GAMING/GAMEPLAY/CITY-BUILDING GAME
An Objective, Complicated, and In-Depth Look At Cities: Skylines 2
I like the game but it doesn’t feel the same as the original game
Have you played the new Cities: Skylines game yet? Do you feel the same way I’m feeling about it right now?
I was so excited for this game and it has a lot of potential but…
I feel that the game is a bit lackluster. It’s still a city-building game and it’s still a fun time for me when I play it but I don’t feel quite the same as I did with the original game. The initial anticipation and waiting for this game was met with a tepid game. I’m not saying it’s bad. It couldn’t be bad. It’s still miles ahead of another city-building franchise it’s often compared to.
There are many positives to highlight as well
The buildings feel more to scale than the original game even did. I feel that you have to put more work into your city to get your systems running how they should and that’s a good thing. Another thing I actually like is that the game doesn’t force you or incentivize a ton of high-density residential only realistic to the largest cities. It allows and requires you to build large neighborhoods of low-density residential more realistic and true to the form of most cities I’ve been to.
The other thing that I like is that the commercial development isn’t wild like in the previous games. You can also put a realistic amount of fire and police coverage and your crime rate won’t go insanely through the roof. Same with school and health coverage for the city. Another thing that makes the game more realistic than the first is the effect of pollution from industry on the town. People won’t want to live downwind from a power plant or industry so those places have to be built strategically with a plan in mind.
The great thing about the new game is you get over 400 tiles to build your city now as opposed to the old vanilla game that only gave you nine tiles, and up to 25 tiles with modifications. At one point, there was also an 81 tile city in that game but that map made most computers crash so it wasn’t viable. The new game runs smoothly on most newer computers.
My new laptop is at least giving me something to work with and the game is beautiful and complicated
I wouldn’t try to play the old game on my previous laptop. My newer computer from late 2022 can definitely handle the larger game with a download that nearly took about 60 gigabytes to download. The graphics on the game are way better too which is why the game is bigger. You can get closer and see citizens’ teeth which is creepy but fun. My partner even said he saw someone getting evicted from their house which I haven’t experienced yet.
The point is, there’s a lot to love about the second installment of this game ten years later. Yet, there’s still something missing. I feel like this game may have been rushed potentially and the heart of it was taken out to go for better graphical gameplay and focused away from playing in a sandbox. The sandbox-type mode is what brought me to the first game.
You actually have to put work in to get your city to a decent size. I think some people will like that, especially city planners. Sure, I wanted to be a city planner at some point but I play the game to grow my population to large numbers.
The updates might help me adjust a bit to the new game
With time and some patches, I’m sure I’ll get there with this game right now. I don’t feel like that’s the only thing missing but it feels like a main reason why I might be initially stalling on loving this game. I still think from an objective perspective, it has the potential to be better than Cities: Skylines' original game but it still has a long way to go for me and I will slowly and tentatively continue to play around with it and figure out more of the inner workings.
For any of you already giving up on the game, I don’t think you should and should also take my approach on this. The game is still in progress with more updates and patches to come, it already is visually leaps and bounds ahead of the game we’ve all had for over 10 years.
Let me know what your initial thoughts are here. Have you built a sizable town with the game yet? What useful tips do you have to share with many of us to help with conquering some of the game play and systems within the game?
