year or more...
It feels like the service/maintenance fees are way too high. You need to add schools right away but when you do they tank your income. Then I turn it down and people complain that my education system is horrible or too far away when they're a couple blocks away!
Biffs plays indie games was the ultimate shill selling this game out without mentioning performance at all.
I tried to not call people out, and I absolutely LOVE his work. And he certainly isn’t alone in this either, but it is worrisome how he (and others) ignored so many of the problems. Not just the performance issues but the gameplay that is broken in so many areas.
I still don’t get how people are defending the issues too. Im constantly being told it’s just me and my rig isn’t up to par. A great article came out today on PCGamer that literally states how the Unity engine is rendering way too much, even more so that Cyberpunk, which is where a lot of the issues lie. My feelings remain the same here in that the ambition just doesn’t match the Unity engines capabilities.
www.pcgamer.com/a-tech-analysis-of-cities-skylines-2-proves-its-rendering-way-too-many-polygons-making-cyberpunk-2077-look-like-minecraft-in-comparison/
I watched Biffa's video about the game's shortcomings and you could tell he wanted to rip the game apart but opted for a more constructive tone, obviously thinking about the potential loss in income earnings if he trashed the game and stopped playing it.
Looks like they actually released the first DLC with this debut: "Cities Skylines II - Colossal Mess"
One thing that also really got me, along with everything else that was wrong, was the sheer size of some of the specialised buildings. Like my high school is as huge as an entire block of houses. They're simply WAY too big I think. Then we get started on the university.. During my four years at a real uni I don't remember it being so large it could have housed its own train route to help get around. I was such a huge fan of old Sim City that I did Urban and Regional Planning at uni, and spent thousands of hours on Skylines 1 playing out my city building fantasies, and yeah.. This one is shite. 32GB RAM and a brand new 4060ti 16GB graphics card with my Ryzen 5 3600 and also needing to run it on medium-low. Oh and the max speed is just not good enough. You leave it there and it takes like 5 minutes for zones to build. They screwed up big time with this one.
Take a look at City State 2. Not quite as flashy, but I'm beginning to migrate over to there.
Big ass schools and administration buildings with 10 acres of pre-detailed (which you cannot change) ground around it. What the hell
Great review. Even performance aside which I gritted my teeth and ignored, it was not fun. I had so many issues with citizens complaining about my healthcare (that is running at 111% efficiency and only has 10 patients) and complaining about smog (no idea where the smog overlay was)... get a million alerts about those complaints but did not get a single one about the fire in my city or the tornado...
Most of all the progression is terrible. Why do I have to wait until I have several thousand pop before I can build a farm? So many of those things are locked just because, for the sake of a progression grind. Most cities were founded around an industry like mining, or built around a rail connection... yet I can't do either of those for a long while until I unlock them.
Couldn’t agree more. I know everyone is talking about performance and understandably so. But you’re bang on mate… let’s not forget about all the other issues too. It’s so far behind CS1 in that regard.
ah because you are to stupid to understand it, the game is bad?
I haven’t played myself, but I’ve been watching others
stream the game. The game looks very sterile, lacks asset variety, and I can’t understand why they charged how zoning demand works. Like, people are going to move wherever they can afford to. The density of a residential building shouldn’t dictate the demand. The end result is having to build suburban sprawl, even with relatively low populations.
And this is less of a major issue, but they missed out big time with creating more dynamic placement of buildings along zones. it would’ve been neat to see buildings conform to diagonals and corners.
@@samuelgiroux6819 Yes major whiff to not even make small residential yards (not even the house itself) conform to realistic sizes along a curved road. We're talking about a yard here, it should be easy to make it fit a given size and not have to adjust terrain heights and such. Imagine the step forward we'd have made with something much more advanced where you can zone individual lots (maybe that's too tedious) and then a house gets built on it and then a yard is built "around it"
For larger buildings, I'd have hoped for something along what you're saying - in some instances dynamically generated buildings that are a given shape to help conform to awkward (read: non 90 degree) roads and terrain changes.
