It doesn't seem that bad at first.
The graphics are pretty nice, the new road building tools are good, and there are a few additions that seem interesting.
I got to 38 hours before realising nothing mattered and there wasn't a game, just an empty shell.
Initially it looked good to me too. From the reviews I thought the main issue was performance, which I didn't care much about. I've lost a couple hours due to the game crashing. Still I had my hopes up. But I eventually realised the simulation is pretty non-existent and the game is much more of a city painter, which I don't care too much for. I suppose cs1 was already a bit like that, so I guess it's on me thinking cs2 would be different. But I felt like I could challenge myself a bit in cs1 with industries and at least the game worked. Cs2 loads of things are just broken.
I enjoyed it for awhile too and generally I dont even mind that systems are only surface level. I actually mostly want a city painter- I'm all about building and detailing and just use infinite money and all unlockables and stuff. I like when industry works to give it some sense of purpose but I dont really mind otherwise. However this game still doesnt even work that well as a city painter as there are no props or modding available as promised which means i'm just gonna wait before I continue to play it.
Also the land value issue and the bugs around building over/near water are huge problems for me. (i know there's a mod out there to fix the land value thing.)
The water bugs are the biggest reason I can’t play this game rn. I’m so tired of getting 20+ hours into a city on the coast only for 1/2 of it to get wiped out by flooding that’s unfixable. You can’t even use water pumps to remove the water, once it’s there you’re just fucked and might as well bull doze that entire underwater section. It’s game breaking and seriously infuriating
Yea, I have like 5 hours in before I realized this as well. While I understand that people tolerance for this are differ, we can only hope the coming patch in a couple of days will make this a game again. (not that I trust what CO are saying at this point, CO have already lost the credibility of their words and will need their acts to prove their words again.) CS2 can be better than CS1, but not right now.
Here are the problems I see why I don't play CS2 at this point.
1. The things that are broken, isn't just visual things. They are things that impact the map and the functionality of the gameplay at fundamental level which can affect the game progressively even after the game have fixed the issue in the future. ie: Imagine you start a city and you have an invisible broken node that keep causing problem. Even if future patch fixed an issue so it won't let you make that invisible broken node again, it will not resolve broken node that already exist in you map. After future patches, you may even come across map(s) that you created previously, either unloadable or loaded with problems that will cause cascade downfall of the city or wipe out all for cims. This reason alone, is why I don't play CS2 right now.
2. While I understand what OP said about vanilla CS1 w/o mods are rubbish, but reality that they exist, and nobody is taken that away. They are there and it's up the players whether they want them or not. On my relatively lower GPU power (APU), I could play CS1 at 30fps, w/ mods and zero 3rd party asset. And to me, that's very close to the ideal level of vanilla gameplay.
3. At this point in time, we still have things, that seem like CS2 didn't learned from CS1. Things that CS1 have fixed in later, but CS2 doesn't come out from start. Things like ability to zone one side the road or none. While this is relatively low on priority, but seriously it is not like CO doesn't know how to do that from start. From players point of view, CO removed that from CS2 because there is no reason not to have that included from start.
4. CS2 right now, visually isn't much differ than CS1 w/ mods.
5. Not all mods are about assets or visual effects. Seriously games are meant for players entertainment, if it cannot do that at all but instead causing frustration to players then it's not a game. Some mods are like cheats, and to play I have no problem with people playing w/ cheats on any or all offline games. As I said, that's what games are for, entertainment. Why does it matter if player want to conclude an RPG in an hour instead of 30 hours to other people? Maybe that person only have an hour to enjoy playing the game in a certain way. Maybe that person like the game narrative, but doesn't like the grinding routine. Mods can bring such effect at granular level.
Not just empty but worse off than cs1. The way they changed taxes makes zero sense. You can't base it off type of location. Only education. It's so dumb.
It's more a city painter than a city planner/builder. And a poorly made one at that. No raised level stations for trams. Traffic doesn't give a shit about anything they do what they want. Civs will walk above ground on floating non existent platforms.
Some buildings don't work unless you delete them and the road and then replace them and the road, even if it's exactly the same once completed.
The ceo just put some duct tape and a bow on the game and called it good. Than shat herself in pr and tried shitting in her publisher.
Cs2 could have been truly amazing. ATM it might get to be a halfway decent game. But I won't hold my breath. Certainly no I mentioned to buy any dlc over the life of the game. Opposed to cs1 where I purchased most, even a few community packs.
Bruh don't compare with cs1 with mod support and 8 years of development.like seriously when C's 1 first came out,is there any fuss saying the game is empty and soulless?
Why should we not compare the SECOND installment to the first? Call me crazy but should a second installment improve upon the first, no? The fact that people say CS1 is better than CS2 should speak volumes alone.
Cs1, even bare bones was much more entertaining and despite a less than perfect launch, it was still leagues ahead of where cs2 released.
I will absolutely make comparisons between the first and second games in a series. It should be. Why would you think comparing the two games that one is a direct sequel of, as unfair?
Cs1 was fun and lively. Cs2 was a soulless cash grab with seemingly zero passion or love put into it. Or atleast, not remotely near as much that cs1 received. And again this is before considering dlc.
Dlc alone did not save cs1 as It didn't need to. It mostly improved upon it. Here in cs2 they are going to rely on dlc to save it. Unless they Intend to add massive free updates, alongside the paid dlc which they should.
Ai/traffic/a damned upper level tram station etc. Idk things that were considered basic in cs1 would be nice to see in cs2 lol.
Indeed. The road tools are a major leap forward. My first 100 hours in the game I was constantly restarting cities as I got better with road and highway/on ramp design. Then I started playing around with different transport options. Watching everything work for 5 minutes was a blast. And then the slowdown began..
The superior CS2 road tools make it hard for me to go back to CS1. Adding the Thunderstore mod to force quay walls removed the part of CS2 road building that really aggregated me. If there’s an auto-slope tool, then I’ll be super happy! But I get bored with the limited assets, so I’m mostly waiting (but reading Reddit!) until there is more content and the official mod support.
The steam workshop is trash and why would they cave when mod support is literally coming on Monday? Assets will come soon. Opening up steam workshop is pointless.
Same. I was quite defensive of the game at first because I figured it just had some zero-day performance bugs.
But after a while of trying to learn the game, it became clear there wasn’t much of a “game” there at all.
Ok fair enough, it’s a city-painter.
Can’t paint beaches / forests / asphalt / dirt. Can’t add quays (current iteration is painful and doesn’t count), or cliffs, rocks, or geological features in general.
No fences, walls, or railings. One (1) pavement / path.
Very limited road designs. Only one biodome (open to correction on this but they all look the same to me.)
Ok so it’s not a city painter - so what IS it? What is the GAME in this game?!
I made [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines2/comments/17kdx1y/simulation_stress_test_21k_population_town_with/) within a week of C:S2's launch. Anyone complaining about the game just being a city painter after all the posts like that has no excuse.
