Review in Progress: Cities: Skylines 2

destructoid.com:

It’s hard to tell when you’re done with a game like Cities: Skylines 2. I’ve got a habit of playing anything with a similar hook until I hate it. It’s typically weeks upon weeks of fascination, and then I drop it when I’ve exhausted every point of novelty backward and forwards. It’s not my usual habit, but when I find a sim, a survival game, an MMO, or something of that nature, and it just clicks, that’s usually my go-to for a while.

I find there’s a lot of that pull in most games even tangentially related, whether it’s the building mechanics in Valheim or the budgeting of another Theme Park sim. If you ask me where you’ll find Cities: Skylines 2 on my scale of teeth-grinding fury to infinitely satisfying, it’s hard to say right now. It’s somewhere at the intersection of tedium and delight — at any given moment, I can’t tell if I’m more frustrated or charmed by its sea of menus, alerts, and tools.

In its current state, Cities certainly has its problems, most of which involve performance. Developer Colossal Order has been upfront about as much, and for the purposes of my review, I’ve played two builds. This latest one I’ve gotten pretty recently, so I can’t speak to the game as a whole, but I can share my experience thus far until I work out a final perspective.

Cities Skylines 2 (PC [Reviewed], Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5)
Developer: Colossal Order
Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Released: October 24, 2023
MSRP: $49.99

Perhaps you’ve inferred as much from the screenshots, but I’m no civil engineer. I do, however, get a real kick out of perfectly lining up tiles in Cities: Skylines 2. I like zoning off new buildings for construction, eagerly waiting to see what type of business pops up from my random selection of tiles.