Cities: Skylines

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Critics Recommend

Average Score

Total Reviews: 65

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It isn’t perfect, but Cities: Skylines is the true successor to the SimCity legacy.

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Critics Recommend

Critic Reviews: 65

Critics Consensus

# Reviews: 65

It isn't perfect, but Cities: Skylines is the true successor to the SimCity legacy.

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Critic Reviews for Cities: Skylines

Critic Reviews

Score Distribution

65

Reviews

Average Score - 83/100

83%

Ranges

8.5/10

Dan Stapleton (IGN)

More than anything, Cities: Skylines is about the simple joy of building. It’s a really impressive and often beautiful simulation, where an amazing number of virtual people go about their business across a huge swath of land. Getting in and creating something is easy, though mastering it will require extensive research on community wikis to understand why growth is stunted even when you address your citizens’ apparent concerns. Don’t expect exciting scenarios or random events, but do expect to be impressed by the scale and many moving parts of this city-builder.

March 10, 2015 |

Full Review

A reasonable port of the PC original, and certainly the best SimCity clone on consoles, but missing features and awkward controls narrow its scope and appeal.

May 5, 2017 |

Full Review

7/10

GameCentral (Metro GameCentral)

4/5 stars

Mike Williams (USgamer)

Cities: Skylines isn’t perfect, but it’s an excellent city builder and a great launch for developer Colossal Order. There a few control issues, a lack of key features explanations for new players, and the building currently lack the complexity found in SimCity 4 or SimCity (2013), but I still sunk hours into the game and will sink many more. With a strong mod community, I’m sure Cities: Skylines will look great for years to come.

March 14, 2015 |

Full Review

Dan Stapleton (IGN)

8.5/10 - (Read Review)

GameCentral (Metro GameCentral)

7/10 - (Read Review)

A reasonable port of the PC original, and certainly the best SimCity clone on consoles, but missing features and awkward controls narrow its scope and appeal.

Mike Williams (USgamer)

4/5 stars - (Read Review)

**Read all 65 critic reviews on the desktop version of VSG.

Read the Reviews (65 total)