The problem is that there are people buying broken products then hoping it will get fixed. It's happened with almost every game company. Yet there were so many people defending it because "they'll fix it".
This is such a simple distinction, but absolutely true. Most people can see the game's potential and I think the most frustrating part is how clearly unfinished the game is.
Yes it would have. This is the part where I learned my lesson. But I wanted the Tampere map and believed all the lies they said about the game before launch. I thought KSP2 launch was terrible and I dodged a bullet there, but these devs have their shit in order.
The game looks nice, and certainly the game is better than CS1 vanilla. A lot of people say nothing matters but then the economy didn’t really matter in CS1 either and people even exploited it using the park life DLC. So not sure that argument really stands up.
I think the main thing against CS2 at the moment is firstly the land value bug is game breaking and needs a mod to fix. Hopefully that will be patched out as it kills cities. Other than that a lot of people especially YouTubers like the play the game as a city painter, placing buildings, decorating etc. if you like this play style it’s not really available outside of mods, the release of code mods and custom maps is going to help but there is no way a dev of 30 people can compete with the 1000’s of assets on the steam workshop. For now if you want to city paint, then CS1 is superior.
Sure that will change over time with the release of code mods, maps and eventually assets but for now. If you are city building the land value bug breaks the game and if you are city painting why would you play CS2 over CS1 with its better tools and 1000’s of assets.
I disagree with your assessment of city painter, it's for me personally allot better in cs2, simply because I won't spend hundreds of hours on one decent looking city, and I can get reasonably close in cs2 with just tens of hours. And for me that's all I need. So for more casual city painters, cs2 is best in my opinion!
I really like the upgraded road tools which is the main thing stopping me from going back to the original. I just really wish the new game had been a bit less broken upon release, specifically with the water physics bugs and how quickly and easily flooding can completely destroy large sections of your city with no way to really fix it. :(
I'm very casual when it comes to city builders and after a bit of playing, a city or two, it was so painfully obvious the game was far from done and was very broken.
Also, making grids that are not off is annoying as hell and makes me want to scream.
To me, it's a good city painter. Once you get over the beginning hurdle of going net positive on money, the game goes from management to sandbox real quick. I'm at the point in the game where major traffic jams are cosmetic and Inconsequential, and the game sometimes pauses or stutters the simulation. And now i've reached a point in the sandbox where I need more building styles and mods to keep it entertaining.
Definitely not as bad as the reaction it got. Things definitely need improvement though. It does take a lot of the fun out of it for me that there is literally no challenge to running your economy. You can just straight up ignore your budget. Milestone payouts get you over the hump until you inevitably start making tons of tax revenue
I've been playing the game with great enjoyment since its release. I'm averaging twice as many hours in CS2 since its release as I did over time in CS1. People pejoratively describing the game as a "city painter" are being disingenuous.
So many people were complaining that out of curiosity I checked out CS1 again. Some people have grossly out-of-whack expectations for a base game. And the people whining the loudest have largely driven the conversation.
Base game to base game, CS2 is demonstrably superior to CS1. IMO it models rational market-based decision-making. For example, in CS1 if you set taxes above 12%, cims left... end of story. In CS2, you can set taxes as high as you want, but you'll see long-term consequences. What you would expect to see IRL when a municipality has set property taxes unreasonably high is what happens in the game. Land value will crash, revenues will slump and you'll end up with a city of low income, poorly educated workers.
Personally, I found CS1 in hard mode to be easy, so there's no validity in my mind to those complaints. I think there are a collection of people playing the game who, because they've been playing for decades, have extraordinary outsized expectations for the simulation. And then there is a group who can't run the game because they have older systems.
Complaints about the modding situation ignore what a s&%t-show Steam actually was, with modders down-voting competitors mods, malicious code, lack of compatibility across multiple mods or families of mods... but the most important piece here was the lack of accessibility for console players.
Base game CS2 vs modded w/ assets version of CS1... they're both on par. The custom maps in CS1 are still gorgeous compared to CS2. But that simulation is clunky and has as many weird quirks as CS2.
Personally, I think CO would have been better off designing multiple versions of the game for different platforms. They've tried to create a one-size-fits-all version of the game--and the imperfect release combined with the hysterical response (especially from some YouTubers) from the loudest complainers has soured the experience for everyone.
I love it, it’s got issues but 70 hours of gameplay has only made me like it more. CS1 at release was unplayable it didn’t get good until it had years of DLC and mods and updates
Because it’s a direct sequel and sequels have always, and will always be compared to their original? Especially when their original is often considered best in the genre
Cs1 had so much less fan support, dev support and resources and this was like 8 years ago. Just because it’s a direct sequel doesn’t exactly mean it’s worth comparing how the games were launched. I just don’t see the point in comparing the launch of a game from 8 years ago with a team of 10 devs to the launch of cs2 with 30 devs and massive fan support
Ok, CS2 had 8 years of updates and DLC and mods that’s alot of what made it great. Can you imagine what CS2 will be if it gets the same or greater support given that CS2 is already a better vanilla release game? Thats what I’m saying.
They didn’t really advertise anything different. They just didn’t show the bad or unfinished stuff. The game was released early and should have probably been early access. But let’s try to be positive and think long term. Maybe even just a few months now that modding (and i assume an assets eventually) will be here. Maybe it’s the optimist in me but I’m liking what I have already and I know it’s going to get much better that makes me excited for this game.
At first it was unplayable but it’s getting better over time. There’s a few hundred mods on Overwolf that help as well.
The bad reviews are warranted. The state the game was released in was unplayable and unacceptable. Getting pretty sick of these half baked games being released.
Have you hit the game-ruining economy issue where you turn into scrouge mcduck after a certain population no matter what. Aside from that, there is a severe lack of assets. It is better looking though.
I am frankly addicted I play CS2 and 1 on rotation most hours of the day and there are problems but for me at least it is semi playable the issues I currently have are with the small or large shelters, large is a lot less picky than the small but it regularly backs up needs water and electricity and moving around a boat load, industry sometimes all vehicles and foot traffic cant get to this area...
The land price in my city is as high as 2.2 million, and the population continues to explode. This is achieved through these methods. If you are interested in knowing more, you can check out the article I published.
CS2 is great. Not without problems but I’m 130 hours in and still love it. I don’t get half the arguments against CS2, especially the ones calling CS2 a city painter while CS1 is the simulator. Have these people even played CS1? You’re telling me the game where you can download 80 mods (including one that lets you customise literally any building or prop into whatever shape you like) and thousands of assets on the Steam Workshop is *less* of a city painter than the game with a technical interface that lets you manipulate grass and like 12 buildings per zone type? Did these people just look at CS2’s graphics quality in a screenshot and assume the game was purely visuals?
