About
Cities: Skylines II for PC is a city building game, the sequel to the first game with the same name. The player is the developer of a plot of land on which they must create a city. Players can lay down roads, zoning, utilities, and city services to attract residents and businesses. You can also set city policies like taxes and edicts to influence how the city grows – and spend the tax money on more expansion, better services and improved infrastructure.
About the Game
Initially you are l...
Read more
Installation:
Developer:
Publisher:
Release date:
23 October 2023
Genre:
Recent Steam reviews:
Mixed
(1046)
All Steam reviews:
Mixed
(44783)
Editions
Add extensions
Visuals
Game features
Description
Cities: Skylines II for PC is a city building game, the sequel to the first game with the same name. The player is the developer of a plot of land on which they must create a city. Players can lay down roads, zoning, utilities, and city services to attract residents and businesses. You can also set city policies like taxes and edicts to influence how the city grows – and spend the tax money on more expansion, better services and improved infrastructure.
Initially you are limited to nine tiles of building space but you can purchase additional tiles from city funds – the above-mentioned tax, amongst other earning. Nine tiles was the upper limit of the previous game (it was twenty-five in the remastered edition that was for consoles): this game allows the player ultimately to go up to a hefty 441 tiles.
This means that the new map for Cities Skylines 2 tops out at 159km2 which is the same size as the entire country of Liechtenstein, in Europe. Buildings can be taller than before, so even within that nine tile starting point, you can do more.
You must create trade routes to feed your city and keep your residents happy – this is even more important than before as population controls – previously set to around 65,000 people – have been done away with. Each map in the game has a preset climate that influences the way weather patterns form. The weather and the population are all set in day-night and annual cycles, so people’s productivity will increase and decrease with the time of year.
The cold winters bring snow and ice, with grey skies, while summer means flooding and extreme events like tornadoes. You must set up disaster response facilities and services within the city to cope with these annual events.
These services will be ranged alongside regular policing and fire departments, which have also been improved. You can now assign these services to set areas so their response times are quick and efficient.
You will also set up public services like education, safety boards and so on, right down to sanitation services. Unlike the first game, in this version, you will also worry about the welfare of your population, communication systems and even mortuary services – and all of these can be expanded and upgraded once they are in place.
The game acknowledges the existence of other cities outside the game, and that means that you can arrange imports and exports. This is managed through a technology tree which is unlocked through play. Do note that weather affects your import and export network, just as it does your in-game public transport network.
The game has vastly improved and expanded upon the city building system that fans enjoyed, while adding more to the transport and economic systems, boosted construction methods and now allows for much more precise customisation – and even some advanced modding capabilities too. See below for some of the improvements in detail.
These are just some of the new and improved features of the game – see how many others you can unlock:
You have more fine-tuning control on the zoning of your city, able to designate residential, commercial, and industrial zones, and even more niche ones such as mixed-used residential.
Signature buildings can be unlocked through specific milestones and placed within zones to improve the desirability of the area and the quality of life of your populace in the area.
The first game relied purely on distance to plot routes for the population: this has been tweaked to use traffic levels, toll costs, comfort and even personal preferences. There's a complex AI pathfinding system that will give more realism to how citizens navigate your city.
Along with realistic daily weather events, you can expect to experience tornados, forest fires, and hailstorms in random events – hopefully not all at the same time.
In the reformed road usage all vehicles will now use all lanes, preventing needless traffic but introducing levels of danger when navigating the roads. And, like in life, delivery trucks and citizens will play it safe, while emergency vehicles are more likely to speed or do dangerous U-turns in traffic.
You can treat the game like a human simulation game this time, following members of your population from start to finish – birth to death – and generally being as nosy as you like. You’ll even be awarded a Little Stalker achievement if you do thoroughly enough!
Your population can suffer from homelessness, an entirely new feature. To prevent this, you must ensure that their income stays ahead of their outgoings otherwise they might end up living in the city parks.
Cities: Skylines II for PC is available for purchase on Instant Gaming for a fraction of its retail price. You will receive an official key and be able to play the game in seconds. Play smart. Pay less.
About the Game
Initially you are limited to nine tiles of building space but you can purchase additional tiles from city funds – the above-mentioned tax, amongst other earning. Nine tiles was the upper limit of the previous game (it was twenty-five in the remastered edition that was for consoles): this game allows the player ultimately to go up to a hefty 441 tiles.
This means that the new map for Cities Skylines 2 tops out at 159km2 which is the same size as the entire country of Liechtenstein, in Europe. Buildings can be taller than before, so even within that nine tile starting point, you can do more.
You must create trade routes to feed your city and keep your residents happy – this is even more important than before as population controls – previously set to around 65,000 people – have been done away with. Each map in the game has a preset climate that influences the way weather patterns form. The weather and the population are all set in day-night and annual cycles, so people’s productivity will increase and decrease with the time of year.
The cold winters bring snow and ice, with grey skies, while summer means flooding and extreme events like tornadoes. You must set up disaster response facilities and services within the city to cope with these annual events.
These services will be ranged alongside regular policing and fire departments, which have also been improved. You can now assign these services to set areas so their response times are quick and efficient.
You will also set up public services like education, safety boards and so on, right down to sanitation services. Unlike the first game, in this version, you will also worry about the welfare of your population, communication systems and even mortuary services – and all of these can be expanded and upgraded once they are in place.
