Cities Skylines II Potato Mode - What to Expect with Minimum Specs

Cities Skylines II is coming out Oct 24th. Recently the minimum and recommend specs were increased, and Paradox posted A NOTE ON PERFORMANCE AND OUR COMMITMENT TO PLAYERS where they state:
"we have not achieved the benchmark we targeted."
Let's talk about Cities Skylines II and it's performance.
0:00 DISCLAIMER
1:46 INTRO
3:13 MINIMUM SPEC BUILD
4:12 POTATO MODE
6:36 THOUGHTS
11:54 OUTRO
My Setup
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[@SuperMickyChow]

This video is what the community needed. No messing, honest and to the point. Thank you

[@Trainrhys]

I’m just wondering how it is so bad compared to transport fever

[@SuperMickyChow]

@@tappytibbons735 no. Golf is a sport for wankers

[@familyman2393]

Anyone with Steam on their computer usually has a decent comp. for gaming.. Grandma sitting in her retirement home . is not gonna use her windows 95 to play this.. ..

[@rj7855]

Except the whining about the lack of mod on day 1, none of the mods he's missing were available for CS1 when released, many came years later.

[@joeyromacus8674]

When hid memory is at 100 percent usage, I'd hardly call it honest.

[@BirbarianHomeGuard]

This game is made for content creators.

[@sGabrielJ]

Almost every game todays is... infortunely

[@Oliver_the_place]

Get a job

[@raskolnikov6443]

@@Oliver_the_placehuh?

[@Jamano1201]

@@Oliver_the_placewhat does that have to do with anything

[@aaaa-eg4ck]

No one will be interested in a content about a game no one plays

[@AwesomeIsMyMotto]

After all the overwhelmingly positive and amazing videos covering this game, this video is refreshing and helping. Thank you!

[@MoveTheMouse]

Glad to hear it!

[@donny1960]

I don't get the praise for stating the obvious. If your system is not up to par to play the game in peak mode. Get a new system or don't get the game. Is very simple. And not a "hidden gem" of knowledge.

[@MikeJProto]

​@@donny1960shill says what?

[@donny1960]

@@MikeJProto Please, You know the same about me as you do this subject. Nothing. I have nothing to do with the companies involved. Is just an opinion. No strings attached. Maybe you are the "shill" for another Company. Better odds of that, than what you falsely accuse. Either way. Stay clear of this Game. It is not for Children.

[@dolorousjohn5499]

@@donny1960 I imagine you though the performance in starfield was excusable too eh? Not for children? why only children are upset by subpar performance on a 2000 dollar pc?

Thank you! Every other creator been ultra polite instead of been honest.

[@MoveTheMouse]

Content creation isn't my job, so I don't need the game to succeed. I'm super disappointed and I know others will be too. Some will be fine with it but I wanted to share my experiences.

[@thephantomchannel5368]

I've noticed a few creators that hint at the disappointment but can't openly specify due to them being a pseudo Paradox employee for P.R. purposes. I appreciate the honesty of the evaluation found here.

[@Trainrhys]

It is annoying that most content creators aren’t being honest as they are the only ones who can make a difference

[@MoonShadeStuff]

City Planner Plays will get into performance in their next videos. There was an embargo that is now lifted so people can talk openly about it.

[@tgamer1510]

This video literally told you nothing about the games performance.

[@unitedfront9717]

The lack of all the dlcs from cs1 would have been no problem for me .....but the performance is really a killer since i only meet the minimum requirements with an bit better gpu (1080) but wow i really didnt think it would be that bad since i could even run cyberpunk on my pc at UHD and lower settings......really sad to see that they didnt optimise

[@Marty-sl7wq]

it must be really shitty engine, why they didnt use better one....

[@narcotezn.c6248]

"I'm not sure who they made this game for, but they're from the future". You just described this game perfectly.

[@HomesteadKev27]

Made me laugh

[@TechAndCookies]

Nice video. The thing with a bunch of content creators is that they reside among people who don't mind dashing cash for hardware. So "higher" end specs become the norm. I've heard one creator in a CS2 vid say "so i'm running on a low specced gpu currently, only a 3060Ti. i do have a 4090 laying around somewhere i should swap in..." If the norm is a 600-800 card being low-end and just having a 1500 dollar card "laying about", you're somewhat disconnected from the real world imho...

[@MoveTheMouse]

Is this some sort of peasant joke I'm too rich to understand?

[@troodoniverse]

Who else does not meet even minimum system requirement?

[@Latriise]

Thank you for this no filter, honest take. The closer we get to launch the more I know I need to wait a bit to see how this game pans out. Not just for performance issues, but for core gameplay mechanics (which are not as updated as I would have hoped).

[@altemzwo8390]

I do meet the recommenden specs (barely). But I run a 1440p ultrawide. And I'm willing to bet that hardly anyone that meets the recommendation runs a 1080p Monitor. I wouldn't be surprised if more of them play on 4k than 1080p. It is a ridiculous recommendation, they clearly made some ill-informed decisions at some point.

[@STUGATS]

Oh god, me too. My pc is decent, 2070OC duo, 11600ks 16gb ram im scared that its going to be unplayable.

[@NoradNoxtus]

Your pc is very outdated holms

[@STUGATS]

@@NoradNoxtus not everyone has the money to afford a new top gaming rig each year..