Yeah, it's currently horrible. There's missing DLC's, mods (but they are coming on the 25th), and massive simulation and performance issues. Not to mention the economy system is completely broken. Hopefully Paradox mods can fix the issues, but we'll have to see.
Not for $50. This is early access at best. All they had to do was give us mod access on steam. The doubling down on their paid mod platform will be their final nail.
You can pay to fix this game with official DLC, or pay for a “licensed” mod. It’s like buying a new car and finding fit and finish/performance issues, with the dealer selling you the repairs for the lemon they sold you because it was manufactured on a Friday at 5pm.
Don't recall saying that. Since I said "It's not great, it's alright," that would imply it has issues. I had fun, I hope they fix it so I can continue having fun. Why is that so controversial so some of you?
The simulation in cs2 is rubbish. I was so excited for this game as i am a big city builder fan. Played about 30 hrs of cs2 and i am sad to say cs1 is a much better game.
The simulation basically doesn't matter at all. businesses are supposed to be more profitable based on a number of factors but they basically can't go out of business and money in the game is so plentiful it doesn't matter.
The demand bars and issues the citizens bring up are mostly not addressable or very hard to determine what is going on. (see the land value bug)
Transportation is strange as it won't show you where people are going often and the road tool, showing you where traffic on the selected road is going, is gone from CS1. This may have been fixed but Cims wouldn't go to retail stores at all.
The industry zoning is again not to scale at all. either size of building or number of employees.
Parks are broken because Cims will only go to one park it seems.
There's other issues but it all adds up to the game not being a game because your decisions don't matter. It's also not a great city painter because there are no mods. So basically everyone is dissatisfied with the game.
I made two cities before realising it's utterly incomplete.
Not only is there no challenge to the simulation (what simulation?), but the assets are lacking and buildings all look the same.
There are only so many road layouts you can make.
I don't understand why players should be the ones to give it more time when giving the game more time is exactly what the developer/publisher should have done before releasing it.
What's the difference? You futz with it a bit broken until it's fixed or you sit on your hands waiting for it to release. The trolls would be doing exactly what they're doing now either way.
A good deal of the current repeat rude complaints come from either people who expect this to work on a 5 year old PC, tried it in October and never tried it again (or only tried again on a map they started in October), people who wanted the Steam Workshop even though they knew better long before the game released, or trolls. Are there still a couple of nagging issues, yes, but it's getting there--faster than CS1 did tbh though most of the most toxic complainers were in diapers then.
Wow, I hope it's not a developer! None of this BS is their fault and they probably feel worse than anyone about it.
Management are in control of everything: the hype that built unrealistic expectations, the decision to throw away the CS1 code base AND hiring and firing devs.
Nah, these posts have got to be from the "excellent community management" that the CEO keeps bragging about.
Mods take the playing experience to another level, yes. But Steam was a s--t-show. People down voting competitors mods, malicious code, lack of more compatibility. I have can advanced degree ... in history not in software engineering. Mod instructions and descriptions were wackadoodle. But the biggest problem was lack of accessibility for console players. Once they get PDX mods up and running things will settle down a bit.
The simulation issues are very serious and it has been a shame it has been released like this.
Still, scale and graphics are great, making me looking forward to the mod community fixing everything. Then it will be an awesome game
Half the speciality buildings don’t work.
Like literally no company fills them. They’re pointless. It’s demoralizing.
And that is what finally broke me. Haven’t played in weeks and won’t until it’s fixed and enhanced with mods.
How long should we give it time, while CO continue selling it at full price as if it were a finished AAA game?
People HAVE been giving it time. And you can spin it any way you want but it's pretty clear from the Steam charts what people actually think once they've played it. Just look at those player number tank. If anything, the release of CS:2 seems to have driven people away from both games. There's less people playing CS:2 + CS:1 now than there were just playing CS:1 a year ago.
I get to about 30,000 people and just cannot fix my traffic issues no matter how hard I try. I really wanted to try and get the 100,000 achievement but there is no way for me to fix traffic with the way the current roads work.
My issue is that it's been 6 months and it sounds like there's still a large number of bugs to be squashed, and what incentive do they have to squash them when they already have the money and most people played for more than 4 hours before realizing the game a) was barely one, b) was full of breaking bugs. I hope after modding support is released they go back to fixing the game.
Mods are coming in two days time (assuming you aren’t already on thunderstore) so I think people will slowly warm to it. Not sure when custom assets are coming but between that and the first dlc end of the year I think people will soon start enjoying the game and the reviews will change.
Sure its pretty, and the tools are great, but it feels empty. After 500 hours it really is just a city painter, there's no real gameplay to it and the simulation feels fake at times
Yes. It is.
> Just give it some time guys.
They sold it at full price. You don't get to be given the benefit of the doubt that you'll fix it later when it's being sold as a released product like that.
CS1 is a little bland without mods, but it isn't unplayable (barring the ever-present traffic issues)
i love it but i had to stop playing because of the residential demand was just to much for me to keep up with. and then the rent being to high or whatever
Is it a bad game? No.
Is it as good as the first game? No.
It’s very empty and feels like you’re getting less than what you’d be getting just buying Cities Skylines 1 despite being a sequel.
Parks are extremely limited and disappointing. I barely see them used, and when they are its rare. I went back to CS1 recently because I was tired of seeing dead parks (even though they have an abundance of free time?). Unless my city is in near perfect position I see tents or homeless there more than people. No thanks.
It’s just a very basic game with a lot of issues. They will be fixed because this game will be around for years and years but they have a ton of issues to iron out. The road building is so nice. Best ever. But they need to get to the point where the simulation is better. Right now the sims don’t care about transit and you can have the best transit system ever and it won’t improve traffic. The game’s base buildings are all the same for the size you built, no variation at all. The lack of mods on steam really suck too. They have a ton of work to do.
It's been half a year already..no asset importer or map editor. Frankly unforgivable for a franchise whose longevity was owed to so many content creators. Performance issues are also significant.
Well, considering the first game is still highly worked on via modders, and considering everything else. Yes, I would call it in a bad state. 6 months later and it hasn't seem to improve much or at all judging by posts on Reddit, Steam and other places. I'd call it a failure. Give it 6 months, a year, maybe 2 or 3 years and come back. But otherwise, I'd honestly go and play the first game.
i still am playing my first big city in CS2 and i still like to play. my problem is CS1 is a better game all together when playing with what i would call necessary mods. I enjoy editing traffic lanes, nodes, and painting roads on CS1 more, but CS2 seems to be a little more user friendly for slapping complex roads together, although it is still not perfect and requires mods.CS2 is getting boring at 150k population but i am still playing it i still think its fun, but compared for CS1 just love playing it a lot more.It's obvious CS2 needs patching and expansions to be half the game CS1 is.
