Paradox has released an unfinished game with its new city builder Cities Skylines 2. After a decade of support for the game’s predecessor, the newest game in the series has failed to live up to expectations.
Prior to launch, Paradox announced that the “finished” version of Cities Skylines 2 would launch with massive performance issues and a complete lack of mod support. However, even with these warnings, fans of the genre are bewildered at the current state of the game.
At the time of writing, Cities Skylines 2 is sitting with a mixed reception on Steam with 48% of reviews being positive. However, the majority of recent reviews are “mostly negative”, with more negative reviews coming in every few hours.
With even the best settings for Cities Skylines 2 resulting in massive performance woes, no mod support and worse graphics than the original in some places, Paradox’s latest city builder also includes a wealth of gameplay bugs and issues than usually come with the company's hardcore PC titles. And fans are sick of it.
“Cities: Skylines 2 should not be released,” reads a fan review after 22 hours of play. “It pains me to say as a big fan of the original game, but the sequel here is simply not in an acceptable state.”
Many fans have defended the title as being an early access game in disguise. However, that same argument has been used in a negative view, as it should be, claiming Paradox has been disingenuous with the title’s release build actually being ready for public consumption.
“The game feels incredibly unfinished. Worse, the devs admitted it is unfinished and chose to launch anyway,” reads another review after ten hours of gameplay. “Sure, they've communicated the shortcomings and all that but it doesn't change the fact they think it's OK to charge full price for what feels like an early access game. CO & Paradox are going to have to do a LOT to regain my trust and confidence. Best advice: wait six months to a year before buying this game. Maybe then it will actually be ready to play.”
Cities Skyline 2 fans aren’t bunkering down on their reviews of the game. Many claim that their reviews will likely change following some real optimisation and bug fixes to the city builder. With some really solid gameplay under its issues, fans want to give Paradox’s latest a glowing review. It’s just not possible.
Cities Skylines 2 is available right now on PC, Xbox Series and PS5. The game is also playable through Xbox Game Pass.