[@dougmasters4561]

@@STUGATSHe's full of shit. Your system is not "very outdated". That's a ridiculous comment considering what those components are capable of. Your setup should be the one that today, runs a game at 1080 at 60fps. That is what should be considered minimum performance. The idea that your system is outdated because it CANNOT run something at 1080 at 60fps is nuts. A 5 year old GPU should be able to run a game, at some low resolutions, at 1080. This game is just poorly optimized.

[@DropIet]

When Biffa said he was getting 1440p 60fps medium on a 5800x3d and 4090 I was like oh my laptop definitely ain't running this one (he was getting ~35fps at 4k)

[@MoveTheMouse]

FPS goes down further as cities get larger.

[@megasfabius]

But I would be disappointed if that was not the case. CS1 is 8 years old by now, so naturally I would expect a follow up game to have graphics capable of holding up several years into the future. You can't have a complete smooth running experience for older PCs AND a next/future-gen proof title. I got at high-end pc and even CS1 falls to 15fps or lower with ca. +3000 assets and high population density. I would be delusional to expect smth else from a game like this. @@MoveTheMouse

[@Huntracony]

@@megasfabius The developers themselves expected better performance, I'm not sure how you can think it's delusional to be disappointed when the devs themselves are too.

[@sacb0y]

​@@MoveTheMouseyeah but he's already built many large cities.

[@exe2066]

great video, thank you for explaining everything for the cs community, because they've been going at it for days lol.

[@S1mL1fe]

I finished buying all the DLCs for CS1 a week ago. That game is still good, I see very little if any improvement on the original. 8 years they had to optimize the next version. This game is a perfect example of a company laying a foundation but relying on the modding community to make it great

[@dixie_rekd9601]

ive played a fair bot of both now, and will continue to play CS1 over CS2. CS2 definitely needs 32gb of RAM though.

[@tonyftony716]

My take on this is that i'm going to enjoy playing CS1 for another year or so until these things get worked out. With all the DLC's and assets they threw at us this year I don't think i'll miss not playing CS2 that much.

[@MoveTheMouse]

In diving into a big CS1 project myself soon.

[@Nords_e87_130i]

Yes, I will throw out all workshop items in CS1 as well, only subscribe to the essentials and start from there until CS2 is in a state that is acceptable for me. As it seems I get better performance with CS1 even though it is bad on there as well and I have a whole lot more of features. No reason for me to pay for CS2, more like spending for a downgrade for now.

[@thephantomchannel5368]

@@MoveTheMouse Hopefully the modders for version 1 will take CS2 as a challenge and continue improving on features and quality of life functions that, as of now, make for a much better experience than CS2. My fear is that Paradox might sabotage version 1 if not enough players buy into the gimped CS2 experience with the promise of being a complete game in 5-8 years.

[@MiniFi_]

With CS1 no longer getting updates the mods can finally work when I turn it on rather than me having to debug everything beforehand! So that's a plus too.

[@paz1798]

+1

[@teaganmonroe29]

I think the issue is that a lot of developers are doing very closed-off testing rounds with select people who likely have better hardware than most or assume that the typical big game KZbinr that makes tens of thousands or millions of dollars is somehow representative of the actual market of players that want to play their games and so they don't test them on hardware that most people have.

[@tuxtitan780]

I think its more than they put a lot of effort into making the game look as good as possible (and it does look amazing tbf), but they didnt really stop to think about how the hell they were going to optimize it for people who dont already have great computers.

[@thephantomchannel5368]

They did test it on hardware that most people have, consoles, and they failed so miserably in performance that they postponed the release which is what they should have done on the PC side as well until they get their crap together. Version 1 was a buggy un-optimized mess which it still is but mostly curbed by mods and patched with DLC's over a span of 8 years. Version 2 I would expect to be better from the start but so far it isn't boding well. Version 1 was excusable since it was their first attempt, version 2 gets no sympathy from me, it should have been better and needs to be better if they expect to maintain the same user base as the first game.

[@JeloOW]

@@tuxtitan780 sewage outlet is a joke, the waste is the same PNG that doesn't even look good

[@JeloOW]

@@thephantomchannel5368 I don't think we can blame the devs, it's the higher ups that probably didn't want to delay the game

[@thephantomchannel5368]

@@JeloOW I blame both, watch their P.R. dev diaries for some serious cringe. You would almost think the people who made the game hate it more than their customers.

[@trevorprice2490]

One realization is that I think this reset totally reveals the double-edge sword of Colossal Order using DLC and relying on community mods to enhance/change so much of the core gameplay. We're going to be back to vanilla state in many aspects.

[@micheleb9501]

Thank you for the honest review, and for confirming that weather is not going to be able to be toggled. I'm so glad I didn't pre-order. There are far too many things that are troublesome in my opinion, and I don't want to have to build another $2000+ computer just to run the base game. I'll stick with C:S 1 for now and wait 12-18 months for them to finish this game.

[@billyswong]

They ought to find a way to show weather in a "low-definition" manner. Weather is part of the game is all well. But players with less than ideal hardware only need the bare minimal visual effect to know the weather.

[@davidinark]

What a great, honest look at what a user experience could really be like: no hoopla, no gushing. I see some people are full of wadded panties in the comments over your candid issues with the game. Don’t let them bother you. It’s refreshing to see someone who wanted a game to be so awesome and yet doesn’t put on rose-colored blinders about it. Keep up the great work. Your fans will be here anytime you move the mouse.