Even a flat map, placing a large building creates such high cliffs. It looks horrible. And It's impossible to lay out a regular grid, even if all you roads are at 90 degrees. The grid ends up all broken up.
Glad it wasn’t just me having this issue! I spent ages trying to beautify the city but gave up on the end.
Performance? Dude its not only performance. There are many bugs in this game. Export doesn't work, demand sections close to not working or lying to you, defisits indicator but i'm proffting and many more. Dude they really need to fix this alpha
You sir were generous with your rating of 4 out of 10. CO screwed the pooch here. They doubled their staff and produced a failure. But the fanboi's oh the fanboi's are out in force stating the exact opposite of you and many other creators.
See you in April CS2!
I’ve been calling it CS1.5 ever since the released the “traffic AI” marketing video. They didn’t even bother to make a traffic manager or move it mod. Then they want $50 so you can beta test it for them
if its next gen graphics, where is ray tracing?
comes with rt performance without the rt
I have 0 problems with performance strangely. I play 4K max settings (motion blur and depth of field off since it makes me sick) with an i5 6600K and an RTX3080 with 16GBs of RAM.
Also while I agree that the zoning system is a problem, you can zone an area before building another road next to it and it won't break the grid. A simple zoning disabling feature would've been great though.
From excitement to taking out GPU loans
Great review. Love the brutal honesty. I purposely didn’t look at any reviews before buying this because, well, it s colossal order! They’ve never done me wrong. They were always great throughout cities 1 and super in tune with the community. Man do I feel betrayed. This game is such a disappointment. One of my biggest gripes is the lack of ANY improvement in the zone/building generation. The build road and zone feature has been a staple of these kind of games since the first sim city in the 90’s. It was fine for cities 1, but WHY on earth is there no evolution of this system??? Why isn’t there a new way for buildings to naturally generate around any road that isn’t a perfect grid with clean 90 degree angles? There is nothing I hate more than perfectly square cities, but the alternative is just as you said! Big open corners and barren parts of the city. Sucks. So disappointed.
You are welcome mate and appreciate your thoughts.
I’m no programmer so what do I know, but my thinking is why don’t they create particular assets that are designed to work on corners. Real cities and towns build on curved roads (especially in Europe) so it’s such a weird thing to not try and develop. Like you say, it’s been this way since the 90’s in the original sim city and 30 years later it’s exactly the same. Thanks again!
Seriously they could have used the perimeter drawing system from the farms and landfills for zoning.
this should've been release in 2025 as a 10 year anniversary for the 1st one. this one is rushed. so ill buy this in 2025 when everything is smooth and mods/assets are there.
It's a bit of a trend..Make a game throw it out and patch it..
I feel sorry for the game developers who put soo much effort in this game and i am 100% sure THEY did NOT want to release the game in "this state". They were able to postpone the console release but i ll bet they also wanted to postpone/delay the pc release. But upper management, CEO of paradox, share holders.. They are only thinking of the share price and turnover/cash.. Delaying will not bring cash into the company. "So stop whining devs and just release the game!",,, And there you have it.. I hope you are proud of the user reviews mr CEO of paradox.
Such an important point here. Let’s not hate in the poor development team. I bet they were as angry and frustrated as us gamers upon release. It’s the greedy folks at the top who are to blame. Thank you for raising this up, we can all get lost in the emotion of it at times.
very well said. i think that some people at CO and Paradox need to be held accountable for this, but i doubt that will happen - they have clearly become blinded by corporate greed. it's a shame. further, all the apologist fans need to watch this, too, as they are a huge part of the problem as well.
The release of CS2 has given me (and I'm sure many others), some serious Cities XL flashbacks accompanied by the PTSD of Cities XXL
Don't worry! The game will be perfect in about two years and $200 plus worth of DLC stuff that really should have been in the game anyway.
