Cities: Skylines 2 Launches; Sequel to the King of City Builders

Source: Paradox Interactive

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More than 8 years have passed since the release of Cities: Skylines. So it's no wonder that fans in love with the first game eagerly awaited the release of the sequel. Whether the developers from Colossal Order met the, no doubt, considerable demands of the players, we will find out in the coming hours, because today marks the release of Cities: Skylines II.

1. Just like the original, the sequel will initially be released by Paradox exclusively on PC. A port to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles will not appear until next spring..
2. Cities: Skylines II can be purchased digitally on Steam or Microsoft store.
3. Those wishing to do so can choose between two variants of the game there: the Basic Edition and the Ultimate Edition.
4. Recently, the official website of Colossal Order published a new, six-part developer diary, in which several important issues related to the game (including modding, gameplay balance, editor) are presented.
5. We also recommend your attention to news created based on the extensive entries and materials published by the creators over the past months (e.g. roads, traffic, transportation, zones, services, maps, small cities).

1. Cities: Skylines II - official website
2. Cities: Skylines II on Steam

Cities: Skylines II - reviews

Expectations for Cities: Skylines II were huge. After the very successful, regularly developed original, which, despite the passage of years, is still very popular, players expected something equally, or maybe even much better. Admittedly, we still have to wait a little longer for their impressions of the game, but if they are similar to those by industry journalists, the developers are in for a really rough fall.

The biggest issue with the reviewed version was its poor optimization. Critics also felt as if they were playing a beta version. In their opinion, the game also lacked many features known from the first game.

Nevertheless, in many respects Cities: Skylines II can be regarded as a model city builder. The work of Colossal Order is praised for its simplified and thus more intuitive interface compared to the original. In the opinion of some, city building itself is even more enjoyable than in the first part. So if the developers refine the game technically, we can safely assume that this will be the best economic strategy on the market.

At the time of writing this news Cities: Skylines II boasts an average score of 76 points on OpenCritic, yet the game is recommended by only 62% of journalists (based on 32 reviews).

Developers answer fan questions

On the occasion of the release of Cities: Skylines II the developers from Colossal Order took part in an AMA on Reddit, where they answered fans' most pressing questions.

From the information the developers provided, we learned that they are aware of the optimization issues and are already working on solving them. In the first place, the developers are trying to:

1. eliminate stuttering;
2. improve optimization and balance GPU performance by "reducing the number of processes per frame and optimizing/balancing effects (mainly depth of field, global illumination and volumetrics), which can be temporarily disabled or reduced in settings to achieve decent fps."
3. complete CPU optimization.

The developers announced that in the near future Cities: Skylines II will receive several small patches and one major update. Once again, they also referred to the the modding aspect of the game, noting that an editor and full support for mods will hit the game some time after the release (as they point out, "it's not a matter of days").

As a point of interest, it's worth mentioning that the Colossal Order team currently consists of less than 30 people.

Cities: Skylines II - new minimum PC requirements

1. Operating system: Windows 10 64-bit
2. Processor: Intel Core i7-6700K / AMD Ryzen 5 2600X
3. RAM: 8 GB
4. Graphics card: Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 (4 GB) or AMD equivalent.
5. Disk space: 60 GB of available space

Cities Skylines II - new recommended PC requirements

1. Operating system: Windows 10 / Windows 11 64-bit
2. Processor: Intel Core i5-12600K / AMD Ryzen 7 5800X
3. RAM: 16 GB
4. Graphics card: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 (10 GB) or AMD equivalent.
5. Disk space: 60 GB of available space