Cities: Skylines 2 looks set to found a new era of city building

thesixthaxis.com:

When you think of city builders over the last decade, there’s only one name that still comes to mind: Cities: Skylines. The breakout success for Colossal Order and (at the time) the biggest game launch Paradox Interactive had ever seen, it’s effectively came to represent the entire genre, as other city builder franchises faded away. Having gone hands on with the game, Cities: Skylines 2 looks set to repeat the feat and cement itself at the top of the genre.

A city builder starts with the road-laying tools, and Cities: Skylines 2 refines and expands upon the already pretty solid offerings of the first game. The fundamentals will be instantly familiar and usable for anyone that played the original, from placing straight roads on a strict grid to putting in curves and winding sections with just a few quick clicks, but there’s some new and exciting options to be found as well. Asymmetrical roads give you three lanes split unevenly between directions, catering better to heavier directional traffic or letting you siphon off from a route with a bespoke turning lane, going hand in hand with the more intelligent traffic AI. You can also now add alleyways to enhance your New York-style cities (and you can also place a quick grid, if you like) or place pedestrianised roads if you want to be more European, and roundabouts are an actual feature instead of an awkward collection of curving road sections.

Oh, and those roads are automatically plumbed for water and sewage, and wired for electricity, smoothing out some of the busywork that accompanied every early game and city expansion in the original. Then again, there’s some new tasks and quirks to get accustomed to with the other utilities. Pipes and cables don’t run through bridges, so