Turn on TAA in advanced graphics settings. Makes aliasing look WAY better
Glad somebody else finally talks about the bizarre looking areas created by the half-assed zoning system. You either pack each building together wall-to-wall, or you leave gaps in them that look barren and strange. What's worse, you can't alleviate this by just having tighter grids, because that will cause serious traffic issues. Cities just look so off-putting and unnatural.
It's like they made the game rely on grids *even more* for it to actually work properly
this is what i hate the most
I have a 5 or 6 year old gaming PC and haven't had performance issues, so I cannot comment on that issue. I only have problems if I am running too much system hogging stuff at once. I do think some of the systems need more tweaking, like the education seems highly unrealistic (4 completely full elementary schools but my single high school is only at 1/3 enrollment??). Thankfully the update on residential zoning has helped a lot with reducing the insane amount of single family homes being requested and upped the middle and high density. Also def needs more decorative items to customize your city. Fences are missing and would be super helpful. A lot of the complaints on the Chirper can be ignored, too. Even with my healthcare insanely high and illness at only 1% people complain about it AND praise it! Noise complaints are constant and start at even the smallest noise level but the ability to control noise is lacking. Tree lined streets no longer seem to help. They complain about air pollution no matter what you do, even if the pollution is down wind from the rest of your city, which is near impossible to avoid. I also have a lot of issues with linking up things, it is hard to see what is happening and they don't always 'click' into place.
Games shit, graphics arnt next gen. More like half done. Everything looks bland. Unfinished. Yeah when some textures load in it looks oryt close up but zoom out and you'll see its just basic blocks with not much going on. The trailers sold me the world and delivered an inflatable globe slowly deflating releasing with it a smell of a working man's pub toilet on a Saturday morning.
And why can't they make vehicles drive like real cars intead rocking side to side like clown cars.. Ugh.. And yeh, they suckered me into the full on 'ultimate' rip off.. Also, thanks for not being a sellout like biffa, city planner, etc... Thanks for calling it like it bl@@&y is.. Yes, i like roundabouts, and I'm an American patriot, so don't think we're all the same over here.
Haha… clown cars indeed mate! Wish I used that line.
Also, thank you liking roundabouts. This has genuinely made me happy as a clam. Appreciate the comments!
What good is the supposed better looking assets and buildings if you have to keep your graphics low?
Haha… so true. Apparently it’s your fault mate… you’re suppose to put everything to “very low” and “off”. As a side note, I’m playing the excellent Alan Wake 2 and that is an absolute looker. Have that pretty much maxed out. But graphically cities skylines is supposedly more demanding!
Thanks for the review. On a slightly more positive note, it's currently available for free if you have an Xbox Game Pass subscription on the PC.
I played Sim City 4 Rush Hour for a good while. Then I wasted my money on Sim City 5. After a while I did purchase City Skylines but found many problems for me at least. Recently within the last six months I decided to give City Skylines another go. Some road connections are still a pain. Terraforming is still difficult Some assets still do not work. There is little help when some assets have "problems". I always end up with an unfinished bus route. Sim City 4 was much easier. I will not be buying City Skyline 2 until City Skylines 1 has been "fixed". I do love the Country Road Radio Station. It gets me singing along often.I am sick of playing Banished. Maybe I should stop playing games and read a good book. Now that seems like a good idea. Have a great day everyone.
Ran into that bridge issue yesterday. Making a new one required 50m-60m height yet the ones already placed on starter maps let boats through just fine at normal heights.
Also I agree with the easy gameplay. I've yet to break a profit in my city yet somehow I'm gaining money over time thanks to the leveling system.
Yes… I couldn’t work out how I was so dam rich but losing $30k per hour! Glad it wasn’t just me!
One cause could be the trade system. If you are connected to outside, you will either buy or sell resources accordingly. For example if you have s surplus of water or eletricity you will sell it, and receive extra money from it. The inverse also happens. This also works for garbage disposal it seems.