Outlet	Author	Score	Date	Quote	Read
ACG	Jeremy Penter	Not Recommended	04-21-2017	Video Review	Read review
Attack of the Fanboy	AOTF Staff	4.5 / 5 stars	03-18-2015	Cities: Skylines is how city-building games ought to be. It’s fun, it’s pretty, it’s easily approachable, yet, difficult to master. It doesn’t have all the features that one might dream of in the perfect city-building simulator, but it does absolute wonders with what it does have.	Read review
AusGamers	Kosta Andreadis	8.7 / 10	03-25-2015	Cities: Skylines comes highly recommended.	Read review
CGMagazine	Cody Orme	9 / 10	04-21-2017	Cities: Skylines is definitely a must-own for fans of the genre, or gamers with a nostalgic itch for SimCity that EA certainly won’t scratch.	Read review
Chalgyr’s Game Room	Breanna Corrigan	6 / 10	06-21-2017	Cities: Skylines has successfully stolen quite a few hours of my life and taught me that the urban architecture in my home city leaves a lot to be desired. With its ability to create your own city design right down to the roads and the great detail available on each of your denizens, Cities firmly rivals, and in my opinion passes SimCity. It’s the only game I have even bought computer parts specifically so I could play it. I had to install a heat sink the size of my fist into my computer to keep my core from becoming a puddle of useless metal. Totally worth it though because this game is one of my favorites of all time. However, I’m a firm believer that not everything should be brought over to console. Although the developers did an amazing job in converting a quintessential computer game for the couch warriors, it just doesn’t work.	Read review
Cubed3	David Lovato	8 / 10	03-20-2015	For anyone who’s looking to experience Cities Skylines and doesn’t have access to a PC, this is the version to purchase. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable game that really captures the old-school simulator catharsis. It’s very addictive and with promises of more patches and potential for more DLC, it’s probably going to be the long term leader of the city building genre on consoles for a long time to come. Heartily recommended to all who are interested!	Read review
DarkZero	Dominic Sheard	8 / 10	03-26-2015	It is, after all, the best city simulator released since aeons before, and with signs of a lot more to come from the mod community and the developers, the future is looking seriously bright for Cities: Skylines that could see it become the king of city simulation.	Read review
Destructoid	Jason Faulkner	9 / 10	03-10-2015	There’s a bit of universal appeal that comes with building and maintaining your own virtual city, and for a while I thought that magic had left the industry. I was wrong. Cities: Skylines is a title that will eat up hours of your time, and with a commitment from the developers to continue support for the title in the future, and Steam Workshop integration, the huge amount of replayability the base game has will become even bigger. I wholeheartedly recommend this game and can’t wait to see what modders and Colossal Order have in store for us in the future.	Read review
Digital Spy	Mark Langshaw	4 / 5 stars	03-12-2015	Cities: Skylines successfully caters for the audience left disappointed by SimCity with a level of accessibility tailored for casual city builders, combined with enough substance to delight veterans of the genre.	Read review
Digitally Downloaded	Matt Sainsbury	4.5 / 5 stars	08-23-2017	Cities Skylines is a ridiculously clever and enjoyable game, and one that I expect I will spend a lot of time playing down the track. EA looks like it will not be revitalising Sim City as a franchise anytime soon, so I’m so glad that another developer has stepped up to the plate and created the game that the last Sim City should have been… and I am so glad it’s finally on PlayStation 4.	Read review
Eurogamer	Daniel Starkey	Recommended	03-18-2015	That distinction between the two doesn’t retroactively make SimCity a better game. A failure is still a failure. It does, however distinguish a visionary-but-broken game and one that works enough to please an itch without pushing boundaries. Skylines is a merely competent game that’s smart enough to let the community innovate for it. All its problems and all its genuine innovation will come from the creative ambition of its players. It’s comforting in a way, because with that you feel that you share your struggles with a larger community, but there’s still the nagging feeling Cities: Skylines lacks a magic of its own.	Read review
Everyeye.it	Francesco Serino	8 / 10	12-26-2016	Natural Disaster is the third DLC of the acclaimed Cities Skylines: a precious add-on which increases the difficulty level of the product.	Read review
FNintendo	Nuno Nêveda	7 / 10	12-21-2018	Cities: Skylines has been adapted to the Nintendo Switch in a way that does its job in a fun and competent way. The size constraints of the Nintendo Switch screen do set some limits that do not allow for the entirety of the game’s characteristics to be fully reproduced but the experience is nonetheless fun and interesting and fits perfectly with the fans of the city simulation genre.	Read review
