Cities: Skylines

The EA-killer itself. Amazing what the development group produced with this game. After SC2013 was such a let down, they knock it out of the park. Here's hoping the sequel doesn't suck.

~just my opinion~
---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☑ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS

---{ Gameplay }---
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't

---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf

---{ Audience }---
☑ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Grandma

---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☑ Decent
☑ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{ Game Size }---
☐ Floppy Disk
☐ Old Fashioned
☑ Workable
☐ Big
☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data

---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls

---{ Grind }---
☑ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding

---{ Story }---
☑ No Story
☐ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life

---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☐ Average
☐ Long
☑ To infinity and beyond

---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☐ Worth the price
☐ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☑ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{ Bugs }---
☐ Never heard of
☑ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☐ 8
☑ 9
☐ 10

Cities Skylines is a strong city-building game that offers plenty of tools to craft your dream metropolis. While the traffic management for the citizens can be downright maddening, with endless congestion even in seemingly well-designed networks, it does add an element of strategic thinking to the gameplay. The DLC packs expand the game significantly, introducing new features and options to enhance the experience, but they can be quite expensive if purchased all at once.

One fun aspect is seeing them go about their daily lives—watching them head to work, visit shops, go to school, and return home gives the city a lively, realistic vibe. One of the game's best features is its vibrant modding community. With custom assets and mods available through the Steam Workshop, you can tweak almost every aspect of your city, from unique buildings to tools that improve traffic flow. Overall, it's a solid choice for fans of city management simulations.

The sheer amount of dlc makes me regret buying this game. And on top of that it hasn't been reasonably priced even 10 years later. I got 20 hours out of this game and never touched it again because the base game is missing a lot. Not sure why the simulation genre is so riddled with this horrible trend where there are 100s of dlcs all priced 10+ dollars each. And on top of that, Paradox requires their useless launcher for the game. I won't be buying Cities Skylines 2 and I am now wholly uninterested in games made by paradox.

This game has made me rage quit more than any first person shooter game I've ever played. It's addicting but extremely complicated, and the tutorial was hardly a tutorial. I find myself constantly googling how to do various things because the "tutorial" did not show me how. Once i think i'm in the clear, things go straight back into the shitter, and end up losing all the money I've made, and is damn near impossible to get back. I thought this was going to be a fun and relaxing sim tycoon game, but I was very very wrong. So glad i bought this when it was on sale for $2.99 instead of paying full price. Could be a skill issue, sure. I will continue to play the game because I do enjoy playing it when things go well, and hope to get better in the future, but i'm just not understanding why it has to be so extremely difficult from the get go. Again, the tutorial was hardly a tutorial. For a game that is so in depth, it needs an in depth tutorial.

No matter what you do the populous complains to the point where I just want to go Joseph Stalin on them all, the balancing act of maintaining a city is more annoying than anything, ESPECIALLY when you carefully plan things out logically and to the methods that a REAL city would thrive from, NOPE not in this game, the algorithms are there to punish you rather than provide rewarding realism based on real world economics and logic. Oh and the "chirper" which is essentially a simulated twitter feed from city residents in game is an abomination that constantly chirps and cannot be shut off.

I'm not review bombing over DLC or the state of CS2. But I'm coming back to this game after a bit of a hiatus. In the meantime, I've played Workers and Resources, OpenTTD, Transport Fever 2, and Rail Route in this niche of gaming. The thing that just baffles me right out the gate, starting a new map, is just how bad the road laying tools are. Not that W&R gets credit for being easy, it's not. But it's amazing to me that this game had the success it did, with the positive reviews it had (until now) with these major flaws.