@@Sorcerer86pt Yeah I think you're right. I finally started making a small profit after I was able to get a couple of industries going AND set up a way to export any surplus (trains). Only about $2k for now with the only surpluses being wood, mining, and utilities so far. I'm sure it can be fine tuned somewhat with taxes, service fees, etc.
@@kayokayo7917 a little tip. So far maintenance cost of eolic energy is very low. Build a lot of those and some Transformers to convert that to sell and you can earn a good profit
So happy I did not get tempted to order the ultimate version, even though I loved CS1... realised it was coming to game pass last minute so I'm going to wait until it's on sale or something, or at least until they release a couple of updates.
Yeah, I'm getting 14fps in a "booming town" (7k inhabitants I think) on my gaming PC with an RTX 4090 and a Ryzen 5950X. I can't build roads any more while the simulation is active (need to pause first), because it doesn't register clicks most of the time with that framerate. Not impressed with the performance, not at all.
The only problem with round abouts in the USA is the people stopping at yield signs lol. My area is starting to add alot more of them the past few years.
I resisted my urge to buy this game. Probably the people I watch on this game aren't as influential to me :P also, I am recovering from my mistake with Starfield.
yea.. im still running a GTX 1080 32gb ram and a 5600x... i expected a bit of a struggle due to my GPU age but this is ridiculous...
Amazing how many people bought this game in early access for full price. And you won't get much in updates before you're shelling out for DLC. DLC that should have been in base
It feels like the service/maintenance fees are way too high. You need to add schools early on but when you do they tank your income. Then I turn it down and people complain that my education system is horrible or too far away when they're a couple blocks away!.. I have like 100+ hours in cities 1 and know how to manage my city, but something feels off on this. I dont want to add any services because it just destroys my income right away.
I can't believe people are defending this type of behavior from a game developer.
15:53 I had public service announcement for no reason I had good water and electricity and it still happened.If should have been in alpha/beta and u could test for half of the price and you could send reports,keep it until full to when opening.
Don't pay full price for this.
Wait a few months to a year when they fix everything.
Personal Example: When I got Battlefield 2142 it ran terrible, and I just couldn't play it.
2 Years later after the patches and fixes, its one of my favorite Battlefields.
Haha I love the sexual innuendo jokes and all the one liners' as stiff as Ron Jeremy in the cheerleaders locker room" --- "They made road connections as elusive as getting a straight answer out of a politician" :D :D. Whoa in some ways it sounds like they are falling into the trap of Sim City when they made it mandatory to play online and changing the game play. No steam workshop does not sound like a good deal!
Haha, thank you kind sir, glad the banter landed! I obviously don't have the technical capacity my end but Gamer Nexus absolutely destroyed it... ruclips.net/video/l4DX6mUY78s/видео.html
You Nailed it Cockney. Charging plp the amount they have to be beta testers is what they have done. I was desperate to try out this game but in its current state, with the amount of bugs in most of the essential gameplay elements, combined with the performance issues and no asset creation options, its just not playable! I do feel ripped off. Hopefully they will sort it out in the comming year.
I'm glad you were crystal clear about your opinions and not hypocritical or being blinded by their fanboyism. Being a fan does not mean you hide their faults. Let them know so they can improve and not repeat these things ever again.
Absolutely mate. It’s totally ok to be a fan of the franchise and hate how they released this. CO need to see and react to what’s going on. Definitely check out the gamer nexus video that got released too. They really deep dive into the performance issues in a big way. Thanks for commenting good sir!
I'm on console, therefore all I know about CS2 is from those videos, but my understanding is that there is a couple useless things that might cause problems.
1- following a sim's life.
2- putting up cranes whenever a build is rising.
Those could easily be remove and probably improve performance.
Fantastic honest review here. I have a 4090 and running a ultrawide 1440p monitor and it runs terrible. This game is half cooked at best.
I’m on gamepass but I heard a patch just got released for steam. I’m seeing mixed reviews for it where some are seeing substantial improvements and for others none at all. So who knows but hopefully this gets fixed up. Thank you for the comment too, appreciate the kind words.