[@thephantomchannel5368]

It's a tough one. Most of us see the potential of what the game/ sim can be, especially when using version 1 as a reference. The disappointment for me is knowing that based on how DLC's were done with version 1 means that we have to wait something like 3-5 years to get back most of the features that were proven from version 1. The fact that this is their 2nd attempt which seems like 3 steps forward and five steps back doesn't bode well for the future of the franchise. Fortunately for Paradox and CO, most of us are masochists and gluttons for punishment and are willing to put up with the pay-to-patch model with the hopes of just getting a little taste of what we all imagine a true city builder simulation could be.

[@AdiPullen]

Hi mate I hope you are well Thank you an honest video As console player I understand why they delayed it Just wish they show us how bad it actually is Keep safe ARP

[@jamieknight326]

Thanks for the honest and insightful look at the performance. Hopefully the performance improves as the devs get closer to the console release. The lack of weather toggle is a frustrating accessibility issue. I also get motion sick playing games. I’ll try it via game pass when it comes out… but I’m going in aware that it might be inaccessible to me… no matter what hardware I throw at it.

[@treycox33]

I watched City Planner Plays today and everything you talked about was expressed by him throughout the stream. He also said that he would not pay for the game in its current state.

[@WallaceMoura]

Huge thanks for sharing this video with the community!

[@wayneleblancsr8126]

My PC is going to huff and puff with this game. I'm going to keep playing SC 1 for awhile longer.

[@PingMe23]

This is pretty important to me since I am pretty much at the minimum spec. i7 6700, 16 gb RAM, GTX1070. I am used to bad framerates in CS1, and graphics aren't a huge priority for me, so I think I'll manage. But, it's good to know what to expect, so thank you for providing that.

[@BrothaMan831]

Dude you treat your pc like it’s a console, just buy console the 10 series gpus are so outclassed by even the 20 series. Developers should have stopped supporting such low end hardware a long time ago

[@rafario448]

​@@BrothaMan831I don't think its possible to be more completely out of touch than you. Assuming everyone has the means to upgrade their pcs all the time.

[@rafario448]

also not only consoles are very restrictive on what you can do with them, but playing city builders in them is objectively a worse experience.

[@Archman155]

@@BrothaMan831people arent rich. the gtx 1080 is the very best gpu i can afford and i will stay with it until newer generations come close in price:performance and its worth upgrading

[@Sims_it]

​@BrothaMan831 If money grew on trees, yes, sure! But it doesn't. And playing simulation games on consoles is definitely a worse experience, especially for CS as its mods are so important to the core game and those are not available on consoles.

[@AGMTB.]

I remember I bought my RTX3080 a few years ago to future proof my pc but it seems like it’s going to be outdated by games like this, very very soon…. 😬

[@MichaelMorganBain]

I just got a 4060 laptop thinking it would breeze it. Now not so much

[@MichaelMorganBain]

@@poopinmahbusiness I have pretty good cyberpunk performance with Ray tracing on but I do have to endure DLSS is on. RAY RECONSTRUCTION though makes the entire game look like slush. Lol.

[@ThePhantomrunner]

They gonna keep doing it cause money you know,but if the graphic cards market started to stagnant like iphone maybe then we might get a better deal for the long term ,😢

[@jxxxxx44]

​@@poopinmahbusinessbro even f***ing Starfield is better optimized than this POS lmao. Your 3080 will be good enough for a long while. Greeting from my 1060 😅.

[@zoopa9988]

@@poopinmahbusiness A Desktop 4070 would be comparable. 4k series in laptops also sucks extra hard since the RTX 4070 in your laptop has a mere 8GB of VRAM while the desktop version has 12GB. Only the 4080 and 4090 have decent amounts of VRAM when it comes to laptops, which is kinda crazy since the cheapest 4080 laptops where I live cost about 2300,- euros, which is about 2400 US dollars.

[@rajahutan1698]

Thank you for sharing this! I have an R5 3600 with an RX6600, and this video gives me a idea of what the game will look like on my PC. I think I'll buy it five years later, like I did with CS1 😅.

[@DocProctor]

I'm very glad that I more than enough beat the specs for the recommended HW, so I'm not that worried about performance issues. It's real good that you actually give a review based on what majority of people run. Enjoyed your review immensely. Sober and real.

[@bignoize23]

Thank you for this. I wasn't sure how bad it would be based on other videos and dev updates. For me, I think its worth cancelling the preorder. Especially, considering the time it will take for the game to be fully fleshed out.

[@MartinPereira-qn2mt]

Yeah this is looking like a KSP2 scenario..... i got off that train before the wreck

[@Holtijaar]

I still fail to understand why people pre-order digital games as if the publisher was going to run our of copies for you to buy. It's been over a decade of pre-order scams in the gaming industry and people still fail to learn, which keeps promoting and reinforcing dishonest practices of the publishers.

[@MartinPereira-qn2mt]

@@Holtijaar for everyone theres a first time i guess

[@bignoize23]

@Holtijaar honestly first time I ever pre-ordered. It was only to get those unique buildings. At the time, I was thinking since CS1 is my all time favorite game, I know I wanted CS2, so why not pre-order? I was able to cancel without any issue. But I get your point. I have and still do find it to be pretty silly with digital content.

[@JeloOW]

​@@Holtijaarthe only games that I always preorder are the Insomniac's Spider-Man games, they never miss

[@justmewwwww]

finally, an honest review after 2 months of paid fake positive reviews

[@MrScott664]

And this is why I didn’t want to pre order before I saw reviews… This game is clearly not ready for release and it’s going to hurt the franchise releasing in the state it is right now. My biggest disappointment out of everything is the performance. Thats the one thing I was looking forward to was improved performance with both newer hardware as well as the use of multithreading. But it appears it’ll need a significant amount of optimization before myself and many others are willing to play.