Game Debate	Stuart Thomas	9.5 / 10	03-10-2015	Colossal Order’s stated goal is ‘to let you build the city of your dreams’, with the emphasis on everyone having unique needs and interests. Of course, their covert goal was to topple SimCity. In both cases, they’ve succeeded gloriously.	Read review
Game Informer	Brian Shea	8.5 / 10	04-21-2017	True to its PC reputation, Cities: Skylines is the best city-builder out there today	Read review
Game Rant	John Jacques	4.5 / 5 stars	03-12-2015	Colossal Order’s ‘Cities: Skylines’ is an entertaining city building game on a scale like no other, and it may be a perfect replacement for ‘SimCity’.	Read review
GameCrate	Rachel Sharpton	Recommended	03-18-2015	Let me put it this way—Cities: Skylines made a sim game fun for me, and that’s quite a feat. Though it’s not something I would normally play, I had a lot of fun fiddling around with the options and just figuring out how things worked. I didn’t feel like my hand was being held, but I also didn’t feel like I was being asked to fly a transcontinental flight just because I had watched a documentary about World War II fighter planes. Maybe it’s not the most accurate city simulation, but in my opinion, it’s definitely the most fun.	Read review
GameGrin	Emsey Walker	8.5 / 10	03-10-2015	Cities: Skylines is a great, solid city builder and while it could still use a bit of polishing off, I will be spending hours playing around with it. A lot of hard work has clearly gone into focusing on small details to make a real complex, challenging and fun experience.	Read review
GameMAG	CAH4E3	8 / 10	04-21-2017	It would be useful for Cities: Skylines to learn from Tropico in respect of political background, still with its obligation of being a good-quality city builder this strategy keeps up brilliantly.	Read review
Gamerheadquarters	Jason Stettner	9 / 10	04-21-2017	Cities: Skylines Xbox One Edition was great and I couldn’t imagine a more perfect version of a city builder for the console.	Read review
GameSkinny	Fox Doucette	9 / 10	10-22-2018	Upgrade your industrial production with the latest expansion for Cities: Skylines.	Read review
GameSpew	Chris McMullen	7 / 10	04-26-2017	Standing back and admiring your city, knowing that you were responsible for its virtual prosperity, is immensely satisfying. Niche interest it may be, but if you favour construction over destruction, then Cities: Skylines offers a solid foundation for your future metropolis.	Read review
GameSpot	Brett Todd	8 / 10	03-11-2015	Smart attention to details like zoning and policy decisions make Cities: Skyline the most authentic city-builder you can play.	Read review
GameWatcher	Nick Horth	8.5 / 10	03-10-2015	There’s already a decent roster of maps, ready-made cities, building designs and more to download, and the game’s not even hit the shelves yet. It’s a sign that Colossal Order cottons on to the reason people like these city-building games; they want freedom, not restriction, streamlined, easy to use systems, not needless complexity. In that sense, Cities: Skylines is a resounding success. In summary	Read review
GameZone	Cade Onder	8.5 / 10	08-16-2017	Cities: Skylines is the city-building game we all wanted, but never got — until now.	Read review
Gaming Nexus	Travis Huinker	9.5 / 10	03-10-2015	Cities: Skylines brings the city building genre back after its near demise from other series’ flawed game releases. The inclusion of large game maps, natural resources management, addictive progression system, and all of it running at a near-flawless technical performance make Cities: Skylines the new standard in city building games.	Read review
GamingBolt	Ravi Sinha	8.5 / 10	04-06-2015	Colossal Order has created one of the most enjoyable city builders in recent memory and despite its small budget, Cities: Skylines celebrates the joy of building in enjoyable fashion.	Read review
GamingTrend	Spencer Campbell	85 / 100	05-05-2015	Cities: Skylines isn’t without its flaws, but even the things wrong with it add to its charm. It might not be that much of a challenge, but it delivers on the glee of expansion.	Read review
Geeks Under Grace	Karen Kennedy	8.3 / 10	08-24-2017	It may not be a gem for everyone since it does require a lot of self-motivation and self-direction for a sandbox genre, but If you are a city builder with determination and organization, this is the game for you.	Read review
God is a Geek	Greg Hill	9 / 10	03-13-2015	Skylines opens up the genre to players old and new with a user-friendly interface, intricately designed mechanics and enormous maps for maximum player creativity. One of the best.	Read review
Hardcore Gamer	Cory Wells	4 / 5 stars	08-17-2017	Cities: Skylines – PlayStation 4 Edition brings an excellent city-simulator to consoles offering an amazing interface and excellent visuals. Everything is straightforward in terms of gameplay and the game feels like a modern take on the older and excellent versions of Sim City. While the console version may lack some of the content the PC version does, there is more than enough here to keep anyone busy.	Read review
