After years of expansions and DLCs, Colossal Order and Paradox are lastly urgent reset on Cities Skylines. For this form of simulation recreation, this can be a large second. These titles aren’t a lot video games as they’re platforms for years of content material and growth – and so beginning contemporary is a really massive deal certainly.
Fortunately, Cities Skylines 2 is a smartly-designed and clearly very rigorously thought of reimagining and retooling of a lot of what made the primary recreation a beloved inheritor to the city-building style. With that stated, it’s additionally a recreation that’s clearly the inspiration for a platform that’ll run for the following decade – with struggles and slight cut-backs that relate to that.
For those who’re new to the entire shebang, the Skylines collection is a descendent of the likes of Cities in Movement and (after all) SimCity; the place you’re put into the function of a benevolent eye-in-the-sky mayor and let unfastened to dictate every thing about how town is designed and functioned.
Curiously, this time round there’s no main ‘eventualities’ or story mode – although there’s a ability tree the place new buildings and options have to be unlocked as your metropolis grows, which creates a campaign-like development. In addition to contending with the wants of town, you’ll additionally must battle issues like pure disasters, excessive climate, and even points like homelessness. This time across the simulation is deeper and extra intricate – although a lot thought has additionally been put into ensuring that these intricacies don’t grow to be irritating distractions.
This form of recreation is troublesome to sum up, but when I have been to succeed in for a single phrase to outline Cities Skylines 2 when in comparison with its predecessor, I’d go for ‘scale’. It is a bigger scale, broader, and plainly extra formidable recreation at each degree. It’s maybe most evident, nevertheless, within the recreation’s featured buildings.
By featured buildings, I imply the particular, necessary buildings you place all through your metropolis – issues that present a selected utility like colleges and faculties, police and fireplace stations, energy vegetation, and so forth. Subsequent to none of these items are new (although how Skylines 2 breaks up and transfers utilities has been tweaked, and there are a number of new components that aren’t within the first recreation) – however all of them are bigger.
I imply this actually. Once you place an oil-fired energy plant or a medical college on the map, it’s large. It dwarfs every thing. Within the earlier recreation, it felt like even the biggest and most vital landmarks had a reasonably agency higher restrict by way of their potential measurement. In Skylines 2, inserting these buildings appears like extra of a real occasion, and helps to outline your metropolis extra, due to how a lot they stand out. Many of those buildings may be expanded, too – made bigger so as to add new performance or to bolster their current setup.
The size feels prefer it’s come from a want for visible spectacle, for the power to create cities that extra carefully resemble the actual factor. This results in new instruments for ease of crafting the form of roads and a sensible metropolis format, after all. However it additionally means there’s extra artwork for a assorted variety of buildings. There is a tighter simulation, the place you’ll be able to zoom proper in and watch one particular NPC go about their day if you happen to like. Even issues like branding has been rigorously thought of, with a whole lot of pastiche model names and logos featured within the recreation to pack your cities out with realistic-feeling companies.
All of this creates a curious paradigm: a recreation that feels a lot bigger, but in addition extra granular. That is additionally expressed within the metropolis boundaries themselves. Particular person tiles that you simply purchase to increase your metropolis’s footprint are a lot smaller, which means you unlock much less floor early on. However as your financial institution stability balloons, you’ll be able to aggressively purchase tiles en masse and find yourself with an general map a number of instances bigger than the earlier recreation.
In the same vein, many methods are extra detailed than something that has come earlier than – whereas additionally leaving apparent gaps of their design that’ll inevitably be stuffed by expansions and DLC. It’s larger and smaller, unexpectedly; a TARDIS of a recreation.
All of it feels wildly formidable, if iterative. However this comes at a price. Some followers have been dissatisfied on the recreation’s minimal specs, after which doubly dissatisfied after they have been bumped just a little increased. The console model has been delayed – presumably as a result of it wants sharpening. For higher or worse, this can be a recreation that’s been constructed as a platform for the following decade or extra. And it’s power-hungry in consequence.
I performed Cities Skylines 2 on one thing fairly rattling near among the best doable PCs you’ll be able to have. An RTX 4090, an i9-13900k, 64GB of reminiscence. It’s a beast. It crushes just about every thing I throw at it. However this pre-release construct of Cities Skylines 2, which the builders frantically patched a few instances in the course of the evaluation interval, gave it a critical run for its cash. As we transfer into late October, it’s getting chilly right here – however I didn’t want the radiators turned on in my workplace with this recreation operating; the PC stored me heat.
Now, I may’ve turned the settings down for a smoother expertise. However what’s the purpose in a rig like this if to not max every thing out? Particularly on a recreation like this, the place twitch reactions will not be required. So I soldiered by with a sub-optimal body price and loads of slowdown (and the odd crash right here and there). These items is irritating, clearly – however I additionally don’t view it as the tip of the world, as a result of I do know I’m in a recreation like this for the lengthy haul.
Like a brand new entry in one thing like The Sims, or like a brand new Road Fighter, I’m all the time keen to provide a little bit of a go on the opening as a result of I do know this can be a rising expertise. Such is the case right here. The plethora of latest instruments all make an enormous distinction; constructing roads and different transit, zoning, and understanding the wants of your metropolis’s folks to be able to fulfill them are all extra easy and but provide extra granular management than ever earlier than. There’s a number of instruments that I feel want some work, (landscaping is complicated and naff) however on the entire, this can be a drastically extra easy expertise than the unique recreation.
That, I suppose, is the headline. I’ve a whole lot of hours logged on Cities Skylines, and it was one among my ‘consolation’ video games that I all the time left put in on my PC to sometimes play; an excellent de-stresser or hangover day recreation. The day earlier than scripting this evaluation, nevertheless, I uninstalled it. It has been outmoded and changed. With among the new options, the brand new visible look, the sense of scale, and the quality-of-life enhancements – I couldn’t return. It’s Skylines 2 from right here on out.
The truth that I’m keen to half methods with the unique recreation even within the face of early efficiency woes and the truth that finally Cities Skylines 2 has a good bit much less content material than the unique, with its oodles of growth packs and DLCs, says so much. This is a wonderful sequel, and an thrilling basis for what I’m certain can be a vivid, addition-packed future. For these with weaker machines or a concentrate on efficiency, chances are you’ll very nicely need to wait. However on this preliminary launch we will see the foundations of a generational traditional. It simply would possibly take a number of extra years to succeed in that full potential – similar to its predecessor.