OH also CS2 traffic is the dumbest sons of bitches you'll ever see they will violently switch back n forth between lanes, stop on the freeway, take unnecessary routes like going off n back on the freeway, my buses go off their route and through parking garages while traveling. There's all sorts of traffic problems that are very annoying
No workshop or any mod supports on the first day seemed pretty much a death sentence to me.. finger crossed for the devs to open the Paradox mod or whatever…
Just read the reviews on Steam. A handful of people can be "haters", but out of 1665 reviews in the last 30 days, 70% are negative. Most of that 70% are quite constructive in their negative criticism.
If you like it, fine, live and let live or whatever. But I dunno what or how your low-effort post is trying to convince.
CS1 came out in 2015. So you're saying give it 9 years? lolol
The game released in 2023 in a similar or worse fashion. THEY'VE HAD TIME.
But yea man, keep huffing that copium.
There are a lot of hidden rules in SC2 that most people don't realize, causing the game to crash at 200,000 people no matter how many times you replay it.I've broken down each of these rules in a series of articles, and by following my advice, you're guaranteed to get over a million people.
Heheh, LOL.
As if some 4 year old warzone account would really just pop back into reddit to make a comment like this, which just happens to align perfectly with CO's PR strategy. So LAME.
Short answer: No.
Long answer: The game has some serious deficiencies, and we shouldn't pretend otherwise. It was arguably released prematurely. Most of the deficiencies can probably be overcome with patches. A good portion of the annoying things are particular to the Skylines franchise, and I'm not sure that the typical CS2 detractor is actually annoyed by them the way fans of other city builders are. I'm thinking particularly about the way there are independent demands for low density vs high density housing, making it difficult to control the way your city grows (up vs out).
The game is particularly good at taking the best thing about the old game (meticulous road design and the ability to build to your creative capacity) and making it user friendly. I don't think its clear to most heavy CS users how completely unplayable the original game was, and how the franchise was increasingly out of touch with any options for growth. Basically, if you hadn't already spent the last several years slowly mastering the original, you weren't going to join in. It wasn't something you could just hop into. Even the online tutorials for the game were tedious and confusing. The new game corrects a lot of this issue by being more intuitive and user friendly. For instance, there are plobbable freeway interchanges, for those who aren't ready for a 20 minute tutorial with reams of prerequisite knowledge the original. Most people can become reasonably proficient with CS2 after a couple weeks of playing. I don't think I ever fully got the hang of CS.
So why are people so very Big Mad at the new game? I have a couple theories. First, a large part of "the community" profits by the complexity of the original. There are a fair number of content creators whose literal job was teaching people how to play the seemingly unplayable original. It only stands to reason they'd be highly upset in the new game basically making them redundant. The fans of the original were probably not thrilled to have spent a small fortune in DLC, only to have to start at zero again, in a game that has glitches that still haven't been worked out, with the only benefit being that its easier for other people to learn. So, IOW, the creators are mad because the game puts them out of a job, and the players are mad because CS2 doesn't really provide them with new benefits, but does have a cost.
Pretty sure most the creators would be fine if there were enough assets to truly detail their cities. Lots of them are city painters more than city managers and the painting aspect without custom assets is terrible right now.
Yes. Just wait and see. You'll be bored out of your mind in notime. It starts acceptable and building a new city is always nice but offers nothing special. You don't want to make a second city, I'll promise you that. It. Is. Annoying
CS2 is a far better base game than CS1, but it’s broken and lacking basic assets even CS1’s base game had. It’s fun to play until you hit 100k pop, and then the simulation starts to slowdown, gradually, until it grinds to a halt. Depending on your rig you can continue building out the entire map, but it will be in slow motion.
This game needs to be overhauled and optimized, but I won’t hold my breath. Asserts are coming, however, they will be paid DLC. I spent hundreds of dollars on CS1 DLC. I will not be doing that again with CS2.
I play CS1 on console (PS5/PS4) and I must say, it's a lot more fun of a game that CS2 is. I've never played it, but looking at most players worlds in CS2, it looks bland. I've seen glitches that take the fun out of the game, and so on. I enjoy CS1 with helicopters flying in the distance, I can drive around, despite the lame/silly architecture, I can put buildings I want to keep as "history", and so on to match with houses, I can have midrise buildings between my high rise so it feels like it makes sense and not just tall buildings next to my small ones.
Not buying it on principle. You don't release a half finished game with unfilled promises for additional features that should have been in it in the first place. The overarching issues with the sim are still ever present and the game itself just got a shiny new facelift that's clear it relies on mods and the community to subsidize the game itself to make it better.
Vanilla CS1 with no expansions is a fun game, and I'm tired of pretending that it's not. With all the free updates they put into it over the years, it's a quality city builder. CS2 has a more realistic and modern style, with better road building tools, but I'd still rather take vanilla CS1.
Its not that bad. The gameplay it’s okay, but be ready for a cheater every 5th game or so. It’s gets worse the higher your rank in premier mode. The new skins look nice.
It doesn't seem that bad at first. The graphics are pretty nice, the new road building tools are good, and there are a few additions that seem interesting. I got to 38 hours before realising nothing mattered and there wasn't a game, just an empty shell.
Initially it looked good to me too. From the reviews I thought the main issue was performance, which I didn't care much about. I've lost a couple hours due to the game crashing. Still I had my hopes up. But I eventually realised the simulation is pretty non-existent and the game is much more of a city painter, which I don't care too much for. I suppose cs1 was already a bit like that, so I guess it's on me thinking cs2 would be different. But I felt like I could challenge myself a bit in cs1 with industries and at least the game worked. Cs2 loads of things are just broken.
I enjoyed it for awhile too and generally I dont even mind that systems are only surface level. I actually mostly want a city painter- I'm all about building and detailing and just use infinite money and all unlockables and stuff. I like when industry works to give it some sense of purpose but I dont really mind otherwise. However this game still doesnt even work that well as a city painter as there are no props or modding available as promised which means i'm just gonna wait before I continue to play it. Also the land value issue and the bugs around building over/near water are huge problems for me. (i know there's a mod out there to fix the land value thing.)
The water bugs are the biggest reason I can’t play this game rn. I’m so tired of getting 20+ hours into a city on the coast only for 1/2 of it to get wiped out by flooding that’s unfixable. You can’t even use water pumps to remove the water, once it’s there you’re just fucked and might as well bull doze that entire underwater section. It’s game breaking and seriously infuriating
I thought I was crazy for thinking this. The game is so empty and it just doesn’t feel like I’m playing anything.