First off, you're starting a map with a divided highway going through it. Yet, you don't actually have those types of roads unlocked, namely high speed on and off ramps. So you can't even manipulate the goofy interchange they put on the map for you. OK fine, I'll use the one way single lane roads with a low speed limit. And as much as I hate them IRL and in game, let's see if I can build a cloverleaf so I can just get stuff started. The way roads connect and interact is so bad, I just can't even continue. Even with anarchy, which really just makes your roads look glitched and stupid. You can't create a proper angled ramp. It's basically a little intersection that curves steeply off the road you're connecting to. The way this game cannot properly handle road connected at angles makes it a fundamental no from me. I've seen plenty of content creators trying to solve this problem to try to create semi realistic intersections and interchanges. The fact that you have to sit there and fiddle with something that should be EASY in a game like this is just sad. If I want to sit and fiddle with complicated things, I'll play Oxygen not Included or W&R. CS is supposed to be approachable. But instead of trying my hand at city design, I'm spending the last hour trying to work around the limits of this game before even planting one zone.

Have been playing this since it came out, so over 10 years now. This is definitely THE BEST city building game. Enjoy every second of it. Especially with the mods from Steam workshop, you can make everything you want come true in this game. Yes there is a Cities: Skylines II but you should not go for that given all the crappy bugs. CHOOSE THIS ONE instead.

"Z:\Games\steamapps\common\Cities_Skylines\Cities.exe" %command%

Right click the game in your library
Go to properties
Paste this line under launch option, replacing the file path with your own

Enjoy the game without needing paradox's dumbass launcher

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☑ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS

---{ Gameplay }---
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't

---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf

---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☑ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{ Game Size }---
☐ Floppy Disk
☐ Old Fashioned
☐ Workable
☑ Big
☐ Will eat 15% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data

---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls

---{ Grind }---
☑ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding

---{ Story }---
☑ No Story
☐ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life

---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☐ Worth the price
☑ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{ Bugs }---
☑ Never heard of
☐ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☑ 7
☐ 8
☐ 9
☐ 10

Cities: Skylines is a fantastic city-building game and, unfortunately, still far superior to Cities: Skylines II. Even after a decade, it remains the best in its genre. The level of detail, modding support, and creative freedom make it a must-play for any city-building enthusiast. Highly recommended!

I cannot play this game. It doesn't run. I have not even seen the main menu screen. I guess the company/devs require a launcher to be installed. I don't know. I can't play tech wizard just to run a game. I use steam for the ease of double click game and play, but I can't even have that luxury.

Getting very tired of the forced updates. These ALWAYS break the game. CS should leave this game to those that love it and support it, and not provide unnecessary updates which NO ONE who plays and loves this game asked for. Looks like just 'another company trying to earn money from their past achievements'>

there is one thing i don't understand....this game is on xbox so why is there no controller support on steam...makes no sense add controller support and i'll give more than 5 stars 5/10

Good game for the price, especially with the sale. However, I cannot recommend the devs. Please look at the extra content available for this game that could have been included if it were not for these devs: 69 ADDITIONAL ITEMS. SIXTY-NINE. This is like No Man's Sky in reverse. Normally, if these devs were more attentive to the will of the playerbase, they would include more in the base game. Instead, ever since I bought this game, all I see are extremely minor updates that really don't affect the gameplay, PLUS some super cool DLC that costs even more money than a $30 game. I like the game, but I can't support these devs or Paradox for the above reasons.

Death by a thousand cuts.

The base game is very basic, and you'll be quick to find things that where included in Transport Tycoon Deluxe (1995) or SimCity2000 are blatantly missing and packed into tiny tiny DLCs. So yeah, even if you buy the base game at 90% off I consider it to be so stripped down it's not worth considering it to be a playable city builder. So then you check what DLC you might want and quickly find that to even get to a point where a basic city builder experience is achieved you are spending well beyond what a AAA game would normally cost.

To top that, if you are a completionist and want the whole thing you are looking at spending $400 or more. At that price point it's hard to see the value proposition making sense from a consumer standpoint.

Just to see what the full game with all DLC is actually like, I "played it at a friends house". It's quite good, but not $400 good. Maybe if the base game wasn't stripped down to a point where it's boring to play for more than an hour and the full DLC experience wasn't this ridiculously priced it might have grabbed me more... but in the end I regret buying the base game, regret spending time on it and I am committed to never buying the DLC unless the entire purchase comes down below $35. I just wouldn't be able to enjoy myself knowing I paid more than that.

They keep updating it. News flash: you have the sequel out already, stick to ruining that and leave CS1 alone.

