a great many reviews so far, both positive and negative, seem to center around performance. while it's definitely true CO ♥♥♥♥ the bed a bit here, for most people these issues are fairly surmountable (if not still having enough annoying present issues like stuttering for those same users). so i feel compelled to counterbalance that by listing an assortment of the the much deeper shameful issues/annoyances in this sequel

- the improved traffic pathing would really be more appreciable if the "lifepath" of cims seemed to matter all that much. there are distinct periods of high (rush hour) and low utilization, but in terms of actual behaviors, cims interact illogically (park at location very briefly before leaving immediately), sparingly, or often not at all
- i know this is a complete rewrite of the game compared to C:S1, but how exactly did water physics manage to regress *this* badly? relatedly, don't waste your money on a hydro dam, as it appears to be wholly non-functional for power at this point...
- ...or *do* waste money on your hydro dam because it actually doesn't matter—the game economy is opaque at best and non-functional at worst. i'm not sure if people are correct in reporting a *complete absence* of logistics mechanics, but it seems like colossal order have so little confidence in this area of the game that businesses/industries can get by on an excess of goods being teleported/freely spawned in their inventories while also potentially suffering from a lack of customers and continue for an incredibly long time without ever going out of business. i've seen a couple people successfully export goods, but most people report their air/sea/train cargo connections never loading a single thing, while other people report businesses that have no outside road connection whatsoever still remaining in business, so something is seriously broken in all of this. (also good luck getting your commercial plots to ever level up with their ceaseless moaning for customers)
- you will frequently struggle to maintain a surplus, probably due in no small part to economic silliness. for most people, they probably are overbuilding services, but it is regardless more difficult than it probably should be. not to worry, though: CO have effectively papered over this by giving you particularly sizable cash bonuses every time you level up in the progression system. unless you've been running a deficit with no profits and few milestones for a while, you're unlikely to ever end up in a penny-pinching situation. this was also true to a large extent in the original game, but that was more because the economy was *easy* rather than due to it being fudged
- dealing aesthetically with lots/roads on terrain in C:S1 was never especially fun, yet here we have also managed to regress massively from "ugly" to "looks like a geometry error even if it's not". actually, building on terrain has gotten worse mechanically in general as well. twice as many slope errors (and twice as easily/sensitively), quays/bridges yelling "it's in water" at the drop of a hat for infrastructure *literally meant to be proximate to water*, even if you get a road right on terrain there's a good chance you get stuck with a disgusting retaining wall setup, etc.
- C:S2 got us all excited for increased ability to build non-car-dependent cities, in contrast to the original... then what we get instead (besides small ped paths that work similar to the original) is a single type of ugly, wide(!) pedestrian street that pedestrians don't properly utilize (maybe due to aforementioned issues with their day-to-day behavior?), but *CARS* DO LOVE TO UTILIZE (Lmao), especially if you zone commercial along it (like one normally would do with pedestrian neighborhoods). a lot of those commercial lots will end up being gas stations, too. i almost can't be mad at this one because it's so whimsical
- further frustrating your plans for a beautiful ~modern and sensible urbanist~ city plan is the fact that it is remarkably difficult to ever push your cims into utilizing the public transit you very considerately built for them. not impossible, but far more often than not you'll see marginal utilization on decent routes. also, remember how i mentioned ped pathways/streets? in your quest to wean off car dependence, you won't see a single bicycle on said pathways. maybe that's just me personally taking offense as a cyclist, but it's yet another inexplicable regression from the original game
- roads are, as everybody have noted, MASSIVELY improved in almost every practical way, yet often beyond what a seasoned player might expect. snapping is, all at once, too weak and too strong (depending on context). zoning plots becomes a planner's nightmare as you'll draw out a grid that is composed of perfect 90 degree angles and still get misaligned plots between the roads
- expecting all DLC functionality to be in this as sequel is not realistic, but—i'm gonna use this word yet again—the absolute regression here in campus areas, park areas, district zone specialization (besides industry), etc. is pretty gaping
