Cities: Skylines II

I'll finally review this garbage of a game that I regrettably pre ordered years ago before it released. Let's be completely honest what this game is, it's in the same vein of something like planet coaster, which is a sandbox painting game. In this case, cities skylines 2 is quite literally a game you play paused and that's it. What do I mean by that? It's the fact that compared to something like older sim cities, the city is never truly alive. It's a pseudo low effort illusion of an active city and nothing more. One thing for instance, when you build houses, they all get the same ugly rectangle high crane png, yeah I say PNG because that's what it might as well be. When you zone areas, all of them get the same exact building png where it shows a crane, and then once some time goes by, then the building automatically appears. Like, where's the life, where's the buildings being built, ANYTHING. You could say who cares? And I would say I do. How can this be a city builder and as per the own description of the game " With deep simulation and a living economy" when you can't get the core foundation of just building animations done, it completely takes the immersion element out of the game, not even including the fact THAT THEIR FIRST GAME HAD PROPER BUIILDING ANIMATIONS. Also to add on top of that, the building variety is terrible. Build one residential zone, and all the houses for the most part look the exact same. I'm not asking for them to make 100+ different house varieties, but for a game that's quite literally a city builder, and one of the main foundational core component of your city is PEOPLE and having HOUSES, there should be a significantly larger amount of building variety which is just not present at all. Also they once again to try and include chirper to give "life" to your city but it's just the same rehashed garbage 3-4 tweets that just say the same thing over and over, there's a reason why people always turn that garbage off. If you've ever played any Sim City before, than you'll know that Cities Skylines 2 is nothing more than a game where you just paint buildings and take screenshots and nothing more. And to be clear, there's nothing wrong with that if you're someone who likes that, BUT, if you're someone who's looking for a city builder that chooses to go past the surface and tries to give you an actual living city that evolves and grows with you over time as you keep working on it, this game IS NOT IT. This game, just like Planet Coaster failed to properly capture what their predecessors did well which was being a painting sim, but also a management sim. Personally for me, there's no fun/point in building a city that is quite literally lifeless for the most part and the options provided are nothing more than set dresses to paint an illusion and nothing more. Also not including that just like the first game, they love to release a metric ton of useless or necessary DLC's that ultimately is meant to just milk you of more money, god forbid the Paradox gives out anything free to make up for the disaster this game has been in for the past few years. The radio/music as well as sound effects is horrible. The game might as well start up with it disabled with how utterly trash it is, the radios are a joke, and the fact that they even have DLC for it is laughable. For those who just want to paint pretty cities, you'll probably like this, but if you're someone who wants to build a city that actually feels alive, this game is an utter completely disappointing waste of time. This is more of a nitpick/personal preference, but I'm not a fan of the color pallete/art style for this game, I'm not sure how to describe it but it feels dreadful and soulless, compared to the more vibrant colorful pallete from Cities 1. I really don't like it at all and it just makes me want to play the first game instead. Also a side note: for anyone reading who is thinking "well you can install xyz mod" my answer to that is quite simply, no. If I have to install mods just to have the game go from unbearable to slightly bearable, than that's a huge issue and speaks to the foundational issues with the game that can't be fixed. I can play older games such as Sim City 3000, Sim City 4 etc without ever feeling like I need mods to enjoy them. Anyways, at least with Cities 1 I could give it lenience as it was their first game, and it did do a lot right as well, but for a sequel, this game just leans further more into just being a painting sim and nothing else, and it doesn't even do that right either as you can see reflected in the other reviews being posted.