[@jerseyboarder7]

This was really well done. This is the first time I've seen your content, but you've definitely earned yourself a sub - thanks :)

[@transgirl2106]

I normally love Paradox, but the fact they specifically denied content creators the ability to speak about the game's abysmal performance issues until just before launch is unacceptable. My 4090 with a 13900-k and 64gb ram won't even be able to squeeze 30fps on my 4k monitor. That's worse than any game launch we've seen in a long time. I know they'll iron out the performance eventually but they really tried to keep this quiet and that's not okay.

[@MoveTheMouse]

We weren't allowed to talk about performance until today. Glad I'm not the only one expressing concern.

[@ashanator1991]

🤣 I'm sure your 4090 will be more than capable to run it.

[@transgirl2106]

@@ashanator1991 Sadly no not at 4k, I just watched a streamer with a slightly better PC get barely 30-40 FPS at 1440p with a bunch of settings turned down and disabled. My PC should and can run any new game max settings at 4k getting minimums of 60 FPS even in Phantom Liberty with path tracing, with most games averaging 90+ at ultra settings. The fact this can't even squeeze 30 FPS out of a $5,000 PC shows how badly optimized it is right now. And the temperatures it pushes people's graphics cards to will fry a lot of people's cards. This game isn't ready to launch.

[@SunVKing]

​@@transgirl2106if your card is overheating that is not the game's fault, it's your case's fault or the GPU itself. The game can't push a card any more than any benchmark test can.....

[@SunVKing]

​@@transgirl2106and 30fps is more than enough for a city builder. Wtf are you planning to do, play mortal combat in a "paint the map and watch buildings grow" game?

[@rjh00]

I am really disappointed in PDX. This game is clearly not ready. If only say 5% of player can play a game then the game is not ready (And that is being generous to the number of people that meet the recommended specs). I think there are going to be a lot of upset people when the game comes out and the decision to push the game out in this state is going to ruin the trust and love that people have in CO, shame on PDX I was looking forward to this, even when I saw some non smooth gameplay in videos and stream, even when they raised the requirements to quite high requirements, even when they released the statement about not meeting performance benchmarks, I STILL had faith in them. But now with the embargoes lifted and seeing this video I have lost faith, the game might end up performing okay in a year from now, but the damage will have been done by then. I will be skipping the game for now and recommend my friends on doing the same, which is a shame because I was the biggest CS pusher in my group of friends. I hope it gets better later on because the gameplay itself seems to be decent, there seems to be a lot to love, but performance just makes it impossible to love it.

[@KlavertjeOpReis]

It’s a shame really. I could only afford to upgrade my pc to the previous recommended specs. Based on that I bought the game in pre-order. Now I will probably not be able the play the game somehow smoothly. I think I will cancel my pre-order and continue on CS1. Thank you for the honest and clear video.

[@rjh00]

@@KlavertjeOpReis I will also just go back to CS1, I had stopped playing CS1after the dev diaries had started coming out and CS2 kept looking better and better, but after today I've pretty much lost any desire in CS2 for now, so I will just go back to CS1 and enjoy that. Who knows maybe some mod creators will make some mods that give us some of the features that CS2 has.

[@KlavertjeOpReis]

@@rjh00 exactly the same here. Totally agree with you.

[@edwardduda4222]

They could improve it so much if they just got rid of the wind. I see all these clips of the wind animations with the trees. There's an animation for every single tree being calculated every time the camera moves. Imagine how expensive that becomes with a few hundred, to a few thousand trees. It's a feature that most people probably won't notice if it's gone.

[@Phantomrooster29]

Right? Like snow that just collects on grass surfaces.

[@ivanjermakov]

This can be implemented efficiently with compute shaders, but sad truth is there is just no point for AAA developers to spend resources optimizing games for 7 year old hardware...

[@poilboiler]

@@ivanjermakov Colossal Order is hardly a AAA developer.

[@elixis6546]

​@@ivanjermakov 7 year old hardware? What have you been smoking? I'm running a 3700x and a 3060ti, those are 4 and 3 year old respectively. Yet according to the benchmarks released by a couple of youtubers, I will struggle to run the game at 1080p. This is just laziness from the developers and the lack of thinking ahead, being pushed by shareholders to develop and release as game as fast and as cheaply as possible.

[@JeloOW]

@@elixis6546 I'm sure the developers wanted to delay the game, but the higher ups didn't let them

[@ihatearial]

Thank you for this video. I've noticed a lot of issues on dev diaries videos but your video gave me an honest expectation alignment and remembered me why, since SimCity 2013, I've never bought a pre order again. This launch reinforces my point.

[@karmacamp4272]

Thank you for the blunt honesty!!!! I had already thought I would wait a year or so. Now I know I will

[@MichaelMorganBain]

I think this game is heading for a disaster which makes me really sad. They are making the same mistakes as SimCity 2013 made which was literally why the franchise of Cities exists.

[@EmperorJake]

SimCity 2013's greatest mistakes were the tiny maps and always-online crap. Skylines 2 has neither of that. While it may have a shaky launch, I think the issues can be fixed down the line

[@LiLBitsDK]

definetly a mistake to launch now if the performance is shite... give it 3 months and grind on increasing performance = better launch... it's really hard to turn around from a bad launch and will hurt more than postponing a few months... and I say this even though I preordered and only have a short time to play before moving out of the country and won't have a computer for a while

[@NopWorks]

It's just performance issues & no Steam Workshop. Not as big of a deal, but still a big deal. If they can fix the performance & make Paradox Mods on par or exceed Steam Workshop, it won't flop. But the reputation will definitely be stained. People will trust CO & Paradox _much_ less now. They gained _tons_ of goodwill from CS1 and they'll lose all that. So this is more like Cyberpunk 2077.

