The first Cities: Skylines game was released in 2015 and was a rousing success overall. The city-builder game was complex with a lot of options, but it wasn't too difficult for new players to pick up and play. The detail in this game was so vast that it made the announcement of a sequel seem irrelevant.

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Despite this, Cities: Skyline 2 came out in October 2023 to a similar amount of praise. It may have seemed impossible once upon a time, but the sequel has managed to make many improvements over the first game. What's more, the game has hardly had to make any sacrifices for these improvements to exist.

6 Seasons

Climate Will Change As The Year Progresses

Although the concept of seasons is not new to the Cities: Skylines franchise, as it was added as DLC in the previous game, it is nice to see this mechanic exist in the base game this time. Every city in Cities Skylines 2 will go through all four seasons over the course of the year. This means that the city will be dry and warm during the summer months, but lashings of rain and snow will hit during winter.

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These new weather types all look fantastic, but they do more than just make the city appear different at a specific time. These weather changes will also impact the gameplay. For example, streets and roads will become more congested during the snow, and NPCs will use more energy in the winter than in spring or summer.

5 New Way To Progress

Population Size No Longer Unlocks Key Items

The first Cities: Skylines measures the player's progress compared to the population within the city. Therefore, players could only go further in the game and unlock new things to build by attracting more people to the city with new housing and jobs. While this is a simple way for players to progress, it is hardly realistic.

As such, Cities Skylines 2 has completely overhauled the progression system in the franchise. Now, there are progression trees that the player can move along by earning expansion points. These points are earned by maintaining citizen happiness, increasing the population, and building vital amenities. These points can also be traded in to unlock new buildings and features.

4 Map Size

Players Now Start With A Smaller Map But Can Expand Further

The great thing about the Cities: Skylines franchise is that the player is never limited by the map size. In the first game, players could build a new city in a five-by-five square, but they could expand into nine squares of equal size as their city expanded. As such, the city grew more naturally.

In Cities: Skylines 2, players can also start with just one small section and then slowly expand outward. The difference this time is that the starting area is almost one-third smaller than in the first game, but the player can choose to expand their city over four hundred times. This is much better, as newer players can learn to handle just a small section, while more experienced players can go ahead and build a city much bigger than expected.

3 Smarter AI

Citizens Are Now More Helpful To Players

When building a city, it helps if the citizens living there are able to use things correctly and follow the paths that players set down. However, this will only work if the AI of the citizens is smart enough. If not, it will only lead to chaos.

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Cities: Skylines 2 continues to use the fake social media network, Chirper, so that players can address the needs of their citizens. Only this time, the AI controlling these citizens is much smarter than it was before. Players can now use this in-game app to track specific NPCs to learn where they live, work, or go to school. This makes it so much easier to figure out what they need and how to make the citizens in a specific area happier.

2 New Tools

A New Game Needs New Things To Play With

As with any sequel, Cities: Skylines 2 comes with a load of new tools for players to use when building their cities. These include new editing tools, deeper zoning tools, and theming options. However, few of these new tools are as helpful to the player as the replace tool.

The new replacement tool in Cities: Skylines 2 allows players to make additions and upgrade roads on the fly. Instead of having to delete and rebuild huge sections of roads, players can now select the specific parts of a road that need changing. They can now change road structures or add things to make the traffic flow more freely in no time.

1 Upgrading Buildings

Specific Buildings Are Now Important

Cities: Skylines 2 has also added one of the most important changes to a city-builder game ever. In the first game, the player had to ensure that all citizens had access to the essential life amenities. This meant having to ensure that everyone lived within the range of a school, fire station, hospital, and police station. The only way to do this was by wasting precious money and space building extra versions of buildings that players already had. Fortunately, the sequel does things differently.

Now, buildings can be upgraded to affect a larger area. Since these upgrades will need to occur naturally as the city begins to expand, players now have more space to add more fun things to their cities instead of having to worry about the welfare of every citizen.