Cities: Skylines II Review (Steam)

For this Cities: Skylines II Review, we raise a city from the ground up and transform it into a thriving metropolis with the most realistic city builder ever. Push your creativity and problem-solving to build on a scale you’ve never experienced. With deep simulation and a living economy, this is world-building without limits.

Cities: Skylines II Review Pros:

• Decent graphics.
• 56.31GB Download size.
• Steam achievements.
• Full controller support.
• Uses the Paradox Launcher.
• Graphics settings – show all resolutions, resolution, display mode, v-sync, game cursor mode, depth of field mode, global graphics preset, dynamic resolution scaling quality, anti-aliasing, clouds quality, fog quality, volumetrics quality, ambient occlusion, global illumination, reflections, depth of field quality, motion blur, shadow quality, terrain quality, water quality, level of detail, animation quality, and texture quality.
• Can rebind controls for both keyboard and mouse and the controller.
• Enable radio – on/off.
• Interface settings – ui style (default/bright blue/dark gray orange), ui transparency, text scaling, highlight unlocked, chirpier sounds, button styles (auto detect/Xbox/PlayStation), time format, temperature unit, and other units.
• City-building gameplay.
• Gameplay settings – edge scrolling, day/night visuals, start paused and show/reset tutorials.
• Performance options – frame rate, balance, and simulation speed.
• Autosave can be turned on and off and you set how many autosave slots you use and how often it saves.
• Ten starting locations – Archipelago Haven, Barrier Island, Great Highlands, Lakeland, Mountain Village, River Delta, Sweeping Plains, Twin Mountain, Waterway Pass, and Windy Fjords. Each has different themes, climate, and natural resources.
• Map setup options – name, theme (European/North American), left-hand traffic, natural disasters, unlock all, unlimited money.
• Tutorial options – continue, restart, and disable.
• If a setting disables achievements the game tells you.
• To help break you in the game gives you a checklist of basic tasks.
• Button icons show on menus.
• A full 3D world with 360-degree camera control.
• Three game speeds and a pause time button.
• The road laying is fast and simple with a drag and drop style mechanic, before you lay it down the game tells you of any terrain rises, length, cost, etc.
• Bulldoze lets you select chunks of road or buildings to get rid of.
• The radio is on the Hud so you can change the volume and station quickly.
• There is a radio ad on and off option.
• If you have played the game before you can skip a fair amount of tutorials.
• Zones can be fully edited and customized from the them of them to the shapes and sizes, for example, housing can be single or family-based houses.
• Paint is where you basically put a big chunk of a zone or structure in place.
• You can apply to rezone the placed zones. (change the zone type).
• Electricity is very important and you have to build the power stations and connect buildings together so they can be built and function.
• The map colors change to help see what is connected, what is needed, or what you have too much of.
• You can zoom right out or up really close to the point where you see people and cars moving.
• Anything and everything you can place is adjustable like power lines can be adjusted all the way down to the hang height of the cables.
• Earn exp as you place things.
• Save and load when you want.
• It has a lot of depth and variety.
• You can and are encouraged to play the game how you want.
• It’s a very addictive game and is a real-time sink.

Cities: Skylines II Review Cons:

• A lot of reading.
• There is an ad on and off option.
• The controls are fine but they do take a while to get used to, I mean there is a lot going on and menus usually require button press combos etc.
• It’s all very daunting at first.
• The game doesn’t offer any pre-built scenarios.
• No mod support.
• Had text overlap a few times.
• At times the character models looked Blocky and ugly.
• Performance is a bit up and down especially when dealing with big cities.
• No multiplayer modes. (more a FYI)
• I still to this day have a few issues with the mechanics and the ins and outs of how some things work mostly because I feel the game doesn’t explain or do a good job of helping you learn.

Related Post:  Alterium Shift Preview (Steam Early Access) 

Cities: Skylines II:

Official website.

Developer: Colossal Order Ltd

Publisher: Paradox Interactive

Store Links –

Steam