[@zimkatv]

What are you talking about? It's heading for a disaster, but it's definitely not making the same mistakes SC2013 did.

[@LiLBitsDK]

@@NopWorks definetly NOT a fan of their own modshop when we have a fine working one as is in Steam Workshop... I'd much rather they didn't waste time on a proprietaire modshop and spent the time improving PERFORMANCE

[@misterprince912]

Disappointing but not unexpected. Thanks for the honest review. With the steam workshop gone and poor optimization maybe another team can make a superior city building game and dethrone Paradox.

[@davyprendergast82]

Yeah you'd think they'd learn that their success came from being that cool company that opened so many fun doors in opposition to EA, yet now they're going to inspire a new generation of developers to take their place. In fact, with AI agents, probably any of us with enough hardware could just clone and edit their game and mod it til our hearts content

[@niquedegraaff]

For $50 it's actually very bad.

[@bellairefondren7389]

Who would be that team?

[@SwiftRelish]

Theres no workshop??????

[@JeloOW]

modders will probably make a mod that acts like the steam workshop and is hosted by them

[@easternMOweather]

Thank you for addressing this. I am very concerned that many people that are ordering it now will be disappointed when they try to play and it is very laggy or won’t play at all. Not all of us can afford new computers my self included. Hopefully the optimization i proves some.

[@tiagodagostini]

This is the type of game where they should NEVER EVER push so hard for IMAGE/GRaphics. THe content and mechanics are the most important factor. I really do not know how this game runs slower than Cyberpunk on a city the same size...

[@mamuf]

I don't think it's comparable like that. You're not rendering and simulating the whole city at the same time in Cyberpunk, all the game renders is just a few blocks and the rest, if you can see it, just with the lower detailed building models, but without any simulation. Also, if you're really far away from a highway, the cars on it are just simple sprites, not fully rendered 3D objects. Cyberpunk just does a lot of clever optimizations, some of which are simply natural since it's just a first-person game. I don't try to defend C:S2, the performance is a huge issue. They're just pushing it too much... or the engine isn't well optimized to render so much with so much detail, who know. But if we don't know all the technical details, we can't really compare the two. They are very different games. I'm not really sure if there's any game to compare it to. Maybe Factorio? But that game is 2D, so a different technology altogether.

[@intermsofreality]

If you're seriously comparing CS2 to Cyberpunk, then you have zero idea of how games function.

[@tiagodagostini]

@@mamufYou also do nto render everything, at least if the game was decently made. Everything tht is ocluded by a building or a hill should NOT go to the render pipeline, but clearly this was made with either rush or very bad developers that never ever made an engine themselves. Oclusion culling is a BASIC technique.

[@cynic5581]

I wouldn’t worry, Weather Toggle DLC is gonna be one of the cheapest DLCs.

[@spectex304]

💀💀💀💀

[@LeeHawkinsPhoto]

Wow! Thanks for your obviously honest take 😨 I’m reserving judgement until I get my shot at it next week, but it sounds like CO bit off more than they could chew and Paradox is forcing them to swallow it…

[@stormgear896]

I'm glad you made this now I know what to expect when i play this with my PC. I don't see many (or KZbin algorithm recommend) video out there that talks about the performance side of the game before yours came out. But now I see more maybe because the game is coming close to launch. I am planning to buy a 4060 just for this game only to find out on their updated requirement that it's still not enough lol. I just hope this will not discourage other players to try the game, here's hoping that through post launch Paradox will have an idea on how to optimize the game once they get a hold of the various pc specs used to play it.

[@shonportugez814]

"As work on optimization continues where also updating the minimum and recommended PC specs" is a statement that any computer science major would be baffled to hear. From where I see it, they probably haven't tested the game enough to know how well it runs on lower end specs with a large enough simulation. -> A few weeks before release, they found out they completely missed their hardware goals, then buried the spec bump news in a blog post a large majority of the player base won't even bother to read. I expected better from them :(

[@TNM001]

Colossal Order has shot itself in the foot...like literally. all they had to do was take CS1 and improve on the simulation (= CPU). thats it. yea, maybe add a few new GPU effects on top and call it "ultra"...whatever. edit: BTW...high settings seem to be CS1 parity. what a nightmare.

[@zhaine1989]

I think there is a real risk of a huge backlash at how the game is optimised and being released in its current state which I think would really hurt morale for the developers, I want this game to be a success, I love City building games! I was so excited when this game was announced but I have a 6700k and a 1080ti and not in a position to upgrade at the moment, I'll just hope and pray that when its optimised over the coming months I can atleast enjoy it abit but might have to stick to Cities Skylines 1 until then

[@Marvin-mq9rk]

Never did I think my rog 3070ti would struggle to play a city builder game

[@CEmpty2044]

I am relatively sure it will be like Cyberpunk 2077 where overtime the issues here pimarely performance get fixed but now theyre forced essentially to release because of Investors Sponsors etc forcing them and it is playable just not nice. they may need to rework the simulating of cars and citizens since those things seem like 2 of the most performance heavy things they may even downgrade them again which i wouldnt hate but isnt what they promised but if i can play with 100FPS on my 1660 GTX then i wont care if the citizens arent as realistic. well have to see what happens in the future

[@PtrkHrnk]

F* developer's morale, they very well know this is unacceptable.

