Cities: Skylines II

Cities Skylines 2 is a worthy successor to the long standing original city builder

In the bustling realm of city-building games, Cities: Skylines II emerges after huge success with the initial game, developers Colossal Order ambitiously pushing the limits of what the genre can do. With grand promises of massive construction and immersive gameplay, does it truly rise above its predecessor or become another management hell?

Cities Skylines 2 offers a myriad of great, all-round, quality-of-life improvements over the prequel. Whereas the game faces technical challenges at launch, it seems well set to become a worthy successor of the original, being much more sleek and accessible as well as bringing a bunch of fun novelties.

Cities Skylines 2 is more of the same in the best possible way, giving players an abundance of quality-of-life improvements and new adjustments to keep the city-building fun going for years to come. While it doesn't quite have that one new blockbuster feature, nor does it revolutionise the genre in the same way that the original did back in 2015, it is still a brilliant game that you should not miss out on.

Cities: Skylines was an excellent city-builder, released to great fanfare and one that took more than a few jabs at the undeniable failure of SimCity. Released in 2015, the original has been padded to the seams with DLC; the only one we reviewed was the Natural Disasters DLC, but this all fits into an issue that is plaguing the sequel - if you compare it to the original when it was released, Colossal Order has come on leaps and bounds. Compare it to the one you can play now, and there are issues. It's impossible not to compare it to what you can play now, which hurts Cities: Skylines II.

I love city builders. Doesn’t matter if they’re focused on creating the perfect medieval town or a self-sustaining planetary colony. City builders bring together the intricacy of interconnected systems, imagination and creativity, the aesthetics of city planning, and a whole lot of godlike power. The original Cities: Skylines built on the traditions of venerable games like SimCity. It wasn’t perfect at launch, but years of DLC, fixes, and user-created content eventually made Cities: Skylines shine. The sequel is an interesting beast. It’s more robust than the first game was at launch, but leav...

Cities: Skylines 2 is bigger than the original, but not quite better.

Cities: Skylines 2 doesn’t rebuild the genre nor its identity, instead choosing to go bigger and deeper without losing sight of what made its predecessor work. With no better alternatives on sight, this will do.

In the technical world of city-builders, 2015’s Cities: Skylines made a name for itself as an uncompromising but delicate game where players needed to spin a variety of municipal plates to keep things in order across their fantasy cities. Eight years and millions of digital building permits later, Colossal Order has returned to construct a convincing sequel in Cities: Skylines II. The iterative additions don’t arrive without consequential imperfections, but Cities: Skylines II still boasts all the intricacy and customizability necessary to provide players with a challenging and deep city-build...

Cities: Skylines II has an extensive system that lets you control every aspect of a city's growth. Unfortunately some aspects could use more explanation and the graphic requirements are high, making it tough to get started.

Cities Skylines 2 is on the verge of being a boom town but has a little ways to go.

While the game shows promise, it is hindered by questionable decisions and plagued by stability issues. Cities: Skylines II might not change your life, but some fans could enjoy investing some hours crafting their cities, as long as the game does not crash and burn.