Why Are We so Excited about Cities: Skylines 2?

It's entirely possible that Cities: Skylines 2 is the most eagerly anticipated game the 2Game editorial team has ever had. Sure enough, we've been talking about the exciting prospect of building awesome new cities and townships with powerful new tools, but the discussions go back further still. You see, over the years, we've tackled the topic of a Skylines sequel over and over again:

This wasn't just based on pure excitement, either. The city-builder genre had been trucking slowly along for the longest time. Arguably, since the release of the first Cities: Skylines back in 2015! This meant that there really was no way that, at the very least, a Skylines sequel was coming. And, yes, we ended up being right, but that was just the start of it.

What's with all the fuss?

A sequel isn't a proper sequel unless it meaningfully innovates on what came before. We'll admit: we were a tad worried early on whether Skylines 2 could ever truly top its predecessor. Yet, as soon as the developer, Colossal Order, started releasing actual gameplay overviews, it became clear that our concerns were unfounded. In other words, we're in for a very, very important release this October, and it's going to move the genre forward in a big, meaningful way.

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What Makes Cities: Skylines 2 Such a Big Deal?

Broadly speaking, it appears that Cities: Skylines 2 is here to redefine the city-building genre in all the meaningful ways. In 2015, Skylines was released to a far more crowded context, with genuine competitors coming in at least every so often. Its goal, then, was to establish itself as the city-building experience to choose. In 2023, on the other hand, Skylines 2 has no competition whatsoever. Its goals need to be different by definition because it's competing solely with its own series predecessor.

It's good, then, that Colossal Order seemingly understands this. Skylines 2 would be a failure had it simply been Skylines: Electric Boogaloo, but that's not what it is. The goal, instead, appears to be to streamline the gameplay and empower the player. A big step forward, in all the ways that matter.

If we're being honest, though, there are some reasons one might be concerned here. They are the game's bumped-up hardware requirements and its release date pushbacks, respectively.

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Higher System Requirements: A Cause for Concern?

It's no secret that the original Cities: Skylines was quite hard to run once you reached the endgame. Even today, in fact, on super high-end hardware that goes far and beyond anything available back in 2015. Obviously, Skylines 2 is going to push the envelope if you build out your cityscape to an extreme level. That much is a given. Will it scale well with modern hardware, though? Because the original absolutely did not, having been optimized for stuff that was way different from what we ended up using over the years.

As you may have heard, Colossal Order recently bumped up Cities: Skylines 2's core hardware requirements by a fair margin. It wasn't a small nudge, either: find both both the old and the new system requirements in the section below:

OUTDATED - Minimum PC Hardware Specifications

NEW - Minimum PC Hardware Specifications

OUTDATED - Recommended PC Hardware Specifications

NEW - Recommended PC Hardware Specifications

As we said, we're looking at a significant increase here. The question we need to ask, then, is whether these new specs are an overcorrection, or if the old ones were an out-of-date placeholder. Not a great sign if you were on the edge beforehand, only to be completely blown out of the water after the update.

Still, the new specs do allow for lots of flexibility, and they're not necessarily cause for concern. We will need to wait and see how the benchmarks pan out, simple as!

What About Release Pushbacks?

The second major potential caveat is the fact that Skylines 2 got a big console release date pushback very recently. As announced on the official Paradox forums, console versions of Cities: Skylines 2 will be coming out in Spring 2024, though the silver lining is that the PC version is still due to launch on October 24.

Phew, right?

But what if it's not? This could certainly be taken to mean that the game is in a roughshod state, even today - two weeks before it comes out on PC - and that Colossal Order isn't at the stage it was hoping to be at, months ago. If we were cynical, we'd subscribe to this notion. Yet, we can't help but feel that this should've been anticipated.

Developing a city-building game for consoles is something entirely different than it is to develop it for PC. Colossal Order absolutely should take more time to tune it well enough to work on gamepads, and the fact that we didn't get a more comprehensive pushback even on PC is a good sign. We're not worried, in other words!

A New Era of City Building is Almost Here

To be perfectly honest, we fully anticipate that Cities: Skylines 2 will need tweaks and tune-ups for months after it comes out. This is a big and important release, and the community is bound to have loads of feedback for Colossal Order as the game comes out. Moreover, if it's anything like its predecessor, we're looking at a ridiculously long post-launch content tail.

The potential, then, is immense. If you're a city-building fan, you will be playing this game, no two ways about it, and we'd even go so far as to compare it to Football Manager in the context of niche coverage. Add comprehensive modding support to the mix, and you've got something truly awesome brewing. We're just a hop and a skip away, now, so stay tuned - 2Game's going to have a lot of content ready to go on day one and beyond!

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It’s entirely possible that Cities: Skylines 2 is the most eagerly anticipated game the 2Game editorial team has ever had. Sure enough, we’ve been talking about the exciting prospect of building awesome new cities and townships with powerful new tools, but the discussions go back further still. You see, over the years, we’ve tackled the topic of […]