- on release of the original basegame, the hyped-up "district/city policies" system was a little underwhelming as far as what you could really do with it (and it was only after several DLC that the policies menu had any flesh on its bones). it looks like an absolute abundance compared to the 6 or 7 policies they've given us here lol
- i've made peace with the decision to not use steam workshop in favor of (still-unreleased) Paradox Mods but that doesn't mean i don't still think it's stupid and as an imposition upon this game it's just another feeble gasp from the increasingly frail, wheezing body of paradox interactive ever since they went publicly-traded
- other cosmetic gripes. there isn't even a tasteful fog to obscure how ugly the borders of the playable map are. all vegetation and any non-sea water (like rivers and lakes) suddenly, visibly do not exist beyond the playable boundary, as do roads—they couldn't even bother with something that kind of resembles a road going off into the distance. the really funny thing is, i've seen (on the Tampere map at least) that trees *can* still render beyond the playable area and some scatter into it for tree clusters on the borderlines. they were just too lazy to add any garnish to this area otherwise. which doesn't really make you want to make use of the nearby playable area lol
- death by 1000 cuts. so much across both major and minor functionality is either practically inoperative, fairly broken, or at least a little broken/unbalanced/inconsistent, including:
> postboxes don't really seem to work. the postal system does (i think). just not postboxes. there's a lot of issues in other systems that are flat-out silly just like this
> road-naming and what the game considers a distinct road is all screwed up. i've had entire grid neighborhoods have 80% of said grid's roads considered one contiguous road. and if you build off a road, you never know how radically the game will shift what it considers to be part of the old road or a new road entirely. custom road names are not protected in this process and you will lose your custom names extremely easily. at this rate i'd rather just pretend road names don't exist anymore and hide them, but hiding labels is not an option (which it was in C:S1)
> seasonal cycles cannot be disabled and you cannot simply go to a climate that does not have seasonal cycles, because all maps/map themes are in temperate northern hemispheric climates anyway. your winter wonderland will quickly become a snowy nightmare

a great many reviews so far, both positive and negative, seem to center around performance. while it's definitely true CO shit the bed a bit here, for most people these issues are fairly surmountable (if not still having enough annoying present issues like stuttering for those same users). so i feel compelled to counterbalance that by listing an assortment of the the much deeper shameful issues/annoyances in this sequel - the improved traffic pathing would really be more appreciable if the "lifepath" of cims seemed to matter all that much. there are distinct periods of high (rush hour) and low utilization, but in terms of actual behaviors, cims interact illogically (park at location very briefly before leaving immediately), sparingly, or often not at all - i know this is a complete rewrite of the game compared to C:S1, but how exactly did water physics manage to regress *this* badly? relatedly, don't waste your money on a hydro dam, as it appears to be wholly non-functional for power at this point... - ...or *do* waste money on your hydro dam because it actually doesn't matter—the game economy is opaque at best and non-functional at worst. i'm not sure if people are correct in reporting a *complete absence* of logistics mechanics, but it seems like colossal order have so little confidence in this area of the game that businesses/industries can get by on an excess of goods being teleported/freely spawned in their inventories while also potentially suffering from a lack of customers and continue for an incredibly long time without ever going out of business. i've seen a couple people successfully export goods, but most people report their air/sea/train cargo connections never loading a single thing, while other people report businesses that have no outside road connection whatsoever still remaining in business, so something is seriously broken in all of this. (also good luck getting your commercial plots to ever level up with their ceaseless moaning for customers) - you will frequently struggle to maintain a surplus, probably due in no small part to economic silliness. for most people, they probably are overbuilding services, but it is regardless more difficult than it probably should be. not to worry, though: CO have effectively papered over this by giving you particularly sizable cash bonuses every time you level up in the progression system. unless you've been running a deficit with no profits and few milestones for a while, you're unlikely to ever end up in a penny-pinching situation. this was