I was about to buy it 10 minutes ago, then this showed up on my feed. Since everything is watching, i'll take advantage and wait until its on special.. thanks!
There is a new hotfix released an hour ago. I can’t comment on its effectiveness as it’s Steam only for now, but it may have fixed up some of the performance issues I noted. I can only pray! Thanks for the comment!
You would indeed need a recent graphics card to run this, but if you have this it runs great. For me at least (40-60fps on RTX 4060 Ti 16GB with i7 16GB RAM). There will be improvements and more content, this game will grow.
I pre-ordered the special version back in July (90 usd - two free DLC expansions). When October rolled around and the system demands became clearer, I got rather concerned. In the end, I opted for a refund without ever downloading it. I've enough stress and frustration in life without my escape from life just adding to them! 🤬
You dodged a bullet there mate. It’s in gamepass if you want a little gander but right now I’d say this is at least 6 months away from being where it needs to be. Thank you for sharing mate!
I dont get what happened to me i have a rtx 3050 and have 50-70 fps on medium, this sounds great but my game seems to crash randomly loads, hopefully theyll fix it
64GB DDR5?
I've never been more jealous!
I only bought it to help with the rendering speed for my Adobe Premier Pro. For gaming it’s not needed at all, but it was there for the taking if Cities Skylines wanted it!
This is the best CS2 take, I'm tired of people walking on eggshells when it comes to this company
I remember months ago when this game was announced the usual "remeber guys no preorders" was spreading around the internet but fans always battled this statement because "it is different with cities skylines" somehow. Well there you go! Look how much they care about you
They have no incentive to make a decent base game. They know modders are going to do everything 10 times better than they have. Now they just sit back and reap the benefits of free labour, while pumping out overpriced dlcs full of features that should have been in the game from the start.
Next up will be an update to the first Skylines that breaks it.
Was thinking on buying it but didn`t pull the trigger straight away due to the game requirements, only managing the min with the current years old setup. Then i noticed that its on the Xbox Game Pass so i guess i don`t even need to buy it at all for Steam since the Workshop wont be supported anyway. Anyway on med/low + some things like fog etc off i can manage 45-50FPS, not bad but in a long term it probably aint the way i would want to play that game. But yeah there are some things where it does feel like its some early access game.
I only made it to 30k population before it started to falter. I wonder what this is like at 250k population!
Thanks for sharing mate, and absolutely this is where gamepass pays dividends!
Great video and congratulations on the baby!
You are very kind mate. Finally got home and smashing back a celebratory pint! Appreciate your kind words!
Just sat down to play. Glad ive seend this video. My games Graphic’s terrible. Lag terrible. Even the menu! Couldn’t believe it. After a quick Google realisation I’m not the only one!
I watched a lot of content creators, create okay looking cities, play the game relatively smoothly just thought it was early access issues. They have definitely been lying. This game is far from ready. Very disappointed
Even as early access you would be a little disappointed. But to put this out as a full release is just shocking. But fear not mate, you are not alone here!
I preordered on Steam cos I really enjoyed Cities 1 which was a day 1 purchase for me. Refunded 3 days before launch after suspecting it won't be in a good launch state. Thank god for steam refunds.
The day paradox released cs2 unity trailer was the day i know cs2 is going to be shit. Nobody in the right mind will showcase a game trailer with less than 60fps. From the trailer its so obvious there were fps drops, but all they say were: trailers were based off beta testing. BUT BRUH U GUYS ARE LITERALLY A FEW MORE MONTHS AWAY FROM RELEASING THE GAME...
