After years of post-launch support for Cities: Skylines, Colossal Order has returned to deliver the hotly anticipated sequel, Cities: Skylines 2. The game seems to have taken some of the best aspects of that original title to new heights, which has helped create one of the deepest city simulators on the market. But, while that may all sound great, it also comes bundled in a deeply flawed package that may not be exactly what fans were expecting.

Cities: Skylines 2 has immensely improved upon the city simulation of the original to deliver an exciting city builder that genre fans will surely love. It has all the makings of another genre kingpin, but it may also be held back a bit by some of its rougher edges. Some fans may be able to overlook some of its shortcomings since it really delivers on the city simulation concept; however, others may have a hard time prying themselves away from that original game right away.

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Right away, fans will likely notice that Colossal Order is rectifying one of Cities: Skylines‘ biggest flaws with this sequel. The city size has been increased dramatically, which should give players immense freedom to construct the city of their dreams. Now, players can purchase hundreds of new tiles to expand their city in interesting and unique ways. While these tiles may be smaller than the expansions of the original game, the sheer number of purchasable plots makes up for that. This helps make Cities: Skylines 2 a worthy sequel to the original, which is made even better by many of the other additions to that iconic game’s formula.

Cities: Skylines 2 is offering a far deeper city simulation than the original game, which is great to see. Even though Cities: Skylines was great, the sequel has taken the city realism to new heights. Players have to deal with traffic accidents, a more fluid economy, new types of zoning that can give cities whole new feels, realistic citizens with refined aging mechanics, and are given the ability to micromanage even more things. All of this leads to a much stronger city builder that genre fans may not soon forget.

Cities: Skylines 2 has also changed the way that many of the city service buildings work. It seems to be taking cues from SimCity 2013 by giving players the ability to modularly upgrade these services. Hospitals can have more wards and a helipad added, police stations can get more jail cells, universities can be upgraded with more classrooms, and even the landfill can be improved with all sorts of add-ons. This upgrade mechanic was one of the best parts of SimCity, so it is really cool to see it crop up here. They all go a long way in giving the buildings more functionality while also giving players more ways to evolve their city as it grows in size.

Growing a city in Cities: Skylines 2 is obviously the main goal of the game, but fans of the original may not know what to expect here. Instead of basing the milestones around population size, Cities: Skylines 2 is built off of an XP system. This system rewards players for various things including population size, happiness, and placing down certain buildings. Once they earn enough XP, they will reach the next milestone and unlock new toys to play with. While this new XP system may be jarring at first, it actually feels a bit nicer than the population-based progression system of the last game.

Earning milestones works differently here, and so does the actual unlocks that players get. They are still granted loan increases, money, some city services, various new mechanics, and district policies at each milestone. However, the majority of Cities: Skylines 2‘s buildings are now unlocked via new development trees. Players are given points when they hit each milestone that they can then use in these development trees to unlock new upgrades or buildings for the core services of the city. There are multiple trees with each tree featuring multiple tiers of rewards, which lets players prioritize the services they want to upgrade within their city.

While these new development trees are an interesting addition, the actual milestones seemed to have suffered because of it. Once players hit milestone 10, they should not expect any more fun unlocks for the next 10 milestones. Instead, all they get are points that they can spend on the development trees and a cash influx. In Cities: Skylines, it felt like each milestone mattered since players would unlock new policies and buildings constantly. Now, the unlock system has changed drastically, which may hurt some players’ enjoyment of earning milestones.

Additionally, Cities: Skylines 2 seems to be missing a lot of the content that the original got via DLC. There are elements of packs like Snowfall, After Dark, and Natural Disasters, but the majority of the DLC content has been left behind in the original. This means that although the game may offer a deeper simulation than its predecessor, it is launching with less content than that game currently has. That may make it hard for some players to make the jump over, especially since there is no news on when, or if, the game will be getting any of that content.

One of the biggest things that Cities: Skylines 2 is missing is the freeform area tool that was introduced with Cities: Skylines Parklife DLC. That tool let players construct their own custom parks to fill in the gaps of their city. And it was such a popular addition that Colossal Order carried it over to more types of buildings through other DLC packs. Right now, players can construct their own custom parks, industries, college campuses, and airports in Cities: Skylines. This is something that Cities: Skylines 2 has left out, which seems like a strange omission after the studio spent so much time developing the mechanic over the years.

On top of that, the districts in Cities: Skylines 2 feel far more limited than they did in the original game. Districts were a way to split up and specialize cities with various policies and esthetics. While this feature still exists within the game, these districts can no longer be painted onto the city, but instead, they must be rectangular in shape. There also seem to be fewer district policies which means that players do not have as much control over these areas as they once did. Additionally, it is not often clear what policies players have in what districts as the UI no longer displays it unless players click into the district itself.

Besides the content itself, one of the other things holding Cities: Skylines 2 back is the presentation itself. The original game was never the best-looking game on the market, but it did feel brighter and had more character. In Colossal Order’s mission to make Cities: Skylines 2 feel as realistic as possible, it seems to have also left that behind. The game just looks dull with the buildings mostly being different shades of gray. The terrain itself also looks like green plates rather than actual fields of grass, which does not really change on higher graphic settings. While these graphics are not a dealbreaker, some players may find the art style a bit bland compared to other city builders on the market.

Even with some of its shortcomings, Cities: Skylines 2 delivers an extremely deep and content-rich city simulator that genre fans will definitely want to check out. It should once again remind fans why Colossal Order is the perfect studio to lead the urban city-building genre after the failings of the SimCity franchise. However, it is also hard to look past the fact that this game is launching with less content than the original game currently has. Couple that with the limitations the districts have and the lack of the custom-building tools that players loved in the original, and the game feels like it is being held back a bit at launch. Much of this may be fixed with post-launch updates, but right now, it feels like a pretty glaring omission.

Cities Skylines 2 releases on October 24 on PC with a PS5 and Xbox Series X/S version launching Spring 2024.

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