Cities: Skylines is THE city-builder sim, having utterly dominated its competition by being simultaneously simple to start but also infinitely deep. If there is an aspect of urban planning and design you're interested in in real life, chances are Cities has at least some representation of it, and it's probably incredibly fun to play around with and explore. Additionally, the seemingly endless support given to the game both by the developers (through free content patches and paid DLC) and by the mod-making community ensures that the game will remain fresh and relevant for years to come.

The game does have a few notable flaws; tutorials and tooltips are helpful in explaining what various buildings and tools are, but not really how to use them effectively. Progression can be illogical and unintuitive, particularly without some of the DLC packs to smooth over the rough edges. Traffic remains an incredibly unresponsive problem to try to manage without the help of mods like Traffic Manager: Presidential Edition, even after seven years on the market. Most noticeably, the game is still a massive resource hog that will require fine-tuning in the settings on older hardware.

However, the game's community has worked tirelessly to provide support and solutions to most, if not all, of the game's flaws; if you're on the fence about buying this game, chances are someone on YouTube has already addressed your concerns and has a solution for you. No game is perfect, but Cities: Skylines is a rare game that continually attempts to address its own shortcomings, and for that I both commend and recommend it.

Cities: Skylines is THE city-builder sim, having utterly dominated its competition by being simultaneously simple to start but also infinitely deep. If there is an aspect of urban planning and design you're interested in in real life, chances are Cities has at least some representation of it, and it's probably incredibly fun to play around with and explore. Additionally, the seemingly endless support given to the game both by the developers (through free content patches and paid DLC) and by the mod-making community ensures that the game will remain fresh and relevant for years to come. The game does have a few notable flaws; tutorials and tooltips are helpful in explaining what various buildings and tools [i]are,[/i] but not really [i]how[/i] to use them effectively. Progression can be illogical and unintuitive, particularly without some of the DLC packs to smooth over the rough edges. Traffic remains an incredibly unresponsive problem to try to manage without the help of mods like Traffic Manager: Presidential Edition, even after seven years on the market. Most noticeably, the game is still a massive resource hog that will require fine-tuning in the settings on older hardware. However, the game's community has worked tirelessly to provide support and solutions to most, if not all, of the game's flaws; if you're on the fence about buying this game, chances are someone on YouTube has already addressed your concerns and has a solution for you. No game is perfect, but Cities: Skylines is a rare game that continually attempts to address its own shortcomings, and for that I both commend and recommend it.