In the years following its release in 2015, City: skyline set a new standard for city building simulators. The game’s mundane tasks—drawing street grids, zoning neighborhoods, designing bus networks, and locating garbage dumps—were made engaging and fun by a realistic, detailed game engine and graphics that made you feel like the city you were tinkering with was a living city. , something that breathes.
Hopes were therefore high that the sequel, Cities: Skylines II,would build on the success of the first game. Instead it was universally considered a gigantic flop. Only the most sophisticated gaming computers were capable of handling its processing demands. Even then, the gameplay was buggy and the graphics disappointing. AS Ars Tecnica say it, the second Skylines “it looks rough compared to its predecessor, which amassed eight years of fixes… and changes to cover a dizzying array of ideas.”
As disappointing as its launch may be for players, Cities: Skylines II provides a teachable moment on the game’s topic: urban planning is difficult, even in digital form. The best-laid plans begin to crumble once they come into contact with the incessant dynamism of real urban areas.
The first Skylines it benefited from simpler initial ambitions complemented by fixes and updates over time. The second game tried to launch a bigger, more ambitious simulator all at once and failed miserably. Even in real life, for a city, small fixes and updates are better than a big plan.
This article originally appeared in print under the headline “Cities: Skylines II.”