I love this game but the choice to update it in such a way that breaks some of the best mods keeping this game alive in 2025 while you flounder over your absolute dumpster fire of a sequel is dastardly and and a P.O.S move. the game was fine. We literally dont care about whatever 10 year content you wanted to throw in. get a grip

$10 a month subscription service lmfao

It feels like the developers released an unfinished game, expecting modders to fix everything while selling overpriced DLCs. Without mods, traffic is a mess, the economy makes no sense, and you spend more time fighting the game than actually building a city. Tropico 5 may be simpler, but at least it's fun—and being a dictator there is way less frustrating than being a mayor in this chaos.

Paradox DLC policy and selling are obscene, it's not worth the prices

fuck off with subscription services! Just get the game and all DLC through "alternative sources." A "FIT GIRL" who likes to "REPACK" might be able to help you if you look around on Reddit ;)

Imagine making a subscription-based service for a 10 year old game. Atrocious.

good game, but for ducks sake, the dlcs cost (at least in the current sale) almost 30x the base game price... also why do you have to have your own launcher? it get's annoying and makes it harder to play on linux

Cities: Skylines is the perfect game for anyone who loves building, planning, and managing a city from the ground up. It gives you complete control over every aspect of your city, from zoning and traffic management to public services and policies. The level of detail is incredible, and the freedom to design your city exactly how you want makes every playthrough unique.

The game does an amazing job of balancing creativity with challenge. It starts off simple, but as your city grows, you'll face real-world urban planning problems like traffic congestion, pollution, and budget management. Solving these issues is incredibly satisfying and keeps you engaged for hours. The modding community also adds endless possibilities, with new assets, mechanics, and features that take the game even further.

Cities: Skylines is one of those games where you sit down to play for an hour and suddenly realize the whole night has passed. Whether you're a casual player just looking to build a beautiful city or someone who enjoys the challenge of optimizing every system, this game has something for everyone. It's an absolute must-play for city-building fans.

You like complete game? I present to you DLC, You turds think you can enjoy a game without paying extra? DLC IS FOR YOU. MAKE GAMING GREAT AGAIN BY BUYING 2000$ WORTH OF BRAINDEAD CONTENT THAT JUST ADD NUMBER IN THE GAME.
You want content? Fawk off with this non-sense!! WE HEIR TO MAKE DE MONEY. You, YOU, CONSUMER, GIVE US YOUR MONEY!! HEY SHEEP, IM TALKING TO YOU!!! YOU WANT US TO MAKE A SUBSCRIPTION FOR A 2015 GAME? FINE!!

Excessive quantities of dlc that are necessary to have a complete game. Some of which feeling like they were just tacked on with little regard for how they fit into a city given the limited size of maps. Runs terribly, and still runs bad in the sequel. Have fun running mods when the mod creators fill your page file with 50GB of uncompressed assets. Straight up don't bother, you'll be fighting the game more than anything as it's mechanics aren't fleshed out enough for what you'd want to do with the systems.

Love this game to bits.
This development and publishing team is something else though.

They struggle to make the right move consistently. Even in instances where there could be literally no wrong move they defy expectation and release SUBSCRIPTION services for a decade old game- as a little "thank you" for its literal 10th year of existing. As if insult to injury they are not even cheap GamePass levels of subscriptions. We are talking $52.99 CAD for 6 Months access- OVER $100 Canadian dollars for a YEAR subscription. They have clearly been aspiring to be the Adobe of the gaming genre with this one.

Keep in mind, this move for subscriptions is just the newest "What are you even doing" move in a long list of them from this group. Just off the top of my head:

First it was the endless DLC slog that added just enough useful crap in between that actual utter garbage that you'd be hard pressed not to buy it for $20 here, $20 there.
On to the "Paradox Launcher" update where they post launch, years later, added the additional pop-up prompt.
Coupled with the brand new "If you start this game you consent to us harvesting data from you" Terms of Service changes.
Followed by another handful of shlock DLC.
Straight into the ongoing disaster that was Cities Skylines 2. No content, ugly content, broken content. They walked back their own deluxe edition content because how awful it was. Radio silence. No initial mod support, no Steam Workshop support- now you need to use their service "Paradox Mods" to get community mods to fix their broken game

Now here we are. As a huge thank you for ten years of people playing the original game that made them the leaders in this genre. Ten years of content creators, streamers, youtubers. Ten years of modders who made the game amazing to play-

Subscriptions. Subscriptions and THREE more DLCs on the 25th of March.