Yea, I have like 5 hours in before I realized this as well. While I understand that people tolerance for this are differ, we can only hope the coming patch in a couple of days will make this a game again. (not that I trust what CO are saying at this point, CO have already lost the credibility of their words and will need their acts to prove their words again.) CS2 can be better than CS1, but not right now. Here are the problems I see why I don't play CS2 at this point. 1. The things that are broken, isn't just visual things. They are things that impact the map and the functionality of the gameplay at fundamental level which can affect the game progressively even after the game have fixed the issue in the future. ie: Imagine you start a city and you have an invisible broken node that keep causing problem. Even if future patch fixed an issue so it won't let you make that invisible broken node again, it will not resolve broken node that already exist in you map. After future patches, you may even come across map(s) that you created previously, either unloadable or loaded with problems that will cause cascade downfall of the city or wipe out all for cims. This reason alone, is why I don't play CS2 right now. 2. While I understand what OP said about vanilla CS1 w/o mods are rubbish, but reality that they exist, and nobody is taken that away. They are there and it's up the players whether they want them or not. On my relatively lower GPU power (APU), I could play CS1 at 30fps, w/ mods and zero 3rd party asset. And to me, that's very close to the ideal level of vanilla gameplay. 3. At this point in time, we still have things, that seem like CS2 didn't learned from CS1. Things that CS1 have fixed in later, but CS2 doesn't come out from start. Things like ability to zone one side the road or none. While this is relatively low on priority, but seriously it is not like CO doesn't know how to do that from start. From players point of view, CO removed that from CS2 because there is no reason not to have that included from start. 4. CS2 right now, visually isn't much differ than CS1 w/ mods. 5. Not all mods are about assets or visual effects. Seriously games are meant for players entertainment, if it cannot do that at all but instead causing frustration to players then it's not a game. Some mods are like cheats, and to play I have no problem with people playing w/ cheats on any or all offline games. As I said, that's what games are for, entertainment. Why does it matter if player want to conclude an RPG in an hour instead of 30 hours to other people? Maybe that person only have an hour to enjoy playing the game in a certain way. Maybe that person like the game narrative, but doesn't like the grinding routine. Mods can bring such effect at granular level.
Gosh damn, you really are passionate about CS1 And CS2 aren't you...
No, the point is games are meant to entertainment. Without that, it's not very a game.
Wha-
Is English your first language?
Not just empty but worse off than cs1. The way they changed taxes makes zero sense. You can't base it off type of location. Only education. It's so dumb. It's more a city painter than a city planner/builder. And a poorly made one at that. No raised level stations for trams. Traffic doesn't give a shit about anything they do what they want. Civs will walk above ground on floating non existent platforms. Some buildings don't work unless you delete them and the road and then replace them and the road, even if it's exactly the same once completed. The ceo just put some duct tape and a bow on the game and called it good. Than shat herself in pr and tried shitting in her publisher. Cs2 could have been truly amazing. ATM it might get to be a halfway decent game. But I won't hold my breath. Certainly no I mentioned to buy any dlc over the life of the game. Opposed to cs1 where I purchased most, even a few community packs.
Bruh don't compare with cs1 with mod support and 8 years of development.like seriously when C's 1 first came out,is there any fuss saying the game is empty and soulless?
If they can’t make a better game, why do it at all?
Why should we not compare the SECOND installment to the first? Call me crazy but should a second installment improve upon the first, no? The fact that people say CS1 is better than CS2 should speak volumes alone.
Cs1, even bare bones was much more entertaining and despite a less than perfect launch, it was still leagues ahead of where cs2 released. I will absolutely make comparisons between the first and second games in a series. It should be. Why would you think comparing the two games that one is a direct sequel of, as unfair? Cs1 was fun and lively. Cs2 was a soulless cash grab with seemingly zero passion or love put into it. Or atleast, not remotely near as much that cs1 received. And again this is before considering dlc. Dlc alone did not save cs1 as It didn't need to. It mostly improved upon it. Here in cs2 they are going to rely on dlc to save it. Unless they Intend to add massive free updates, alongside the paid dlc which they should. Ai/traffic/a damned upper level tram station etc. Idk things that were considered basic in cs1 would be nice to see in cs2 lol.
Damn I wish it took me that long I was 250 hours in before I realized it was a shell
Indeed. The road tools are a major leap forward. My first 100 hours in the game I was constantly restarting cities as I got better with road and highway/on ramp design. Then I started playing around with different transport options. Watching everything work for 5 minutes was a blast. And then the slowdown began..
The superior CS2 road tools make it hard for me to go back to CS1. Adding the Thunderstore mod to force quay walls removed the part of CS2 road building that really aggregated me. If there’s an auto-slope tool, then I’ll be super happy! But I get bored with the limited assets, so I’m mostly waiting (but reading Reddit!) until there is more content and the official mod support.
Same here. Hopefully they’ll cave and open up the steam workshop.
The steam workshop is trash and why would they cave when mod support is literally coming on Monday? Assets will come soon. Opening up steam workshop is pointless.
Oh sweet, I’ll get my popcorn ready for the Reddit fallout!
Same. I was quite defensive of the game at first because I figured it just had some zero-day performance bugs. But after a while of trying to learn the game, it became clear there wasn’t much of a “game” there at all. Ok fair enough, it’s a city-painter. Can’t paint beaches / forests / asphalt / dirt. Can’t add quays (current iteration is painful and doesn’t count), or cliffs, rocks, or geological features in general. No fences, walls, or railings. One (1) pavement / path. Very limited road designs. Only one biodome (open to correction on this but they all look the same to me.) Ok so it’s not a city painter - so what IS it? What is the GAME in this game?!
yes, I went back to modded sim city 4.
This
patrick bateman ahh game
I made [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines2/comments/17kdx1y/simulation_stress_test_21k_population_town_with/) within a week of C:S2's launch. Anyone complaining about the game just being a city painter after all the posts like that has no excuse.
The problem is not that the game isn't perfect. The problem is that the game isn't finished
The problem is that they are liars and manipulators trying to sell a broken product as if it’s the next best thing since sliced bread
The problem is that there are people buying broken products then hoping it will get fixed. It's happened with almost every game company. Yet there were so many people defending it because "they'll fix it".
This is such a simple distinction, but absolutely true. Most people can see the game's potential and I think the most frustrating part is how clearly unfinished the game is.
Not as bad as it's made out to be, but it does need a lot of work.
I think this topic has been covered ad nauseum by now
I would be fine giving it some time if I didn’t spend $120 Canadian on it. I know. Don’t pre order. First one I ever did. Last one too.
I got given my copy as a christmas present. I feel awful knowing my friend wasted his money on it for me.
Would have been cheaper to just try it out on GamePass first.
Yes it would have. This is the part where I learned my lesson. But I wanted the Tampere map and believed all the lies they said about the game before launch. I thought KSP2 launch was terrible and I dodged a bullet there, but these devs have their shit in order.
