Cities: Skylines 2 vs Cities: Skylines; Here's What the Former Will Miss

Source: Colossal Order

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The release of Cities: Skylines 2 is fast approaching. If you are wondering how the latest game by Colossal Order looks like compared to the previous installment of the series, here is a comparison of the two games.

List of new features in Cities: Skylines 2

Cities: Skylines 2 is expected to offer a number of new features that were either not available in the previous game or only appeared in DLCs. Their list is as follows:

1. Dynamic seasons - the developers made sure that we can experience a full cycle of seasons in each city. Of course, changes resulting from the subsequent seasons will affect the economy.
2. Streamlined creation of neighborhoods - the game will enable us to decide exactly what type of development will be adopted in a given area. Unfortunately, we will still be able to choose only two architectural styles - European and American.
3. More advanced services - there will be, among other things, the possibility of improving buildings.
4. The lives of residents will be more complex - they will not only drive to work, but also actively spend their leisure time. In addition, they may lose their homes due to financial problems.

Cities: Skylines vs Cities: Skylines 2

There's no denying it, Cities: Skylines 2 will offer many improvements over its predecessor. The developers have set themselves the goal of increasing the realism of the simulation.

Improved city simulation

In Cities: Skylines 2 citizens will behave in a more complex way. They will have a kind of routine - for example, they will travel to and from work at certain times of the day. They will also not be interested in spending their free time at home. So they will go to nearby entertainment outlets.

Building improvements

Improvements have also been made to building. This applies to both roads and buildings. The developers decided to make the construction of cities as easy as possible. Therefore, in Cities: Skylines 2 we will be able to automatically create a ready-made road layout.

The possibility of adjusting the shape of selected areas has also been made available - for example, we will adjust crop fields and garbage dumps to the curves of the surrounding road. Cities: Skylines did not offer such an option, so agricultural areas often consisted of rows of straight streets intersecting at right angles. In addition, there will be an option that can be associated with SimCity 2013, namely building improvements.

Optimization

Optimization is also questionable in Cities: Skylines 2. The rather poor performance of the game on official materials and the delay of console versions suggests that the biggest pain of the previous game has not been fixed. So we can expect that larger cities will once again consume huge amounts of RAM, and the gameplay itself will run at 30 fps or so.

Cities: Skylines on mods vs Cities: Skylines 2

Cities: Skylines 2 doesn't seem to draw too much inspiration from the most lauded mods for its predecessor. From the materials released so far, it is clear that popular fan-made solutions will not make their way into the game.

Traffic management

Cities: Skylines lived to see the extensive mod called Traffic Manager: President Edition. It introduced a number of solutions to the game, which greatly facilitate traffic management. Thus, we could set driving paths from individual lanes or create intersections with more advanced traffic lights.

The materials that the developers have released so far indicate that the basic version of Cities: Skylines 2 will not have such advanced tools. Yes, we'll get a better traffic simulation, which, among other things, takes into account rush hours, but that's probably that's all that can be expected at launch.

Free movement of objects

One of the more popular modifications to Cities: Skylines is Move It. It's a comprehensive tool whose biggest advantage is the ability to move objects anywhere, regardless of the grid. In addition, it allowed for, among other things, copying of selected areas and pasting them elsewhere. Although this is a convenient solution, the developers did not decide to implement it immediately in Cities: Skylines 2.

In addition, the ability to quickly create shapes from trees and bushes will also be missing. The basic version, like the previous part, offers only the ability to single-stack plants. Therefore Cities: Skylines over the years has seen several modifications adding this feature.

Cities: Skylines with DLC vs Cities: Skylines 2

The developers also decided to implement some of the features that in Cities: Skylines were only available after purchasing DLCs.

1. Snowfall DLC introduced snow-covered maps. In this case, however, the atmosphere remained unchanged. Cities: Skylines 2 will already introduce a dynamic weather system in the basic version. So there will be constantly changing seasons on each map. There will also be natural disasters.
2. Streetcars will also appear in the basic version of the game. In Cities: Skylines they were only available after purchasing Snowfall.