The game acknowledges the existence of other cities outside the game, and that means that you can arrange imports and exports. This is managed through a technology tree which is unlocked through play. Do note that weather affects your import and export network, just as it does your in-game public transport network.
The Nitty Gritty
The game has vastly improved and expanded upon the city building system that fans enjoyed, while adding more to the transport and economic systems, boosted construction methods and now allows for much more precise customisation – and even some advanced modding capabilities too. See below for some of the improvements in detail.
What’s New and Improved?
These are just some of the new and improved features of the game – see how many others you can unlock:
Cities: Skylines II for PC is available for purchase on Instant Gaming for a fraction of its retail price. You will receive an official key and be able to play the game in seconds. Play smart. Pay less.
Configurations
Game's latest news
The console versions of Cities: Skylines 2 have been delayed due to "hardware limitations"
While the PS5 and Xbox Series are generally capable of running graphically and technically ambitious games, they seem to lack the power needed for Cities: Skylines 2.
Indeed, studio Colossal Order claims that the consequent delay of the console version is caused by "hardware limitations" of…
1
Cities: Skylines 2 for console has been delayed once again
Things aren't looking up for Cities: Skylines 2. The game has been heavily criticized for being marred by bugs at launch, but it seems the city simulator for consoles is going through development hell.
The PS5 and Xbox Series versions are still a long way off. Until now, the target launch date had been…
3
The path for Cities: Skylines 2 economy will be out on June 24
One of the most eagerly-awaited updates for Cities: Skylines 2 will be out next week.
On social networks, the developers have announced that the game's new economic model will arrive on June 24 at 9 a.m. London time. The patch has taken some extra time because of a few last-minute fixes.
Finally, we…
Cities Skylines franchise
Similar products
Reviews
Best reviews
immediate delivery and saved me a bit of money compared to buying through steam. Also this is the pre-order version so got some free DLC too but ymmv. looking forward to playing once the game releases in a few hours!
- immediate delivery
- free landmarks dlc
- cheaper than steam
2023-10-24T08:19:28-0400
rtx 3060ti and i5-13600kf and it´s so close. The optimization of this game it´s worst than the first version of cyberpunk, i can´t understand why you can sell this game when it´s clearly unfinished. I hope new upgrades can solve this problems.
- better than skylines 1
- optimization
2023-10-27T11:47:11-0400
Game is not optimized well for launch. I'd probably recommend it based off of the 5 hours I have played so far once they fix a lot of the issues. For right now I would hold off because you won't get your money's worth.
- Beautiful graphics
- Smooth building
- Badly optimized gameplay
- Low FPS
2023-10-25T00:43:54-0400
not worth buying it! there aren't many mods available! the traffic manager is really much needed but it's not available! the base game is lame. in the previous version you could have build a square, in this one you have no option.
- graphic is good
- everything
2024-01-16T12:35:04-0500
i am again as always hapy buy the game cheap get the code and done asdaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
- Every thing
- The tax is only showed at check out still really cheap but ye
2023-11-20T09:59:18-0500
Amazing Game and at first thought was a scam but just had some rlly good deals to offer
- So quick and Easy
- Fun Game
- No Bugs or Graphical Issues
- Nothing
2024-09-21T09:07:33-0400
Really good game and improving every update nice work
- Graphics
- Gameplay
- Still quite laggy
2024-08-01T00:20:23-0400
unfinished game, all sort of thing thats supposed to be ok at launch are not. like they don't even try the game before release. all the new update only fixe minor things. game is 3 weeks old, still broken, thats a shame
- export/import not fonctional
- car behavior completely broken
- performance very low
2023-11-15T11:55:03-0500
It is even without mods a substantial upgrade to CS1.
The scale is much more realistic and the map feels really large.
Now that the performance issue has been fixed (atleast for me) I can only recommend the game.
The scale is much more realistic and the map feels really large.
Now that the performance issue has been fixed (atleast for me) I can only recommend the game.
- Better Scale
- Map feels really large
- Better Graphics
- Might run bad on lower end PC's
- Not a lot to unlock (in the techtree)
- Variety of Assets is really bad
2023-11-02T13:28:15-0400
le jeux est bien mais il n'est pas optimisé ( je commence a bugger vers les 8 milles habitant ) mais apar sa le jeux est très cool et super bien fait. ( The game is good but it is not optimized (I start to get stuck around 8 thousand inhabitants) but otherwise it is very cool and super well done.)
- super beau ( beautiful )
- super jeux ( good game)
- Pas optimisé ( Not optimized )
- lag
2023-11-01T18:10:29-0400
Recent reviews
The game is great. It has more building options than the original CS without mods.
I really like the variability of the specific industry, where you choose the size of the area.
The game certainly has a lot of bugs so far, but I'm really enjoying it.
I really like the variability of the specific industry, where you choose the size of the area.
The game certainly has a lot of bugs so far, but I'm really enjoying it.
- nice graphics
- specific industry building options
- bugs
2024-12-05T03:12:26-0500
Best reviews
Recent reviews
%% review.created_at|date_format('Do MMMM YYYY') %%
Game bought on IG
Useful?
%% review.created_at|date_format('Do MMMM YYYY') %%
Game bought on IG
Useful?