[@shr2000]

I am even worse with a 1050.

[@PtrkHrnk]

@@shr2000 Very low settings or 720p30 then? I think developers' minimum target should be Megalopolis with 100 000+ cims for min specs. 200 000+ for recommended.

[@Breakdown0]

Great video, loved the flow of it! Such an important topic to cover, since it gives a real grasp on what to actually expect. Holy moly, were those potato-settings a joke! I built a new PC roughly 3 years ago with an RTX 2070 and an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 and while I'm tempted to upgrade, I really don't like the idea of spending 500€+ on a new CPU and GPU for just a single game that clearly has optimization issues. But Colossal Order have been very transparent with their game and what they're about to release so I'm looking forward to them fixing this issue.

[@noahlikesmilk18]

same im scared too I've got a 2070 super and i59600k

[@lenardburgess9400]

Subscription earned due to your honesty, this is ksp2 in city builder form

[@franciscomagalhaes7457]

Thank you. I was getting excited for the release, but the general consensus seems to be you either "if you want 1080 with 30 fps and medium to high settings, you need at least an rtx 3080, ideally with the installation in an nvme drive". Really can't afford something like that right now.

[@ArturdeSousaRocha]

Looks like C:S1 will continue to be popular for some time to come. Hardware below specs for C:S2 can easily be overkill for C:S1.

[@ishi...]

Thanks for the heads up, I did consider preordering, now I will probably get it on a discount some time next year, if I don't forget about it.

[@NexusSeries6]

I cant believe you've been posting content for a year after taking a year off and I had NO IDEA. Frigging youtube didn't recommend ANY of your new videos. I'm now going back and catching up, and am glad to have you back.

[@MoveTheMouse]

Good to be back!

[@rcturner719]

I appreciate your honest and frank review.

[@sammy4282]

Thank you for not only conveying your critiques more openly than other creators, but also taking console into account. I hear a lot about how certain things will be updated later or modded away, and all I think is “What if I can’t use mods and why should it be left till later instead of now?” The game(imo) doesn’t look nearly graphically pleasing enough, or functionally improved enough to justify such insane system requirements, and it really feels like they intended for this to be a 2024 release but Paradox have pushed them to bring it sooner, resulting in an unoptimised, unfinished and lacklustre game. It’s sad because CS2 does seem to address many issues that vanilla CS1 had, but it also seems like, in order to achieve these, they’ve sacrificed a number of things that were added after CS1 released. It literally just feels like they’ve gone back to release CS1, added a few mods, a few free updates and called it a day, I just hope the issues are resolved within a year or two so long term the game holds up to its hype...I hope.

[@thephantomchannel5368]

Part of me wonders if they worked backwards on CS2 and built a complete game just to remove core features and mechanics to patch it in later via DLC's.

[@davyprendergast82]

Yeah I was expecting something that looks like Unreal Engine 5 and perhaps with much grittier neighbourhoods, dirty syringes lying around in the gutter under the bridge as well as glitzy skyscrapers, but it all kinda looks cartoonishly unrealistically polished like the first one

[@Jay_440]

Thanks for the honesty!!

[@spacekettle2478]

Thank you for making this video! I'd probably hold off until they manage to improve the performance to more reasonable levels. The dev diaries got my hopes up when they mentioned that the performance is improved/better, so it was quite disappointing to hear that the performance is bad.. The reason I stopped playing CS1 was because of how laggy everything would get, and now that I got myself a new laptop I was hoping I could play CS2 smoothly, but sadly it doesn't seem very likely..

[@eruveo]

I cancelled my preorder 2 weeks ago. Do not regret. Will buy when it’s working and cheaper.

[@Lkease]

Thanks for the video. Was going to pre-order today but seeing how bad it is, I'll probably hold off until things get better. I'm only rocking a Ryzen 5 5600 and an RTX 3050. Not sure if I'd even be able to hit a city with a population above 15k with those specs 😅

[@Car_edits221]

Yep same for me 😅

[@forestvan4915]

I got a 3080 and a 5600 I’m scared it won’t work 😅

[@Sindrie1]

Man, you say "not cancel your pre-order bad". But if I can't even get 1440p 60 on medium settings with a 2080ti then that is absolutely worth canceling. I refunded my pre-order on steam. The only thing I wanted from CS2 was for it run better then CS1.

[@MoveTheMouse]

Some creators are fine with the performance others are not. Performance IS an issue, and if is a concern holding you back, I'd wait. If I wasn't a partnered creator, I would be playing day one via GamePass before buying. Having hands on experience I can't recommend it except to a niche that has high end hardware AND is also ok with poor performance.

[@alfs2925]

Oh wow. Thank you for the video. I've got the GTX 1660 Super, 16 GB of RAM and a CPU below the minimum spec. So sub-potatoe PC here. I was thinking of giving CS2 a try, but after seeing the graphics in the game along with the framerate it's a plain no for me. Maybe I'll have a look at this game in 2 years when I've bought a new PC.

[@alf279]

6:31 you almost got me there dude. This convinced me not to even try this game on my i7-6700 / 32GB DDR4 / RTX A2000 setup. I see the main point of Skylines 2 vs a well-modded Skylines would be that it looks better... but it actally looks way worse unless you have a high-end PC.

