Cities Skylines 2 is a top seller on Steam despite “mixed” reviews
Cities Skylines 2 is a Steam top seller despite performance issues
Cities Skylines 2 has launched with a “mixed” reception. While the game remains a top seller on Steam and has set a concurrent player record of over 100,000, the game has a “mixed” review rating. While city management and visuals are both improved significantly, the game does not run well on most PCs. A lot of PC gamers are suffering from performance issues, and this has lead to a huge number of negative reviews for the game.
Last month, Colossal Order cranked up Cities Skylines 2’s PC system requirements and later the studio confirmed that the game would launch with performance issues. Simply put, the developer put launching the game above the game’s day-1 performance. Cities Skylines 2 is set to be supported for years to come. Over time new updates are expected to optimise the game.
In a sense, Cities Skylines 2 is an early access game, at least as far as PC performance is concerned. Updates are planned that will optimise the game’s CPU and GPU performance. Simulation updates are also planned that should reduce stuttering. For now, PC gamers are expected to lower a lot of graphical settings to ensure smoother framerates.
Why doesn’t Cities Skylines 2 support FSR or DLSS?
Cities Skylines 2 does not feature Temporal Anti-Aliasing. Some aspects of the game are currently incompatible with this technique, which means that the game has to rely on other forms of Anti-Aliasing. Both AMD FSR 2 and Nvidia DLSS are a form of Temporal Anti-Aliasing. This means that neither technique can currently be implemented in game.
Colossal Order are currently working to add TAA support to Cities Skylines 2. This will, in turn, allow DLSS and FSR to be added to the game. Currently, SMAA is utilised by default. It is also likely that both FSR 3 and DLSS 3 Frame Generation technologies could be added to the game as part of future updates.
As it stands, Colossal Order need to tackle performance issues on both the CPU front and the GPU front. General optimisations should help increase CPU performance, and TAA and upscaler support should help address GPU performance concerns. If you don’t mind playing the game with some hitches and a lower than normal framerate, you can buy the game today. If you want a smoother experience, you should wait for Colossal Order to release some optimisation/performance updates.
You can join the discussion on Cities Skylines 2’s performance issues and mixed reviews on the OC3D Forums.