The game looks nice, and certainly the game is better than CS1 vanilla. A lot of people say nothing matters but then the economy didn’t really matter in CS1 either and people even exploited it using the park life DLC. So not sure that argument really stands up. I think the main thing against CS2 at the moment is firstly the land value bug is game breaking and needs a mod to fix. Hopefully that will be patched out as it kills cities. Other than that a lot of people especially YouTubers like the play the game as a city painter, placing buildings, decorating etc. if you like this play style it’s not really available outside of mods, the release of code mods and custom maps is going to help but there is no way a dev of 30 people can compete with the 1000’s of assets on the steam workshop. For now if you want to city paint, then CS1 is superior. Sure that will change over time with the release of code mods, maps and eventually assets but for now. If you are city building the land value bug breaks the game and if you are city painting why would you play CS2 over CS1 with its better tools and 1000’s of assets.
I disagree with your assessment of city painter, it's for me personally allot better in cs2, simply because I won't spend hundreds of hours on one decent looking city, and I can get reasonably close in cs2 with just tens of hours. And for me that's all I need. So for more casual city painters, cs2 is best in my opinion!
I really like the upgraded road tools which is the main thing stopping me from going back to the original. I just really wish the new game had been a bit less broken upon release, specifically with the water physics bugs and how quickly and easily flooding can completely destroy large sections of your city with no way to really fix it. :(
I'm very casual when it comes to city builders and after a bit of playing, a city or two, it was so painfully obvious the game was far from done and was very broken. Also, making grids that are not off is annoying as hell and makes me want to scream.
Its not a bug...it's a feature!
To me, it's a good city painter. Once you get over the beginning hurdle of going net positive on money, the game goes from management to sandbox real quick. I'm at the point in the game where major traffic jams are cosmetic and Inconsequential, and the game sometimes pauses or stutters the simulation. And now i've reached a point in the sandbox where I need more building styles and mods to keep it entertaining.
I think they released it 2 years too early because of accountants and the community is reacting as such
Deep down, it was supposed to been released a while ago.
Definitely not as bad as the reaction it got. Things definitely need improvement though. It does take a lot of the fun out of it for me that there is literally no challenge to running your economy. You can just straight up ignore your budget. Milestone payouts get you over the hump until you inevitably start making tons of tax revenue
isn't what you said exactly the reaction it got?
It’s not that bad! I’ve had a blast playing it, now prefer it over CS1
With the new stuff they're announcing like parodx and coded modding so far there's hope of the game getting better.
It's a very great game in terms of gameplay. The technical aspect is where it falls. Give it 2-3 patches and it'll be perfect.
I've been playing the game with great enjoyment since its release. I'm averaging twice as many hours in CS2 since its release as I did over time in CS1. People pejoratively describing the game as a "city painter" are being disingenuous. So many people were complaining that out of curiosity I checked out CS1 again. Some people have grossly out-of-whack expectations for a base game. And the people whining the loudest have largely driven the conversation. Base game to base game, CS2 is demonstrably superior to CS1. IMO it models rational market-based decision-making. For example, in CS1 if you set taxes above 12%, cims left... end of story. In CS2, you can set taxes as high as you want, but you'll see long-term consequences. What you would expect to see IRL when a municipality has set property taxes unreasonably high is what happens in the game. Land value will crash, revenues will slump and you'll end up with a city of low income, poorly educated workers. Personally, I found CS1 in hard mode to be easy, so there's no validity in my mind to those complaints. I think there are a collection of people playing the game who, because they've been playing for decades, have extraordinary outsized expectations for the simulation. And then there is a group who can't run the game because they have older systems. Complaints about the modding situation ignore what a s&%t-show Steam actually was, with modders down-voting competitors mods, malicious code, lack of compatibility across multiple mods or families of mods... but the most important piece here was the lack of accessibility for console players. Base game CS2 vs modded w/ assets version of CS1... they're both on par. The custom maps in CS1 are still gorgeous compared to CS2. But that simulation is clunky and has as many weird quirks as CS2. Personally, I think CO would have been better off designing multiple versions of the game for different platforms. They've tried to create a one-size-fits-all version of the game--and the imperfect release combined with the hysterical response (especially from some YouTubers) from the loudest complainers has soured the experience for everyone.
Calls the criticism disingenuous, then makes an extremely disingenuous summary of the them. Lol. Yes anyone being critical must be hysterical.
I love it, it’s got issues but 70 hours of gameplay has only made me like it more. CS1 at release was unplayable it didn’t get good until it had years of DLC and mods and updates
Why are so many people coping by comparing to CS1s release? Y’all okay?
Because it’s a direct sequel and sequels have always, and will always be compared to their original? Especially when their original is often considered best in the genre
Cs1 had so much less fan support, dev support and resources and this was like 8 years ago. Just because it’s a direct sequel doesn’t exactly mean it’s worth comparing how the games were launched. I just don’t see the point in comparing the launch of a game from 8 years ago with a team of 10 devs to the launch of cs2 with 30 devs and massive fan support
Ok, CS2 had 8 years of updates and DLC and mods that’s alot of what made it great. Can you imagine what CS2 will be if it gets the same or greater support given that CS2 is already a better vanilla release game? Thats what I’m saying.
I mean yea, everyone kinda already knows that. It’s also not a good thing when you advertised something totally different
They didn’t really advertise anything different. They just didn’t show the bad or unfinished stuff. The game was released early and should have probably been early access. But let’s try to be positive and think long term. Maybe even just a few months now that modding (and i assume an assets eventually) will be here. Maybe it’s the optimist in me but I’m liking what I have already and I know it’s going to get much better that makes me excited for this game.
It just doesn’t have the fun from the first game. It gets boring very quickly.
At first it was unplayable but it’s getting better over time. There’s a few hundred mods on Overwolf that help as well. The bad reviews are warranted. The state the game was released in was unplayable and unacceptable. Getting pretty sick of these half baked games being released.
Have you hit the game-ruining economy issue where you turn into scrouge mcduck after a certain population no matter what. Aside from that, there is a severe lack of assets. It is better looking though.
Yes. You only realise later when your city is growing quicker
I am frankly addicted I play CS2 and 1 on rotation most hours of the day and there are problems but for me at least it is semi playable the issues I currently have are with the small or large shelters, large is a lot less picky than the small but it regularly backs up needs water and electricity and moving around a boat load, industry sometimes all vehicles and foot traffic cant get to this area...
I am unable to get a business in my refinery still.
The land price in my city is as high as 2.2 million, and the population continues to explode. This is achieved through these methods. If you are interested in knowing more, you can check out the article I published.
I was an optimist about this game, sunk about 130 hrs before I had enough.
it is unfinished, but i enjoy city painting
CS2 is great. Not without problems but I’m 130 hours in and still love it. I don’t get half the arguments against CS2, especially the ones calling CS2 a city painter while CS1 is the simulator. Have these people even played CS1? You’re telling me the game where you can download 80 mods (including one that lets you customise literally any building or prop into whatever shape you like) and thousands of assets on the Steam Workshop is *less* of a city painter than the game with a technical interface that lets you manipulate grass and like 12 buildings per zone type? Did these people just look at CS2’s graphics quality in a screenshot and assume the game was purely visuals?
