That said, it's not perfect. But knowing both the developers and publishers behind it, it is bound to continue growing into what I can only imagine will be a genre-defining game for at least a decade, and the foundation laid is already extremely solid.
I am not surprised to see the game hovering at 50% user reviews on Steam. But I would be *shocked* if that didn't grow to 90+% over time and become a gaming classic. Just the sheer amount of technical prowess on display here is beyond impressive.
It's not that the cities have gotten larger or more content-rich - in this department, C:S2 is so far a downgrade compared to its predecessor. But the amount of customization, control, and insight granted to players, rivals honestly even the most detailed macro-scale simulations of all time: Dwarf Fortress, Football Manager, Flight Simulator X are some that come to mind, and in terms of sheer simulational complexity, C:S2 may even be ahead of most of them.
It's an absolute mechanical marvel.
So, after a few hours with Cities Skylines 2, what stands out to me the most - beyond the technical shortcomings and performance issues - is the complexity of the simulation and the level of detail in creating a virtual world.
If you showed a SimCity 4-obsessed me from 2005 this game, I would hardly be able to believe such level of accuracy in simulation would ever be possible.
What C:S2 does exceptionally well, is not upping the scale - but making the scale resonate a lot more than C:S did.
"President Biden joined a group of striking autoworkers on a picket line in Michigan on Tuesday, an extraordinary gesture of support to a labor union by a sitting American president." ~NYT
Okay, that's great. But what kind of dystopian, fucked up society we have created where *the most important official in the world* personally shows support for a union, and the corporations are not expected to immediately fold? They wield more power than *the sitting U.S. President*. Try to parse that.