Cities Skylines 2 reviews prove launch issues are worse than expected

Despite warnings, Cities: Skylines 2‘s performance issues have been worse than anyone could have imagined, and it’s leading to some quite sour reviews this week.

At the time of writing, Cities: Skylines 2 sits at a meager 39 percent positive reviews on Steam, with many players complaining about poor performance and stability, even on the best PC hardware money could buy.

“Who would imagine we would get another unoptimized mess in 2023… I am tired, boss,” reads the top-ranking negative review. Particularly striking are the reviews by players who claim they own the RTX 4090, arguably the best graphics card on the market, and still only manage to get FPS in the low 50s with the minimum graphics settings.

Players on Steam weren’t the only ones involved with bombarding the game with negative or mild reviews. On Metacritic, Cities: Skylines 2 has an average score of 76, with most reviews criticizing its bad performance and launch state. It’s nearly 10 points below its predecessor, which is often hailed as one of the best city-builder games of all time. Cities: Skylines 2 had a lot to live up to and certainly still can if it gets rid of the underlying problems plaguing its performance.

Paradox and Colossal Order issued a joint statement on Paradox Plaza on Oct. 15, before launch, warning players of performance issues.

In the warning, the devs suggested Cities: Skylines 2 wasn’t reaching expected benchmark results but that it’s nonetheless ready to release. The game’s console release was delayed until Spring of next year for the same reasons.

It’s unclear why Paradox decided to delay one version and release another if they were both unfinished. Whatever the reason, there’s still hope patches and updates will bring Cities: Skylines 2 up to speed, but the situation is surely doing damage to CO’s and Paradox’s reputation.