Can It Survive the Performance Issues? [ Cities Skylines II Review ]

Those of you that have been around for a while, know I have a soft spot for city builders, so of course I'm going to take a stab at Cities Skylines 2 since they offered a press key. So, how is it looking? Let's take a look.
Here's the first 6 hours (no commentary) of the city used in the background for this review: • 6+ Hours of Cities Sky...
You can find City Skylines 2 on Steam @ store.steampow...
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Some (not all) games for review may have been provided for free from the developer, publisher, or viewers - at least for newer games.
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[@Alzorath]

Since it's apparently going to become an issue judging by a handful of the comments youtube has flagged for approval after a surge of external traffic: The point of a review is to provide an accurate account of the pros and cons of an experience the reviewer had on a game, and capture their opinion. My review is my opinion and observations, I'm not here to dress a turd up in flowers, or bury a diamond in manure. Getting mad because I like part of the game, or getting upset that I don't think a game is perfect - is just a sign that my reviews are not the ones for you. My stance is, and always will be: there are no perfect games, and short of asset flips and shovelware, there are no perfectly horrible games. So every review, will have positives AND negatives (whether I "like" a game or not) To hit the most common points people have been mentioning: - The game does have performance issues, as addressed in the video, alongside the mention of playing on low/medium settings at larger city sizes. It's not "sky is falling bad", but it's also not good. - Unless explicitly stated, I do not review modern titles utilizing any mods (retro titles sometimes need mods to run on modern systems, and I restrict these to wrappers/upscalers/nocd mods) - I do not do sponsored reviews (they are unethical), nor do I post reviews for games produced by companies I have blacklisted (the only channel I will post content from blacklisted companies is the Game Sampler channel). If you don't want to be caught by spam filters or "offensive content" filters - don't post links, don't swear incessantly, don't directly attack people, and don't post the same words over and over. Other than the link filter, these are not channel specific filters, but rather youtube itself catching the comment, and I generally don't approve those unless they add something valuable to the conversation.

[@Alzorath]

addition: Used Czardus's optimization setup ( kzbin.info/www/bejne/a3jYmGt_ramUrdU ) after recording my video, and it is a pretty nice improvement, especially when combined with the latest patch. Latest patch boosted me by about 10fps, and these settings ate that up, but I still end up sitting in the upper 20s and low 30s, on a system just shy of "recommended specs" while recording, and improves the graphical fidelity a lot. (latest patch does have a texture glitch currently, but it is pretty easy to work around, and they're already aware of it, and it's been passed on)

[@MrMtanz]

Thanks for the review! Your game looked pretty smooth near the approx. 60K population. Did you have to play around with the graphics settings until you could find a combination that worked?

[@Alzorath]

For the b-roll on this, I did not (I ran it on medium or low defaults for the most part, just with things like motion blur, depth of field, etc. turned off) - the gameplay is 25-35 fps at a bit over 60k pop with simple setup like that (1440p) Since doing the review, I have dug a lot deeper in the settings - and have been able to get most of the settings up to high settings, and fine tuned others to keep the 25-35 fps (and I think there's more performance to squeeze out still). This is on a system just below the recommended specs (5700X/6700XT), while recording.

[@2KXMKR]

I'm relatively unimpressed with the road and particularly the rail mechanics. Yes, it's a massive upgrade from CS1, but players of Transport Fever will recognize it immediately as a system that was in that game from the very start in 2014, before CS1 was even released. The problem with the CS2 version is the train lines just follow the contours of the land, transforming trains into roller coasters. In Transport Fever the train line will automatically create cuttings, embankments, tunnels and bridges in order to keep the line as flat as possible. It's as if they have put half of a good idea into the game and ignored the other. Not good! As for pricing, I wouldn't worry about it too much. Two or three years from now we'll have a decent game with DLC and mods to support it and if you wait until a Steam sale you'll probably get it all for around the same price as release. Personally it's a no from me, not until the performance issues are sorted and the game has some more content to offer. Wait for the sale!

[@DZstudios.]

Not available on Mac😭😢

[@Alzorath]

sad but true :( - I wish apple would be a bit less proprietary/locked down in their ecosystem again, since their current setup makes it harder to develop for (despite actually being more powerful machines than people realize)

[@vanadyan1674]

Cannot wait for this game, but it is probably a pass on release for anyone that isn't meeting recommended specs. If you are below rec specs take another look when the console version releases, it will be far better optimized for low end systems at that point.

[@pixel-ink]

Yeah, I think this is a downgrade. I'll pass for now until I see more detailing content, better performance and how well the Mods will be implemented. I wouldn't rush into buying this at this time. Its better to wait. I still have CS1 that still works great.

[@Alzorath]

from a performance perspective, yes - though the gameplay feels much closer to classic modded CS1 for me (was never able to keep up on all the DLC for it though)

[@iursingh]

The performance is horrible. Absolutely horrible.

[@Alzorath]

It definitely still needs several optimization passes, but it is nowhere near as bad as people are shouting all over forums (it's a city builder, I don't need 120fps) - they do need to change their setting defaults though, since that's the biggest chunk of the problems people are encountering (since it leaves on weird settings that hurt performance, even on default low)

[@Deathwish026]

the monetization and your feelings about paradox should be separate from this otherwise it would be unprofessional.

[@Alzorath]

that was one reason I kept it minimal - that, and including it would've made the video about 27 minutes long...

[@aryjarvis3161]

I don’t fully understand. What’s unprofessional about mentioning paradox’s monetization model? If I was unfamiliar with Skylines and Paradox I would want to know that all of their games feature a bevy of dlc. They’re even selling a premium edition.

[@Alzorath]

@@aryjarvis3161 because this is a review for a specific game (so I did a short version of it) - the "unprofessional" part would've been making half the video about video game monetization models and their ethics, which would've detracted from the discussion of the game itself. It would be kind of like doing a documentary about Alcatraz, but then going off on a tangent for half of it about the broken corrections system in the US.

[@darkelf1000]

God that looks boring.

[@MrGablin]

They're weirdly engrossing sometimes. You blink and five hours have gone by and you still haven't gotten rid of the traffic.

[@Alzorath]

depends on personal taste - for me, I'm hard pressed to find a genre where I can't find at least one game I "like", while it's not uncommon for a lot of people to be extremely genre loyal to one or two genres or themes.

[@tomazevic007]

true, 30h of your life to build a town with 3k population lol. I've seen channels with 140+ hours in the game and and looks and feels super boring. nobody got time for that, Sim city was so much better, simpler and less time consuming. Bummer it got dropped

[@Alzorath]

I prefer Cities Skylines over the newer SimCities (there was a charm to the early SimCity games though, pre-EA) - and at 30 hours, I had a 60k population city, and a few 5-10k population cities where I have been testing stuff. The city planning is just way more engaging