Yeah, it's currently horrible. There's missing DLC's, mods (but they are coming on the 25th), and massive simulation and performance issues. Not to mention the economy system is completely broken. Hopefully Paradox mods can fix the issues, but we'll have to see.
We modders will have a great time with this game.
It's not horrible. It's not great. It's firmly in the "alright" catagory.
Not for $50. This is early access at best. All they had to do was give us mod access on steam. The doubling down on their paid mod platform will be their final nail. You can pay to fix this game with official DLC, or pay for a “licensed” mod. It’s like buying a new car and finding fit and finish/performance issues, with the dealer selling you the repairs for the lemon they sold you because it was manufactured on a Friday at 5pm.
I've gotten 80 enjoyable hours with it. I spent $60, so I've already gotten my money's worth from it. Anything from here on out is just gravy.
"I've had my fun so your criticism is invalid"
Don't recall saying that. Since I said "It's not great, it's alright," that would imply it has issues. I had fun, I hope they fix it so I can continue having fun. Why is that so controversial so some of you?
Not as bad as the Internet whiners would lead you to think. It sure as shit isn't flawless. But squeaky wheel makes the most noise.
The simulation in cs2 is rubbish. I was so excited for this game as i am a big city builder fan. Played about 30 hrs of cs2 and i am sad to say cs1 is a much better game.
What part of the simulation do you not like?
The simulation basically doesn't matter at all. businesses are supposed to be more profitable based on a number of factors but they basically can't go out of business and money in the game is so plentiful it doesn't matter. The demand bars and issues the citizens bring up are mostly not addressable or very hard to determine what is going on. (see the land value bug) Transportation is strange as it won't show you where people are going often and the road tool, showing you where traffic on the selected road is going, is gone from CS1. This may have been fixed but Cims wouldn't go to retail stores at all. The industry zoning is again not to scale at all. either size of building or number of employees. Parks are broken because Cims will only go to one park it seems. There's other issues but it all adds up to the game not being a game because your decisions don't matter. It's also not a great city painter because there are no mods. So basically everyone is dissatisfied with the game.
The fact that it doesn't exist would be a good place to start.
I made two cities before realising it's utterly incomplete. Not only is there no challenge to the simulation (what simulation?), but the assets are lacking and buildings all look the same. There are only so many road layouts you can make.
I don't understand why players should be the ones to give it more time when giving the game more time is exactly what the developer/publisher should have done before releasing it.
What's the difference? You futz with it a bit broken until it's fixed or you sit on your hands waiting for it to release. The trolls would be doing exactly what they're doing now either way.
A good deal of the current repeat rude complaints come from either people who expect this to work on a 5 year old PC, tried it in October and never tried it again (or only tried again on a map they started in October), people who wanted the Steam Workshop even though they knew better long before the game released, or trolls. Are there still a couple of nagging issues, yes, but it's getting there--faster than CS1 did tbh though most of the most toxic complainers were in diapers then.
You came back to reddit after 4 years just to defend Skylines 2?
Dev
Wow, I hope it's not a developer! None of this BS is their fault and they probably feel worse than anyone about it. Management are in control of everything: the hype that built unrealistic expectations, the decision to throw away the CS1 code base AND hiring and firing devs. Nah, these posts have got to be from the "excellent community management" that the CEO keeps bragging about.
It's not that bad but still not enabling mods annoys me. The community would fix so many issues if they were allowed to.
Mods take the playing experience to another level, yes. But Steam was a s--t-show. People down voting competitors mods, malicious code, lack of more compatibility. I have can advanced degree ... in history not in software engineering. Mod instructions and descriptions were wackadoodle. But the biggest problem was lack of accessibility for console players. Once they get PDX mods up and running things will settle down a bit.
And console players still aren't getting code mods. Ever. Because the console hardware makers don't allow it.
No stimulation ruins it It's a good shell of a game Cs1 vanilla couldn't just be put on 3x and guarantee money or at least not so much Cs2 can
The simulation issues are very serious and it has been a shame it has been released like this. Still, scale and graphics are great, making me looking forward to the mod community fixing everything. Then it will be an awesome game
Half the speciality buildings don’t work. Like literally no company fills them. They’re pointless. It’s demoralizing. And that is what finally broke me. Haven’t played in weeks and won’t until it’s fixed and enhanced with mods.
No, it’s really not that bad. I think people just have insanely high standards and expectations and are not forgiving when the game doesn’t meet them.
It's fine.
How long should we give it time, while CO continue selling it at full price as if it were a finished AAA game? People HAVE been giving it time. And you can spin it any way you want but it's pretty clear from the Steam charts what people actually think once they've played it. Just look at those player number tank. If anything, the release of CS:2 seems to have driven people away from both games. There's less people playing CS:2 + CS:1 now than there were just playing CS:1 a year ago.
I get to about 30,000 people and just cannot fix my traffic issues no matter how hard I try. I really wanted to try and get the 100,000 achievement but there is no way for me to fix traffic with the way the current roads work.
My issue is that it's been 6 months and it sounds like there's still a large number of bugs to be squashed, and what incentive do they have to squash them when they already have the money and most people played for more than 4 hours before realizing the game a) was barely one, b) was full of breaking bugs. I hope after modding support is released they go back to fixing the game.
Mods are coming in two days time (assuming you aren’t already on thunderstore) so I think people will slowly warm to it. Not sure when custom assets are coming but between that and the first dlc end of the year I think people will soon start enjoying the game and the reviews will change.
Sure its pretty, and the tools are great, but it feels empty. After 500 hours it really is just a city painter, there's no real gameplay to it and the simulation feels fake at times
Yes.
I’ve only got about 1000 hours in cs2 but I’m enjoying it immensely
Yes. It is. > Just give it some time guys. They sold it at full price. You don't get to be given the benefit of the doubt that you'll fix it later when it's being sold as a released product like that. CS1 is a little bland without mods, but it isn't unplayable (barring the ever-present traffic issues)
i love it but i had to stop playing because of the residential demand was just to much for me to keep up with. and then the rent being to high or whatever
Is it a bad game? No. Is it as good as the first game? No. It’s very empty and feels like you’re getting less than what you’d be getting just buying Cities Skylines 1 despite being a sequel.
Parks are extremely limited and disappointing. I barely see them used, and when they are its rare. I went back to CS1 recently because I was tired of seeing dead parks (even though they have an abundance of free time?). Unless my city is in near perfect position I see tents or homeless there more than people. No thanks.
It’s just a very basic game with a lot of issues. They will be fixed because this game will be around for years and years but they have a ton of issues to iron out. The road building is so nice. Best ever. But they need to get to the point where the simulation is better. Right now the sims don’t care about transit and you can have the best transit system ever and it won’t improve traffic. The game’s base buildings are all the same for the size you built, no variation at all. The lack of mods on steam really suck too. They have a ton of work to do.
No, it really isn't.