It seems after the Cities Skylines 2 pre-order money has dried up they have doubled back to this gem to stomp and squeeze a little more out of it instead of trying to make CS2 palatable.



So here is a helpful list.
- Avoid all "Radio" DLC. Its overpriced filler garbage for bundles to inflate the price.

- The Content Creator packs are big hit or miss'. There are youtubers who have reviewed the packs content.

- Don't buy the Map bundles. Workshop map creators are incredible. Use the workshop.

- Mods will make the game. Use the workshop. People have made "collection packs"

- The big DLCs that add to or change the game are as followed: After dark, Snowfall, Natural Disasters, Mass Transit, Green cities, Parklife, Industries, Campus, Sunset Harbour, Airports, Plazas & Promenades, Financial Districts, Hotels & Retreats.

- Never pay full price for this stuff. I recommend you look up "isthereanydeal" (is there any deal) They list every legitimate site that has authorised game keys. There are other places too. Just don't pay full for this.

Subscriptions. Ha.

Big fat "NO!" to all attempts to integrate a subscription model into a single-player game! Instead of debugging and polishing the second iteration of the game, the devs decided to do a quick money grab by seemingly giving away the first base game and, at the same time, introducing an all-dlc subscription! A subscription to get access to all those overpriced dlcs! Such a shameful act of disrespect to the players must not be tolerated! If these bunch of lazybones succeeds, each and every new game will be cut into pieces and then infinitely sold to us – players – via atrocious subscriptions!

I love City Skylines, but not enough to recommend a game that has SO much DLC that the company making it builds a whole new subscription service around it.

Games like this is the reason why many people just play it via other means. A few hundred dollars in DLC, and then to celebrate their anniversary you can enjoy paying a subscription fee if you want them instead. Because we live in a world where everyone loves even more subscriptions!

They could have done better bundles and deals instead of a subscription. But they are betting on you forgetting that you subbed and continue paying it for a while, even after you are done playing it. I could pay the 10 bucks and get a lot of hours played in that single month and be done with the game. And then cancel it. Or they could just charge 30 bucks for a bundle with everything. The cheaper subscription will probably net them more since people do forget. I would prefer paying 30 bucks over 10 for the month.

But, they won't do that, so I won't pay them another cent.

DLC policy, all that needs to be said really.

When you are so delusional about DLC pricing that you need to add a subscription service for it :D

Score: 9/10

Cities: Skylines is one of the best city-building games out there, offering a relaxing yet deeply engaging experience. It’s the perfect blend of creativity and strategy, allowing you to shape your city however you like while tackling the unique challenges each map presents.

I’ve built countless cities across different maps, and no two have ever felt the same. The game constantly keeps you thinking—whether it’s optimizing traffic flow, managing resources, or handling unexpected crises. Watching a small town grow into a thriving metropolis is incredibly rewarding, and the freedom to experiment with layouts and policies makes each playthrough feel fresh.

If you enjoy slow-paced, thoughtful gameplay where you can take your time and build something truly impressive, Cities: Skylines is a must-play. It’s a game I keep coming back to, and I doubt I’ll ever stop finding new ways to design the perfect city.

The game is better than CS2 and I enjoyed the game. But I am not impressed to see a subscription model added to a 10 year old game,

CIties 2 is still terrible to this day. Economy has had updates, but still not running properly. lodging is an issue, no customers but brings in mega cash. high education people? do they exist?

Cities 1 is great, but with it's age why is all the DLC still so damn expensive?
The amount of DLC that is almost a requirement will set you back $100 quite easily.

Time for paradox to drop pricing by 50% permanently, then have sales from those prices.. the game is 10 years old, theres no reason DLC should be full priced.

