Despite being one of the most eagerly awaited releases of 2023 in the genre of city builders, Cities: Skylines II has received mixed criticism due to its performance on PC at launch. Even though Paradox Interactive and Colossal Order warned the fans about the state of the game, it's a hard pill to swallow, and the game has been subject to negative reviews on Steam. Still, the developer studio keeps working on improving the game as planned, and the first big update for Cities: Skylines II is available already.
Working hard to fix the problems
The first post-release patch for Cities: Skylines II includes several optimizations that do not solve all of its problems, but it's a good starting point for a game that could very well be considered as in Early Access.
- Changed LOD to be independent of rendering resolution to get more consistent performance with high resolutions
- Minor optimization with fog
- Depth of field optimizations and tweaks
- Global illumination tweaks
- Optimized stutters when buildings spawn/level up
- Optimized various stutters across all systems
- Fixed crash after upgrading wind turbine
- Fixed crash when car crashes into still hidden car with trailer
- Fixed crash with mesh loading (that happens with low settings mostly)
Developer Colossal Order has also stated that the performance problems of Cities: Skylines II are not as severe as some may think. They have identified most of them and are working on possible solutions that will greatly improve the game across a wide variety of hardware configurations.
"Firstly, we want to assure you that the issues are not deeply rooted in the game’s foundation, so we fully expect to be able to improve performance going forward. The issues we are currently facing are tied to the rendering of the game, and decreasing the quality of visual effects such as Depth of Field, Global Illumination, and Volumetrics will get you a fair performance without affecting simulation - at the cost of some eye candy."
It seems that Cities: Skylines II has a long path ahead before it reaches an optimal state but the game can count on the support of the huge community of players that love its predecessor. After all, Cities: Skylines is still one of the biggest games in the genre. In any case, if you are a fan of the franchise, the cheapest deals on Cities: Skylines II PC keys are available with our comparator.
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