I have the first game, but i ain't giving my money for this piece of sh*t! 😆Graphics look only just a bit better than the first one in geometry, but worse in everything else. They look too blurry-dull, i don't know how to describe it exactly. For me, Colossal Order, is done as a city building game developer. Even the latest DLCs for the first game, have negative reviews on Steam, due to bad performance, like the Airports DLC for example. It's like they had an excellent developing team in 2015, created the base game and immediately fired all their best developers and kept the crappy ones, to continue with the DLCs. The only thing i hope for, is for a decent company to actually copy Cities Skylines and make a perfect city builder, because it deserves better. Far better.
I will wait until the game is discounted, I am not supporting this rushed out B******* on release
I won't be buying CS2 anytime soon, which is a shame as I was really looking forward to it!
FM24 is being released in a couple of weeks ... I'll look forward to that instead!
Great Review, thanks mate 👍
You are most welcome mate. Glad it helped.
Worth checking by the way in case FM24 is on gamepass. I know it was last time out. That way you can always play CS2 and FM24!
What is FM24? I am clueless.
@@Hschlick84I presume Football Manager 24! But I could be wrong!
@@Hschlick84 Football Manager 2024 ... brilliant game, if you're into footy!
I was waiting for a proper honest review as I really wanted to buy this, being a huge fan of the original. I'm glad I waited.. Let's see if it is going to improve, but I won't be spending my hard earned cash just yet. I am hoping this improved..
What an intro to a cities skylines video
Haha, funnily enough you’re the first person to comment on it!
The performance is nowhere near this bad if you are willing to sacrifice 4K. At 1080p on otherwise high settings, it’s buttery smooth for me.
Colossal order still NEEDS to optimize it, but it’s far from unplayable with the new patch (your video may have been pre-patch as far as I can tell).
Very fair mate and yes, this review was pre patch and on gamepass (I believe that hotfix came later after Steam?).
And yes at 1080p I also get much smoother gameplay, but a 13700k and 4080 shouldn’t be for 1080p. At minimum that set up is 1440p, and 4k if a good optimise game. I’m pushing by 70fps in cyberpunk/MSFS at full ray traces settings so this shouldn’t be a problem.
Reality is, if CO released this as an early access title, which if we are honest is fair, then the criticisms less. But don’t forget they did a huge marketing push with a $50 and $89 release, telling people to turn off settings entirely or in your example getting good results on 1080p.
I could probably get great results at 720p too, but that doesn’t make this right in the slightest.
Worth noting, many people haven’t got to big cities yet. At 1440p I had buttery smooth too. Until I hit 40k population sizes… then it really tanked again!
Appreciate you commenting though, very good points!
excellent review! i also am subscribed to Worth a Buy and saw that video , I have a 3060 RTX graphics card and it handles most games at high/ultra settings, but if your super spec 4080 build cant deal with it, then mines got no chance in hell !! I have gamepass for PC and I am able to download it but i'm not even going to bother :(
Worth a buy is truly excellent so it’s nice to be in good company. And good call on waiting it out. Honestly, in a few patches I’m hoping we can at least get smooth gameplay here. All the other stuff can wait, because there isn’t decent game in here. Thank you for the comment mate
@Rakrak03 thanks for sharing. When you say “fiddle” did you put things to low/very low or off, or are we taking a mix between high/medium?
I was peeved when i realised this game wasn't arriving on consoles. Now I'm relieved 😂
I'm an xbox cities skylines player, so i get to just sit back and watch the chaos unfold before i even get to play the game. Get to wait until next year, if it even comes to consoles now after looking at this trainwreck
The biggest dealbraker for me is a lack of workshop.
And we still don't know really how they will implement their own system other then it looks like it will be in game and you NEED to have a paradox acc now to use it.... which really stinks, last thing I want is to make another account for them to sell my info.... It is most likely going to be worryingly much more regulated than the Steam Workshop or Nexus. I worry I won't be able to get custom buildings that are themed on places or have any sort of real-world logos. If they go hard on that, I am going to be upset. I just don't want 100 of the same reworked buildings and assets because of copyrights or something. Not to mention mods possibly taken down now just because it relates to one of their overpriced DLCs
This game is so fucking broken, to think that i will have to wait for at least 2 years of paid DLC and mods to make it more suitable or even compare it to the first release is obnoxious.