[@the_titan_atlas]

Thank you for the honesty with this video, saying what needs to be said. It’s such a shame, after all the excitement when this sequel was first announced. It seems like CS1 still has plenty of life left in it, until they sort out CS2 and actually make it playable.

[@MoveTheMouse]

Mac support too!

[@goalski134]

gutted to hear this. i’ve been looking forward to this game for so long.

[@markward4235]

Good video nice to see someone try a min specs, Tbh the system demands on Cities:Skylines went up quite abit once you added a few dlc's I can imagine the same for the sequel. GTX 1660 super always been a bit on the toasty side. Can imagine this game being heavy on the CPU front especially on big cities.

[@rubixd9v2]

I knew I was going to watch the entire video on principle because you gave a TLDW/summary in the first like 5 seconds.

[@DrFafika]

My jaw dropped when you showed the game with the lowest settings

[@vanhelzer22]

Man, scathing review. I definitely get it. I have a 2080Ti/ Ryzen7, low detail settings. I haven't experienced lag yet but I'm sure It's coming. Thanks for the review! Looks like I'm going back to Cities Skylines I. Keep up the good work! You're my goto creator for Cities!

[@Durhamgooner86]

Thank you for the honest review mate. More or less confirmed what I’m doing is the right thing. Beginning of 2024 I’m going to start building my own gaming PC (only have an Xbox atm), due to my budget it’s gonna take a while. Hopefully by October 2024 it’ll be ready and the developers will have fixed a lot of the issues that you’ve brought up

[@praxiseffect]

Thank you for this. I was mildly concerned about how this game would run on my older system, still above the minimum but way under recommended. Was also concerned that the best mods from CS1 would not be integrated in the the base CS2. I was using so many mods in CS1 that it became clunky, even with all the tools to help with upgrading mods when the game updated. I will probably wait a year or two now, and maybe even wait for a huge sale. I might be fine waiting 5-6 years for free on Epic

[@JimNichols]

I said this from the beginning CO is making a game that is not being optimized for 'average' systems but are creating a game than needs the system optimized for the game. And that will cause the demise of CS2 , where they will blame you for spreading 'disinformation' about the game. You need a higher end processor to run it, yet the engine used is not optimized to use the cores and threads available in those processors. CS and CS 2 are games of math calculations and the old Xeon E-2288G should preform well in this but it does not. I have double the memory 'recommended' for CS1 and find that at 16 GB I am running 15.3 or 15.4 GB used. You need an AMD Ryzen series 7000, a Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 and 64 GB of memory to run a BUILDERS GAME????? I will pass thank you... As for the videos man you are the bomb, truth told, great gameplay, great scripting, great editing telling the truth without breaking your NDA.... spot on sir, thank you.

[@karengardner67]

Thank you for being the only one on KZbin, that has told us the truth about this game. I have watched this video several times, so that I absorb everything you have said, and I very much appreciate your honesty and hope that you continue to review this game, when new patches and mods come out in the future. Thank you so much.

[@guy_who_games]

The rest switch is exactly what I‘be been thinking since information about this game started to come out. Stripping 90% of the DLC from 1 to sell it to you again in 2 is crazy. CS2 I think will follow the trend of the newest entry in the series having LESS players than a previous entry.

[@serialcominstruments5378]

Thank You!

[@jonsage5486]

As a console player I welcome the honest review…..big ups Looks like I’ll be sticking with the base game on Series X for the meantime……it’s pretty much assured this will be a chuggy mess on the consoles.

[@neffyg35]

I appreciate your honesty! I still pre-ordered the game but I now have more grounded expectations. :)

[@RubleTrillions]

Your honesty here earned you a sub. Really appreciate the breakdown.

[@JPzyx]

After watching reviews and walkthroughts for CS 2 I just bought a few extra DLCs for CS 1 that I didn;t have and kept playing it.

[@oleksandrshymanskyi1129]

god bless you for doing a review of the performance on the configuration almost identical to my specs ❤ gonna be skipping the purchase even though I was waiting for the game so much

[@alanbeddow3775]

Great video.... exactly the information I needed. I'm gonna wait a bit before I dive in. I've been holding off starting a new city till CS2 comes out. think I'll start a new one tomorrow on CS1 now.

[@rotoplumper]

Excellent video, thank you, this is what I wanted to know

[@Rangar1997]

I'm definitely getting this game . . . in 10 years

[@DWPL89]

Well I guess I am gonna wait till RTX 6080 comes out XD Thanks for the honest video!

[@marcinnowogorski]

Holy crap! An honest review! Sir, You have my sub!

[@veronicatash777]

I'm wondering your experience level with Paradox. For example, two recent releases were Crusader Kings 3 and Victoria 3. Both launched with extreme lag, but within a month were running perfectly fine. It seems to be the way that Paradox creates games: they launch them unoptimized and then quickly optimize them over a couple months. It's a bit cheesy to use paying players as guinea pigs for crashes, but they do fix it and they fix it fast using those crash reports. I'm not sure how much a difference Collossal Order makes in this, but this is what I've seen in recent releases and I certainly have tons of Paradox games on Steam.

[@ht8764]

Close to 3000 hrs in CS1 and counting, ill have to pass on CS2 until its modded out (if we can still do workshop things for free in the future) im current underspec for CS2 and have no plans or desire to upgrade my PC for this game (already went through that process with CS1)

[@beezienkirsten]

If you want the 9 landmarks prepurchase then keep order. If dont care then I would cancel n wait till on sale and in better shape. Be real, we are talking about least 2yrs + away.

