Cities: Skyline II - Poorly Optimized
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Cities: Skylines II (Reviewed)
Developer: Colossal Order Ltd.
Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Released: Oct 24, 2023
Price: $50 USD
Cities Skyline II is a well-known city-building simulation game in which the goal is to develop a prosperous city from nothing while also maintaining your economy and keeping your population happy and healthy, which is no easy chore as you build your path to prosperity facing treacherous events all throughout the seasons.
Cities Skyline, its successor is quite popular among all city builders, and for good reason. The quantity of mods supported and the hours of enjoyable and engrossing gaming are difficult to match when it comes to most. It's difficult to recommend to anyone who isn't a creative thinker, since the majority of the fun comes from you.
Issues
Optimization quality is not there
Are Devs vying to see who can create the most poorly optimized game of 2023?
I am not an expert in these types of games, however, given the first game was launched in 2015 and this game was released very recently. I would have expected the bare minimum for a game to operate properly at a high frame rate (60+) and in game settings, with minimal clipping of animals and houses, among other things.
Evidently, this is the world we live in, where devs expressly claim that this game is designed to be run at 30 frames and is optimized for low-end gamers, which is understandable given who the target audience is, especially those without high-end PCs. There are several other concerns that being the simple building aspects, a lot of things just feeling very poorly designed and not at all that functional.
Low settings
When you load a save after resuming, the game enters Windowed mode, which you can't really see in this photo, but the game itself has a lot of flicker with shadows and a very short draw distance (there's no option to increase it) for greater realism, as the vehicles in the distance demonstrate. Which, knowing this is maximum graphics, I find a little upsetting. It doesn't appear all that different from the default settings. Making it unattractive to zoom in to observe how your city folk are faring.
Frustrating roads
Let's say you want to make a road that connects to a location.
I couldn't figure out if it was possible, but most roads will just not connect to the location and leave a curve attached, which literally destroys me due to OCD.
I want a nice neat line to connect to businesses, unless it's on a busy street for locations and houses. But you can't you have to make a line going from horizontally against the locations and then a road going back around to the way it came in, or use a roundabout. I just felt like something so simple, should be a thing. Come on.
Presentation
Disappointing
I didn't have any problems with the game itself; it's just that the overall quality didn't feel quite right. Like other games, it is usually optimized more a year or two after its initial release when they include all of the essential support features and DLC that makes the game more interactive and interesting to play.
It's enjoyable and peaceful if you don't try to treat it like realism, but I couldn't see the point in playing it right now when I could be playing something else with more features and overall better settings / ease of access to accomplish the things.
The music is good, and the sudden radio frequency for the news radio telling you how good or bad you are to help you bring attention to your current needs if you haven't been keeping track was very nice at first, but became repetitive as they don't really say anything after their first few lines, just repeating the same questions and answers over the course of a few hours in slightly different patterns.
Social media messages were quite entertaining for the same reason: to help you understand what people want the most, and you're there to assist them attain happiness while also attempting to grow more without getting into financial trouble.
Gameplay
Limited to your creativity
Cities Skyline's II gameplay is controlled all by your active creativity. There are milestones and goals set up for you to achieve success and earn a lot of money, allowing you to acquire more land and increase your city's dominion overall, but this is limited to your ability to create structures and good placements for your city.
Structure
You wouldn't put pollutants upstream from a water filter; you'd put it downstream. You wouldn't build a ground water pump near to an energy plant, and you wouldn't put dwellings or businesses directly in the path of industrial locations.
A city without proper structure, will fail to maintain their happiness and overall goals.
It's fun when you know what you need to do
It's amazing to build a city from nothing and then see it expand. It's not for everyone, but the gameplay is gratifying when you're doing things correctly or appropriately correcting the problems that need to be handled over time as they occur.
These issues being water shortages, power issues, housing, etc.
Conclusion
I would wait a year
I was enjoying the building element until I wasn't.
It's just that I felt increasingly frustrated with my inability to build things the way I wanted to, as well as having to cope with the game's continual bugs and low graphic quality. I would not have been able to enjoy the game at all if it hadn't been for the idea of giving milestones and a lot of money for accomplishing those milestones. But I simply felt like I couldn't do anything since it wasn't totally supported.
If you don't mind unoptimized graphics and a low frame rate, then it's fine. It's nothing out of the ordinary, but I'd be more interested in the game if it was more visually pleasing. What is the point of zooming in so close if all you see in the distance are low quality models and poorly done models, with no way to change those settings for people who desire that kind of experience? Modder's will very certainly be able to improve this, but Cities Skyline already has such support, so it would make more sense to return to the first game and wait till this one is more optimized officially.
This concludes my views of this game; while my opinions may be met with criticism, that is what distinguishes gamers; you don't have to like the same things as others, nor do you have to agree with them. If you want to catch me on one of my streams or locate me on social media, you may do so at the following locations, I'm always playing something new.
- Pawkt
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