Don't buy if you don't plan on spending atleast 100 euros more on DLCs. (just pirate the game)

This game is easy or challenging depending one the setting one inputs. There are tons of helpful mods, and its very immersive in all the layers of city building, right down to trash, crime, sewage and traffic. I can play this game for hours, also very relaxing to sit in and just create.

I love this game. But i recommend after the game being out for a DECADE...wait until they make a sale that is at least 75% for everything. If you cant wait, I only recommend purchasing the base game, industries, nightlife, and mass transit. The others are money grabs and mostly add assets that the community members already significantly provide (thank you to you community members for such a memorable experience). Thank you Colossal Order for developing such a beautiful experience. However, I am very disappointed that at a 10 year anniversary this company (I think its the publisher's move) still did not provide a decent sale. That is how insulting this is being perceived; so you receive a not recommend. To celebrate publicly but not really include/provide access for all is diabolical levels G.

Cities is one of my favorite games. Every time I come back to it, I spend days playing it before not touching it again for the year. I really wish it had more content, but I'm too poor to afford all the DLC. The fact that this game is OLD and has excess DLC, all of which is full price, is really demoralizing to someone who's already struggling for the basics. c:

Has 500 DLC's all being sold at full price despite releasing an inferior sequel.

Borderline unplayable without mods, if I could rate this game I would give it a 3/10, but the mods bring it easily up to a 7 or 8.

But they are mods made for free by the community, and given Paradox's nature as a bunch of greedy bastards it's probably only a matter of time before they start bundling and charging for mod packs like they are with Crusader Kings.

Paradox you are a shell of your former selves and it's just sad to see how you have fallen into the greed trap.

Game is good, but this company doesn't respect it's customers. You can buy DLCs for this game relatively cheap off of random keystores, yet they want to start a subscription service to catch ignorant customers who lack this knowledge. Mind you, this is being done 10 YEARS after release AND after the failure of the newest game in their series. Do not fall for this trickery. If you do not own this game already, or if you are thinking about buying DLC for it, look on safe, alternative market places for sales rather than opt into a subscription service that will likely cost you more in the long run.

Best game ever. I still preferred it over sequal, and it's great that new content is still coming to this game...

was playing and then the FUCKING game fucking crashed and i lost over 3 fucking days of progress (a whole ass transit hub, some random fucking interchanges and shit) and now im so fucking frustrated over a game. recommended

With the additional DLC's, this game is a constant for me. I currently still prefer it over the latest version but I assume that is because the latest updates to the new game is still in its infancy.I love going back trying different maps in this game and creating stories out of my builds. Thanks to the City Planner plays youtube I have a deeper understanding and appreciation of the game and often find myself absorbed in to the reality and metropolis I have built. It helps me feel better about the chaos that is this world and city I live in.

its really Fun, i can spend hours without a Break. but i musst say that the Dlc´s are way to overpriced so stay away, or get it in a Sale, i do not recommend to buy City skylines to the people who doesnt have alot of money.

great game better than the second one for now more content and more mod friendly 10/10 would recommend

Such great games, such awful business practices. I wait more than half a decade for a normal game to go on sale, and then I pay $20–$30 a game that runs well and includes all its dlc. I wait more than half a decade to buy a Paradox game, and end up paying more than you would for an "Ultimate Edition" AAA game at launch, and that's only cherry picking the absolutely necessary dlcs. I love Cities: Skylines, but I refuse to play any other Paradox game because of their pricing. The performance is also god-awful on top-tier systems, in 2 days it celebrates its 10th anniversary since release and it still can't break 60fps on top of the line hardware with all settings set to the lowest preset. Upscaling and frame generation don't even shine either, because the starting framerate is so awful.

this game is so in depth and for the first one in the series, with some mods, its damn near perfect. The graphics are a bit goofy, with cars lifting their wheels around corners, and the vanilla buildings leave something to be desired. Gameplay however is smooth and user friendly. 8/10 game, my favourite city builder.

Good for making digital trainsets too

The gameplay loop is pretty simple but satisfying, however I find it gets boring once your city gets to around 12-13k population. I keep coming back every now and again and try to build a better city than before.