The evolution from Cities Skylines to Cities Skylines II is in my opinion pretty similar to that of The Sims 3 to The Sims 4 or Crusader Kings 2 to Crusader Kings 3. It is a mostly incremental upgrade that serves to reset the base, creating an easier to approach game for newcomers that isn't bloated with 400 dollars worth of DLC.
Naturally this means that many features in the previous game are missing so that the developers can implement these features as DLC once again. That is not to say that there are no improvements in Cities Skylines II or that this is a bad game, just that a player coming from Cities Skylines 1 should not expect the wheel to be reinvented.
It is very much the same game just with a different flavor: more approachable, nicer looking, and primed for many upgrades. Anyone who has gone through multiple generations of The Sims 'upgrades' already understand exactly what is happening.
The game itself is still good though. Even at it's gimped (compared to Cities Skylines 1) state it competes as a top tier City Sim with many of the features you'd expect of such a game and most importantly, it's still fun. The main issue is of course the lackluster (to put it lightly) performance.
This game runs absolutely terribly and might just be one of the worst optimized games of this year. Though I've thankfully not run into any stutter issues, the game is far too demanding on hardware given the fidelity it's able to achieve.
The fact that Cyberpunk 2077 runs better with path tracing than this game does on ultra IN THE MENU is genuinely crazy to me. I personally opt to lower my graphics settings to low with heavy anti-aliasing and resign myself to enjoying 70fps.
I haven't played super long though so as for how performance scales with larger cities I don't yet know. Given the current performance issues though, I think we can make an accurate assumption.
My recommendation for now is to wait for patches to see how performance improves. If you really want to give the game a go either sail the seas or try it out on Game Pass (that's where I'm playing it right now). It's most definitely not worth the full asking price in its current state and as such I can't recommend it.
2/5
Naturally this means that many features in the previous game are missing so that the developers can implement these features as DLC once again. That is not to say that there are no improvements in Cities Skylines II or that this is a bad game, just that a player coming from Cities Skylines 1 should not expect the wheel to be reinvented.
It is very much the same game just with a different flavor: more approachable, nicer looking, and primed for many upgrades. Anyone who has gone through multiple generations of The Sims 'upgrades' already understand exactly what is happening.
The game itself is still good though. Even at it's gimped (compared to Cities Skylines 1) state it competes as a top tier City Sim with many of the features you'd expect of such a game and most importantly, it's still fun. The main issue is of course the lackluster (to put it lightly) performance.
This game runs absolutely terribly and might just be one of the worst optimized games of this year. Though I've thankfully not run into any stutter issues, the game is far too demanding on hardware given the fidelity it's able to achieve.
The fact that Cyberpunk 2077 runs better with path tracing than this game does on ultra IN THE MENU is genuinely crazy to me. I personally opt to lower my graphics settings to low with heavy anti-aliasing and resign myself to enjoying 70fps.
I haven't played super long though so as for how performance scales with larger cities I don't yet know. Given the current performance issues though, I think we can make an accurate assumption.
My recommendation for now is to wait for patches to see how performance improves. If you really want to give the game a go either sail the seas or try it out on Game Pass (that's where I'm playing it right now). It's most definitely not worth the full asking price in its current state and as such I can't recommend it.
2/5