also true to a large extent in the original game, but that was more because the economy was *easy* rather than due to it being fudged - dealing aesthetically with lots/roads on terrain in C:S1 was never especially fun, yet here we have also managed to regress massively from "ugly" to "looks like a geometry error even if it's not". actually, building on terrain has gotten worse mechanically in general as well. twice as many slope errors (and twice as easily/sensitively), quays/bridges yelling "it's in water" at the drop of a hat for infrastructure *literally meant to be proximate to water*, even if you get a road right on terrain there's a good chance you get stuck with a disgusting retaining wall setup, etc. - C:S2 got us all excited for increased ability to build non-car-dependent cities, in contrast to the original... then what we get instead (besides small ped paths that work similar to the original) is a single type of ugly, wide(!) pedestrian street that pedestrians don't properly utilize (maybe due to aforementioned issues with their day-to-day behavior?), but *CARS* DO LOVE TO UTILIZE (Lmao), especially if you zone commercial along it (like one normally would do with pedestrian neighborhoods). a lot of those commercial lots will end up being gas stations, too. i almost can't be mad at this one because it's so whimsical - further frustrating your plans for a beautiful ~modern and sensible urbanist~ city plan is the fact that it is remarkably difficult to ever push your cims into utilizing the public transit you very considerately built for them. not impossible, but far more often than not you'll see marginal utilization on decent routes. also, remember how i mentioned ped pathways/streets? in your quest to wean off car dependence, you won't see a single bicycle on said pathways. maybe that's just me personally taking offense as a cyclist, but it's yet another inexplicable regression from the original game - roads are, as everybody have noted, MASSIVELY improved in almost every practical way, yet often beyond what a seasoned player might expect. snapping is, all at once, too weak and too strong (depending on context). zoning plots becomes a planner's nightmare as you'll draw out a grid that is composed of perfect 90 degree angles and still get misaligned plots between the roads - expecting all DLC functionality to be in this as sequel is not realistic, but—i'm gonna use this word yet again—the absolute regression here in campus areas, park areas, district zone specialization (besides industry), etc. is pretty gaping - on release of the original basegame, the hyped-up "district/city policies" system was a little underwhelming as far as what you could really do with it (and it was only after several DLC that the policies menu had any flesh on its bones). it looks like an absolute abundance compared to the 6 or 7 policies they've given us here lol - i've made peace with the decision to not use steam workshop in favor of (still-unreleased) Paradox Mods but that doesn't mean i don't still think it's stupid and as an imposition upon this game it's just another feeble gasp from the increasingly frail, wheezing body of paradox interactive ever since they went publicly-traded - other cosmetic gripes. there isn't even a tasteful fog to obscure how ugly the borders of the playable map are. all vegetation and any non-sea water (like rivers and lakes) suddenly, visibly do not exist beyond the playable boundary, as do roads—they couldn't even bother with something that kind of resembles a road going off into the distance. the really funny thing is, i've seen (on the Tampere map at least) that trees *can* still render beyond the playable area and some scatter into it for tree clusters on the borderlines. they were just too lazy to add any garnish to this area otherwise. which doesn't really make you want to make use of the nearby playable area lol - death by 1000 cuts. so much across both major and minor functionality is either practically inoperative, fairly broken, or at least a little broken/unbalanced/inconsistent, including: > postboxes don't really seem to work. the postal system does (i think). just not postboxes. there's a lot of issues in other systems that are flat-out silly just like this > road-naming and what the game considers a distinct road is all screwed up. i've had entire grid neighborhoods have 80% of said grid's roads considered one contiguous road. and if you build off a road, you never know how radically the game will shift what it considers to be part of the old road or a new road entirely. custom road names are not protected in this process and you will lose your custom names extremely easily. at this rate i'd rather just pretend road names don't exist anymore and hide them, but hiding labels is not an option (which it was in C:S1) > seasonal cycles cannot be disabled and you cannot simply go to a climate that does not have seasonal cycles, because all maps/map themes are in temperate northern hemispheric climates anyway. your winter wonderland will quickly become a snowy nightmare