A flawed game with great potential: critics have tempered their praise of city-building simulator Cities Skylines 2

Cities Skylines 2 urban strategy game from Paradox Interactive and Colossal Order studio will be released in a few days.

Critics have already had time to get acquainted with the game, gave it scores and published reviews.

Here's What We Know

In general, experts were satisfied with Cities Skylines 2.

The game offers a huge number of opportunities to build and develop a megalopolis. Such a vastness is not often found, but the problem is that despite the extensive possibilities, the game does not stimulate to use all the tools, because the price of a mistake is extremely low.

Critics praised the graphics and detail of Cities Skylines 2, but all mentioned an optimisation problem and the poor technical state of the game. But it is hard to reproach Paradox with this claim, as the company acknowledged the problems in advance, apologised to gamers and promised to fix all the bugs promptly with patches.

Journalists agreed that, as it often happens with Paradox's strategy games, Cities Skylines 2 in its original form is a great foundation on which updates, add-ons and custom modifications will be used to create a top-notch game. But at the moment, it is "raw" and requires a serious application of gameplay designers' energies.

As a result, Cities Skylines 2 received the following scores:

• on Metacritic - 77 points;
• on Opencritic - 76 points with 67% of recommendations.

When We Can Expect It

Cities: Skylines II will be released on the 24th of October, the same day the game will be available on Game Pass.

PlayStation 5 Xbox Series versions will be released in early 2024.

Source: Metacritic, Opencritic