You won’t have to look far in these comments or elsewhere to realise that it’s apparently you that the problem and not Colossal Order! What a strange world gaming is!
this game needs more than a year thats for sure. I'd give it at least 3 years to fix it and add back things like the animations for city services and mods to help with the games jankyness. Seems like they got it stable and just shipped it in beta.
I miss SimCity…
Cool video man. I wish they kept improving CS1 instead: like the last few updates with the parking lots, new roads, new stations, and airport aprons were awesome.
You are most welcome!
They couldn't improve on it, due to the engine used. They had to start all over. Live with it!
@@akyhne Lol I just gave examples of how they did improve it by only adding assets..... Point instantly invalid... Why you defending it so hard for no reason???
@@FlashGamersNetwork Improvement means optimizing the game, not adding new features. And the old game engine wasn't up for the task. Im not defending anything, just making a point!
defending what? Cities skylines is a mess, he is right. Cant improve it enough, new game was needed. They just failed with the new game.@@FlashGamersNetwork
I called it in the beginning when they announced it. I knew it would be a cash grab.
I refunded it once they said they were changing the recommended specs. My GPU was just 1 notch below the 3080
I’ve only played 3 hours on game pass and I’ve got to say it really does feel like a upgraded simcity 2015
i played it about 7 hours, and i came back to cities skylines 1, it was like a breath of fresh air lol :D
I have now 30h and 125k City, I kindy like it ( mostly cause I just love city builders) but graphic is definitely NOT next gen.
See, thinking about UE5 could help suggests you forgot that the game is inherently a simulation and simulation part in CS II was done really well. Game is not CPU limited in any way unless you run the game below minimum specs or obviously built a huge city (few hundred thousands) but that still can improve if you throw-in more cores - yes, it scales really well with core count and can utilize 100% CPU unlike in CS1.
Also, it's not directly the population what will start limiting the FPS, but the amount of stuff on screen which is in fact forced by population because they have to live somewhere :( but still it will be GPU bottleneck as the game (genre) has pretty unique challenges when it comes to rendering graphics.
Unity is really the best engine if you plan making a simulation game like this one, and about the UE5, you can see from recent game releases that the engine has problems with running games which don't even push CPU or simulate complex things, which was and is the main focus of CS.
Anyways, we will see how much the can optimize graphics, but saying it should be EA is wrong IMO. The game already includes all features which they planned, it is possible to play and as well as CS1 it will get years of support. It just have a bit to many bugs, IMO they could've delay it a bit, but on the other hand, with all the marketing they did around the game, I'm not really surprised they didn't (before releasing the game they didn't really earn any money). One can also argue, with a grain of salt, that you've seen how the game runs and assume that's the worst state(before optimization run)
I enjoyed the first CS waaay more than this game. 16 hrs in, I don’t have any motivation to continue.
No company who releases a product in this state deserves to survive. It's completely indefensible.... CS2 isn't even a video game, thanks to the entire simulation being nonfunctional.
I would have taken a copy of cities skylines 1 with perfect performance over Anything in citys skylines 2.
The tornadoes helped build this game and as a former player and lover of city skylines 1. I can't believe they put this trash out and did that. I will be staying with the original city skylines.
Yeah no one really picked up on that from the review so thanks for reminding me. They truly are god awful looking and whilst they can be fixed, it just demonstrates to me how rushed this game was.
18 minutes of goodness, pardon me lads just getting some gourmet popcorn first
Haha, very kind. I don’t think I’ve ever given anyone 18 minutes of goodness before.
I'M SORRY BUT THE PERFORMANCE IS HIS FAULT!!!
Why is he playing this NEXT GEN game at 4K with a flagship setup??
He should obviously be playing at 144p everything low, smh!
You got me at the beginning! 😂
I wasn't very enthusiastic about this release anyway, everything looks pretty much the exact same