[@leighmerrill1567]

Mouse: I like your real honesty and insights to this game! I have been following you for a very long time on CS1, and I appreciate everything you talk about CS all around (CS1 and CS2). In this post, you really said what I was thinking but I had trouble putting it in words like you just did. I feel the gaming world is clearly divided where you have PC vs Console: one has advantages over the other. Specs being one of them but at what cost? It all comes down to money in the end but for some people, money is no object. And that is fine! You do what you want; however, people like me can't afford a pc so I chose to go console. I still own a PS4 Pro late knowing I can still enjoy my backward compatible games on a PS5 later down the road if and when a possible PS6 comes out. Cities Skylines being one of them. I know CS1 Remastered is out on PS5 only but I am ok with that for now I will make do with what I got because I can't afford to upgrade at the moment. When I look at CS1 vs CS2, I don't have the same vibe with CS2 like I do with CS1. That's just me. From what I saw on other channels and yours, certain aspects of CS2 kinda forces you to play what they give you rather than having the option to turn off and on like weather for instance. CS1 Remastered allows you to change the dynamic weather. CS2 you can't change the weather.. I can't get into a game without having the option for changing the settings. CS2 is kind of bland at the moment for me. Some may say CS1 is bland but I am still a fan. So, my point is the gaming world is divided and Specs can ultimately a factor when playing a game and can afford. CS2 may look good but I personally can't get into an early developed game vs a game I truly like to play. The choice is yours! Peace!

[@lego_brick_dad]

This game is a perfect example of engineers thinking they know what's best and adding every possible feature, instead of listening to what customers are actually looking for and providing a well-functioning game for people to enjoy for years. I'm very disappointed in CO and Paradox and I'm hoping they will learn from this. Devs, I can't afford to dish out thousands of Euros to buy a new PC just to be able to play this "next gen" game (which is a bs term nobody asked for). Thanks for the great video!

[@jeffb1886]

Thanks for this. I had to laugh at your comment... "I'm not sure who they made this game for, but they're from the future." ;-) But that was the only fun moment. I've barely got just over the minimum. i7@6700 and the 1660 Super...which you tested. I never played CS1 but used to play SimCity back in the Stone Age and loved it. Based on the beautiful gameplay videos I saw, I was hoping for the best when I discovered CS2. But now I'll clearly wait past the release date and watch community feedback. I wonder if I should just buy CS1 with my "advanced" system, learn the game, and see what happens in the coming months. Definitely disappointed.

[@showyourteeth2180]

I'm afraid that I agree with you. Growing trees, weather, forced progression, forced zoning, empty workshop, no move it, no anarchy and questionable requirements: all are downsides for me. As you, I hope that CO and Paradox will get around this. Until then...

[@guernica4262]

Thanks for the video. I'm running an i7 8XXX series and 1070, so this is just more of a wake-up call that it's time to upgrade. I feel for those who don't have the money to spec their PC to the recommend specs, but I've seen too many developers go the other extreme and spec their games for the lowest common denominator at the expense of decent day 1 graphics and features.

[@GagGreene]

First Cities is what made me get a gaming PC so was considering getting an updated machine for this game, but I will wait on optimization. Thank you for the honest take.

[@teutorixaleria918]

Jesus christ like so many games these days, using insane amounts of hardware power to run like crap and not look especially great. This is broken, genuinely broken. If they dont deliver a massive performance patch this game will be dead within weeks. The only people playing it are going to be youtubers and people who can afford 4090s. How you gonna sell DLC for a game nobody can run?

[@MoveTheMouse]

Just wanted you to know I keep getting a good laugh at you calling out the pinned comment as a pin of shame and giving the L to OP on like ratio.

[@marrobertx]

Wow I guess they’re targeting on SimCity 2000 nostalgia… so many memories!

[@daylarfarshot523]

Thank you very much for this vid. I didn’t realize they had bumped up the recommended specs. Im running a 1660ti-xc and an i7 9700 /w 64GB RAM and im scared. Almost wishing I could refund my preorder at this point and consider it again in the future when I need to upgrade the rig for other main games. The one thing that I was always concerned with is the fact the game gives each individual citizen a life. With how in depth thats going to be I feel like when the city population gets up there its going to put a strain on everything but who knows.

[@Fraggelmann]

I bought the game yesterday and will try it out today. My PC is ok with 3/4 on the recommended settings, with my CPU being the weak link. I might look for a more recent CPU if I don't enjoy playing it, but I hope I don't have to. Appreciate this video though, and I hope that they will optimize the game more in the future, so that more people can enjoy it, because it does look like a treat, if your hardware is good enough.

[@GarethPW]

Just an FYI: the leap in minimum specs is not multi-generation. Intel 5000 series was a very limited release and GeForce 800 was mobile only. As far as mainstream desktop was concerned, they essentially didn't exist.

[@ageoflove1980]

Got a 3060ti and a Ryzen 5800... Im seriously worried now...

[@brink668]

Best video so far on the whole Cities Skylines 2 issue. Great job. They have to optimize and get those requirements down. If they don't this game will always have issues. ...... no toggle to turn off Weather even the graphics.......

[@jamesrothwell8693]

Interesting video, enjoyed watching. But I am still looking forward to CS2. I remember when CS1 came out I noticed that when my city got big my system chugged, after a year or two hardware generations update and the game gets better. I'm hoping it's playable for me with 4090 and 7900X3D for now and perhaps in a year or two an upgrade will let me get a better experience in CS2. As you mentioned I expect this game to be around for 5+ years at least.