# Cities: Skylines 2

7 Hacker News commenters recommended Cities: Skylines 2 and 27 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People recommend it for its in-depth city simulation and built-in mod tooling, though critics say it launched with poor optimisation and heavy performance demands.

## Why people recommend it

- Built-in mod tooling (2 comments): "CS2 allows for even deeper code mods because they have mod tooling built right into the game unlike CS1." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45979534)) "it has built-in modding which is what brings out this type of detail work" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49946217))

## What people warn about

- Poor optimisation and heavy performance (6 comments): "They actually did a really bad job of this for Cities: Skylines 2 and it was a big reason why the game was so sluggish on release." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49946021)) "on launch Cities Skylines 2 was extremely demanding in respect of its graphics due to very poor optimisation" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48302478)) "very heavily GPU bound, due to very unoptimized meshes and a poor culling implementation" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48304944))
- Overly detailed rendering wasted resources (3 comments): "But people don't play a game became its simulating a city accurately right down to individual teeth in every citizen." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48865393)) "wasn't it rendering every pedestrian's teeth in detail as well? hilarious oversight" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49344253)) "render the full polygons of every individual's teeth no matter the distance" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48758107))
- Rushed development and team problems (2 comments): "was too busy buying sports cars and partying to deliver CS2" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49951982)) "They fumbled it so badly, a new developer got put on it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49945757))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [SimCity 3000](https://hackerapproved.com/p/simcity-3000.md): 23 recommend
- [SimCity 2000](https://hackerapproved.com/p/simcity-2000.md): 20 recommend
- [SimCity](https://hackerapproved.com/p/simcity.md): 20 recommend
- [Cities: Skylines](https://hackerapproved.com/p/cities-skylines.md): 20 recommend
- [Microlandia](https://hackerapproved.com/p/microlandia.md): 20 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Cities: Skylines 2", https://hackerapproved.com/p/cities-skylines-2/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).