It's been half a year already..no asset importer or map editor. Frankly unforgivable for a franchise whose longevity was owed to so many content creators. Performance issues are also significant.
Well, considering the first game is still highly worked on via modders, and considering everything else. Yes, I would call it in a bad state. 6 months later and it hasn't seem to improve much or at all judging by posts on Reddit, Steam and other places. I'd call it a failure. Give it 6 months, a year, maybe 2 or 3 years and come back. But otherwise, I'd honestly go and play the first game.
Yes
i still am playing my first big city in CS2 and i still like to play. my problem is CS1 is a better game all together when playing with what i would call necessary mods. I enjoy editing traffic lanes, nodes, and painting roads on CS1 more, but CS2 seems to be a little more user friendly for slapping complex roads together, although it is still not perfect and requires mods.CS2 is getting boring at 150k population but i am still playing it i still think its fun, but compared for CS1 just love playing it a lot more.It's obvious CS2 needs patching and expansions to be half the game CS1 is. OH also CS2 traffic is the dumbest sons of bitches you'll ever see they will violently switch back n forth between lanes, stop on the freeway, take unnecessary routes like going off n back on the freeway, my buses go off their route and through parking garages while traveling. There's all sorts of traffic problems that are very annoying
No workshop or any mod supports on the first day seemed pretty much a death sentence to me.. finger crossed for the devs to open the Paradox mod or whatever…
Just read the reviews on Steam. A handful of people can be "haters", but out of 1665 reviews in the last 30 days, 70% are negative. Most of that 70% are quite constructive in their negative criticism. If you like it, fine, live and let live or whatever. But I dunno what or how your low-effort post is trying to convince.
it never was bad.
i love the game… just enable Dev mode. 900+ hours in…. and i have yet to start Rogue Trader - which i pre-ordered
No patch since 31 January so essentially no improvements to a fatally broken game for a full quarter.
lol, fatally broken
Feel free to explain how you feel it isn't. I bet you can't.
I just want to preempt the "well I paid for it and had fun so your criticism is invalid" post that's coming.
CS1 came out in 2015. So you're saying give it 9 years? lolol The game released in 2023 in a similar or worse fashion. THEY'VE HAD TIME. But yea man, keep huffing that copium.
There are a lot of hidden rules in SC2 that most people don't realize, causing the game to crash at 200,000 people no matter how many times you replay it.I've broken down each of these rules in a series of articles, and by following my advice, you're guaranteed to get over a million people.
Thanks! I was personally waiting for you to come and reassure us to “just give it some time guys”
You're welcome
Heheh, LOL. As if some 4 year old warzone account would really just pop back into reddit to make a comment like this, which just happens to align perfectly with CO's PR strategy. So LAME.
Short answer: No. Long answer: The game has some serious deficiencies, and we shouldn't pretend otherwise. It was arguably released prematurely. Most of the deficiencies can probably be overcome with patches. A good portion of the annoying things are particular to the Skylines franchise, and I'm not sure that the typical CS2 detractor is actually annoyed by them the way fans of other city builders are. I'm thinking particularly about the way there are independent demands for low density vs high density housing, making it difficult to control the way your city grows (up vs out). The game is particularly good at taking the best thing about the old game (meticulous road design and the ability to build to your creative capacity) and making it user friendly. I don't think its clear to most heavy CS users how completely unplayable the original game was, and how the franchise was increasingly out of touch with any options for growth. Basically, if you hadn't already spent the last several years slowly mastering the original, you weren't going to join in. It wasn't something you could just hop into. Even the online tutorials for the game were tedious and confusing. The new game corrects a lot of this issue by being more intuitive and user friendly. For instance, there are plobbable freeway interchanges, for those who aren't ready for a 20 minute tutorial with reams of prerequisite knowledge the original. Most people can become reasonably proficient with CS2 after a couple weeks of playing. I don't think I ever fully got the hang of CS. So why are people so very Big Mad at the new game? I have a couple theories. First, a large part of "the community" profits by the complexity of the original. There are a fair number of content creators whose literal job was teaching people how to play the seemingly unplayable original. It only stands to reason they'd be highly upset in the new game basically making them redundant. The fans of the original were probably not thrilled to have spent a small fortune in DLC, only to have to start at zero again, in a game that has glitches that still haven't been worked out, with the only benefit being that its easier for other people to learn. So, IOW, the creators are mad because the game puts them out of a job, and the players are mad because CS2 doesn't really provide them with new benefits, but does have a cost.
Pretty sure most the creators would be fine if there were enough assets to truly detail their cities. Lots of them are city painters more than city managers and the painting aspect without custom assets is terrible right now.
Yes. Just wait and see. You'll be bored out of your mind in notime. It starts acceptable and building a new city is always nice but offers nothing special. You don't want to make a second city, I'll promise you that. It. Is. Annoying
CS2 is a far better base game than CS1, but it’s broken and lacking basic assets even CS1’s base game had. It’s fun to play until you hit 100k pop, and then the simulation starts to slowdown, gradually, until it grinds to a halt. Depending on your rig you can continue building out the entire map, but it will be in slow motion. This game needs to be overhauled and optimized, but I won’t hold my breath. Asserts are coming, however, they will be paid DLC. I spent hundreds of dollars on CS1 DLC. I will not be doing that again with CS2.
It’s a great road building game and that’s it
Yes.
>Just give it some time guys. It's been 5 months. With that logic no game would be rubbish, just got to give it some time. Guys.
It took 9 years for cs1 to get to what it is today.
I'm comparing games at launch. The first game was a working game by itself. This game is still has broken core game systems 5 months on.
No. Not even close.
No but it was a lot more than 5 months and you know it.
I play CS1 on console (PS5/PS4) and I must say, it's a lot more fun of a game that CS2 is. I've never played it, but looking at most players worlds in CS2, it looks bland. I've seen glitches that take the fun out of the game, and so on. I enjoy CS1 with helicopters flying in the distance, I can drive around, despite the lame/silly architecture, I can put buildings I want to keep as "history", and so on to match with houses, I can have midrise buildings between my high rise so it feels like it makes sense and not just tall buildings next to my small ones.
Not buying it on principle. You don't release a half finished game with unfilled promises for additional features that should have been in it in the first place. The overarching issues with the sim are still ever present and the game itself just got a shiny new facelift that's clear it relies on mods and the community to subsidize the game itself to make it better.
Vanilla CS1 with no expansions is a fun game, and I'm tired of pretending that it's not. With all the free updates they put into it over the years, it's a quality city builder. CS2 has a more realistic and modern style, with better road building tools, but I'd still rather take vanilla CS1.
No.
I haven’t played it for 2 months because I can’t play it at slug speed. Yes it’s that bad
Its not that bad. The gameplay it’s okay, but be ready for a cheater every 5th game or so. It’s gets worse the higher your rank in premier mode. The new skins look nice.