Just looking to gather opinions and thoughts from this community that were thinking of trying C:S II now that the game is out publicly.
Did you like it? Did you return it? Are you waiting until reports say it’s better? Does it meet your bar of playable on your system as it is right now? Are there improvements over the original you were happy to see? Are there parts you miss? Are there still things you wish for?
7600X + 6700 XT combo here.
Performance is surprisingly bearable, but the lack of optimization is really obvious. For example when you want to place a cemetery, it lags like a LOT., when terraforiming often times the height gets messed up, because of stutters. Using CPP’s 100k population, I get an 30-33 FPS while zoomed in the downtown.
Gameplay features are hit or miss. Road tools are literally amazing, but has it’s drawbacks. Somehow sometimes 90 degree intersections don’t actually turn out as 90, can’t edit lines like TM:PE, traffic sign options are a literal joke. For example you can apply stop signs onto an intersection and it just applies a FOUR WAY stop signs. No other options. Also no bike paths (will come in the future freely), no zoning like in the Industries, University, Parks DLC, lack of props (like parks for example), etc.
Buildings looks pretty cool, but these european buildings doesn’t seem that european to me (Although haven’t checked highrise yet), scaling is weird for schools, like elementary and HS is absolutely HUGE.
TLDR: It’s really really underbaked, should’ve delayed it like 6 months. I have refunded the game and returned back to C:S 1 with DLC unlocker.
You could also just put it on a list to keep an eye on and look at it in six months or a year later.
I think that a number of times, publishers put out a half-baked release but do ultimately see the issues at release fixed. Fallout 76 was horrendous at release, and while it’s still not Fallout 5, I think that the updates have made it a decent game. Cyberpunk 2077 also wasn’t ready at release, and while I haven’t looked at it recently, my understanding is that with updates and DLC, it’s also pretty decent. Paradox does have a history of titles that see a lot of post-release work.
I think that in many cases, the patientgamers crowd – wait at minimum a year after release before looking at a game – has the right idea. They may not get the absolute latest, blingiest stuff. But:
Many bugs are often fixed by then. You aren’t the guinea pig.
The hardware it runs on is cheaper and/or performance is better.
People will have done up wikis to refer to.
The game itself may cost less.
DLC is out. For many games – Paradox games in particular – a lot of the content is in the DLC, and the base game is kind of dwarfed by the DLC. For a number of these, a new title in a series isn’t going to be as good as the last before a lot of DLC has come out.
Mods are out. For some games, particularly on the PC, mods make the game vastly better.
I’m not saying that everyone should do that. But in this case, we knew going into the release – and the developer announced – that the performance wasn’t where they wanted it to be at release. So I think that this is a good candidate to wait on. Either they improve performance post-release or they won’t. Either way, you’ll know prior to purchase. Plus, hardware keeps getting faster, so to a certain degree, performance problems solve themselves.
Eh, I wouldn’t disparage the parent commentor for giving the release-day version an earnest try. Some people will be okay with the game in the state it’s in right now, some won’t, and that’s fine.
I think they also would agree they expect it to get better with another 6 months of active development, especially preparing for console release.
Yes that can be a wise solution, can’t argue with that but I don’t want to normalise the idea of releasing games in a heavily underbaked condition, which unfortunately became the norm in the recent years (although releasing too early was common in the 2000’s as well).
EDIT: I know your comment wasn’t about normalizing underbaked games at release, but I just wanted to rant a little bit.
I agree with the majority of your points. It does feel a little bit early access and the stop sign thing was a pain point.
I’ll just offer a counterpoint to your comment of Industry, Park, University district. Although the latter two don’t have much besides individual buildings to place, Industries feel way better integrated in 2 than 1. In C:S1 you had generic and specialized industry zoning which was entirely separate from the Industry district. This sort of zoning made things brought by DLC feel tacked on. We might see DLC for C:S2 work the same way but there’s an opportunity to integrate it more fully with base Cities Skylines systems, like satellite campuses and sports arenas being an “upgrade” for a college for example.
Oh yeah I have completely forgot about the specialized industries. Yes you’re absolutely right, that system works way way better than the Industries DLC version.
What resolution were you playing at?
1920x1080, even though I have a 1440p monitor.
my 6800 XT on Linux gets 30 fps at 4k on high, with dof/gi/volumetrics turned off, and lod turned down