Cities Skylines Remastered Review (PlayStation 5)

by Jim Smale · Published March 13, 2023 · Updated March 13, 2023

For this Cities Skylines Remastered Review, we play a modern take on the classic city simulation. The game introduces new gameplay elements to realize the thrill and hardships of creating and maintaining a real city while expanding on some well-established tropes of the city-building experience.

Cities Skylines Remastered Review Pros:

Decent overhauled and improved graphics.
8.89GB Download size.
Platinum trophy for the main game than a set of trophies for each DLC.
You get the PlayStation 4 and the PlayStation 5 versions of the game.
Management gameplay.
A love letter to games like Sim City.
Controller settings – Invert axis and sensitivity sliders, five control schemes, swap sticks, and swap shoulder buttons.
Left-handed player support.
Day night cycle is an option.
Graphics settings – color correction, grass pollution color, water pollution color, depth of field, depth of field amount slider, film grain amount slider, and anisotropic filtering.
Map editor – set map theme (Boreal/Tropical/European/Temperate), and city name.
Two ways to play the main game – A new map (12 locations with individual resources availability, left-hand driving), and a new scenario.
New game options – dynamic weather, day/night cycle, and cheats.
The game has many cheats – unlock all milestones, unlimited money, unlimited oil and ore, unlimited soils, and unlock 25 tiles.
Excellent performance.
Initial tutorial pop-ups.
Full camera control.
Handy radial dial menu system (optional).
Includes the After DARK DLC.
Very accessible.
Easy to build and quick to build with a powerful click system for type/Road placement.
You can go properly in-depth with roads by adding curves, and angles, raising and lowering them, etc.
The Eyedropper tool allows you to select something and then instantly recreate it.
Zones and Districts are set and depending on many factors (placement/other zones etc) you will have buildings spawn in them.
The drag-and-drop system is employed with certain actions.
Music is provided by radio and has a handful of stations and you can even have it with ads turned off!
Zoom right down and watch everyone go about their business.
The Inspector tool allows you to click anything and get info on it.
A lot of charts and bars to help you know if you are doing alright.
Chirper is the in-game version of Twitter and here you learn about your inhabitants.
Three game speeds that can be tweaked with a button press.
The game is very in-depth.
As you don’t have direct control of people and world regeneration it makes every obstacle, every scenario, and even every new map a whole new challenge.
Infinite replayability.

Cities Skylines Remastered Review Cons:

Scenarios is a game mode front and center but requires DLC to play.
Cheats disable trophies.
It takes a while to get used to all the many moving parts, especially with utilities.
The game doesn’t do a fantastic job of introducing new players.
You can easily lose track of what’s going on.
A huge time investment.