I don’t really understand how people make the review threads, but we’re sitting at a 77 on OpenCritic right now. Many were worried about game performance after the recommended specs were released, but it looks like it’s even worse than we expected. It sounds like the game is mostly a solid release except for the performance issues, but they really are that bad.
- Popular Cities: Skylines 1 streamers are reporting that they are not able to achieve a consistent 60 fps, even with RTX 4090s and lowering the graphics to 1440p medium settings. Based on utilization numbers, it sounds like the GPU is limiting factor here.
- Those same streamers are also reporting 16GB of RAM usage when loading up a new map, which means that the minimum recommended spec of 8GB was a blatant lie from the devs.
- IGN and other reviewers are reporting that the game does not self-level building plots, which is something that C:S1 did pretty well. This leads to every plot looking like this:
Maybe not a big deal to some, but the focus of Cities: Skylines has always been on building beautiful cities (vs. having a realistic simulation), so this feels like a betrayal of Colossal Order’s own design philosophy.
Personally, this is a pretty big bummer for me. I like C:S1 a lot, but I find it hard to get into a gameflow that feels good unless I commit to mods pretty hard, and that means a steeper learning curve. For this reason, I tend to have more fun just watching other people play the game. I was looking forward to C:S2 as a great jumping on point to really dig into city-building myself. Maybe I’m being too harsh here because of my personal disappointment - many don’t really care about hitting 60fps, but those same people also tend to not build top-end PCs. And it sounds like if you don’t have a top-end PC, you’re looking at sub 30 fps, and I think most agree that that is borderline unplayable.
Anyone else have thoughts on this one?
I mostly agree with this post, but
the focus of Cities: Skylines has always been on building beautiful cities (vs. having a realistic simulation)
this is simply not true
Yes, erm… totally about building beautiful cities.
Yeah, my thought is that this is a game they’ll be supporting for 8-9 years so what the fuck does it matter if it runs like dogshit on day one? Don’t fucking buy it until the performance increases and the problems you mentioned are ironed out.
It really is that simple.
Anyone that expected this game to be perfect on launch was clearly not around whenever Cities: Skylines launched. The performance was godawful to the point that I refunded it. A couple of months and a couple of patches later shit was cleared up and I repurchased it. Didn’t have an issue after that.
So yeah, the whole “Why doesn’t this brand new game not have the same performance and features as a nine year old game with numerous DLCs and mods?” thing is getting fucking tiresome.
I don’t think it’s crazy to expect games to have playable performance levels when they release. Not to mention it’s a sequel so you’d think they would learn some things after fixing the first one.
Yeah the fucks up with all the Paradox apologia in this thread? I also remember Cities: Skylines on release It ran fine and my rig was shitty back then. It was a perfectly functional little city builder. People loved it and it was called the new Sim City! “Just wait two years and put down another $50 on dlc bro. Ur dumb for expecting it to be good now.” Nah this shits unacceptable. If a game needs to be supported for years before its considered good then an honest developer would call it an early access game. Ya know, those games that get years of support, updates, and features for free.
Not having 60 fps might be an issue for a shooter or anything that is built on fast reactions, but it doesn’t really sound like an issue in a city builder.
It’s still something I’d rather have than not; not having it makes for a less fluid experience.