Hobby Consolas	Elisabeth López	80 / 100	08-15-2017	Cities Skylines arrives on PS4 to delight fans of urban management and construction games with an edition that includes the DLC After Dark. Despite being a notable edition, it does not reach the mark because it does not include the rest of the expansions and does not allow to manage some aspects.	Read review
IGN	Dan Stapleton	8.5 / 10	03-10-2015	Cities: Skylines is all about building huge, bustling cities, but they don’t need us to save them from disaster.	Read review
IGN Italy	Stefano Castelli	8 / 10	04-21-2017	Complex and demanding, Cities: Skylines is a solid and engaging city-builder ported quite well on Xbox One.	Read review
IGN Spain	David Soriano	8 / 10	04-21-2017	Cities: Skylines hasn’t been benefited or harmed in this Xbox One port.. It’s the same deep and accessible that we had in PC, but now we miss the two DLCs that are missing.	Read review
Kinglink Reviews	Kinglink Reviews	4.5 / 5 stars	11-23-2018	Easily one of the best city management games, if not the only pure one left. Build a city of your own, and watch it grow. This game was made as a response to SimCity and instead replaced it.	Read review
Kotaku	Luke Plunkett	Recommended	03-10-2015	You want to build cities? This game lets you build really big cities that look awesome.	Read review
LevelUp	Guillermo Navarrete	7.5 / 10	05-01-2017	Even with its flaws, Cities: Xbox Skyline One Edition is a worthy representative of the genre and while it does not have the reaches that the PC version, it does maintain the depth. You can easily spend hours in front of the TV correcting small details or building major improvements in your city.	Read review
Metro GameCentral	Roger Hargreaves	8 / 10	03-18-2015	The true successor to the SimCity legacy, and even though it only restates what was great about the original it still does a better job than the last decade or so of official games.	Read review
New Game Network	Alex Varankou	80 / 100	03-19-2015	Cities: Skylines provides solid city management for the right price. And with strong mod support, its few shortcomings in gameplay and content variety will likely be resolved by the community itself.	Read review
NZGamer	Jess Nickelsen	9 / 10	04-27-2015	Ultimately there’s less micro-management in Cities: Skylines than in SimCity, but it in no way feels like something cut-down or “cloney.” No, Cities: Skylines is its own game	Read review
PC Gamer	Christopher Livingston	86 / 100	03-10-2015	A handful of flaws, but this fun and addictive city-builder still climbs high.	Read review
PC Invasion	Paul Younger	10 / 10	03-10-2015	The city builder is back! Colossal Order has succeeded where others have failed. Cities: Skylines is a brilliant game.	Read review
PCGamesN	Fraser Brown	9 / 10	03-10-2015	Cities: Skylines is absolutely the best city-builder I’ve played since SimCity 4. From macro to micro, from the sprawling transport networks and city-wide policies to the fine-tuned districts and street-level detail, it impresses. Its size and flexibility creates a fertile space for experimentation, making each new map, or even each new plot, a place to try out new plans for a hyper-efficient green utopia, filthy industrial powerhouse or anything in between.	Read review
PCWorld	Hayden Dingman	4 / 5 stars	03-10-2015	Cities: Skylines somehow lives up to the unfair expectations heaped upon it, presenting one of the best city builders in years.	Read review
PlayStation Universe	Neil Bolt	7.5 / 10	08-15-2017	To have Cities: Skylines on PS4 is wholly welcome. It may suffer slightly for the transition, but what makes it a wonderfully accessible and engrossing city builder is still there. It may be a touch simple for the sim enthusiast, but it has the ability to draw a wider audience into the genre, and that’s something to be happy about.	Read review
Press Start	Mehdi Zadnane	8 / 10	04-26-2017	Cities: Skylines – Xbox One Edition does make a few mistakes along the way, but it provides players with a great and mostly feature-complete city-planning experience that has been sorely missing in the console space.	Read review
Pure Playstation	Jason Frye	7.5 / 10	08-14-2017	Cities: Skylines – PS4 Edition is a great game for your inner city planner. With a simple interface and an excellent menu system, you can build anything from an ideal small town to a smog-filled metropolis. Although I had to wait sometimes to make my next move in the game, it is still an easy game to recommend to anyone looking for a dynamic, city-building sim without a lot of other unnecessary parts.	Read review
Push Square	Sam Brooke	8 / 10	04-29-2020	With Cities: Skylines, developer Colossal Order has laid the foundations for the city-building genre to return to consoles. Simple controls, immeasurable details, and accessible gameplay all ensure that the urban planning sim is a fun yet challenging experience.	Read review
Rock, Paper, Shotgun	Alec Meer	Recommended	03-10-2015	You’re going to love it.	Read review
Shacknews	Steven Wong	7 / 10	04-02-2015	With Cities: Skylines, you have the chance to plan the city of your dreams, complete with a complex road sysem and economic infrastructure. However, the game’s steep learning curve and vague status feedback might put-off a lot of would-be mayors.	Read review
Sirus Gaming	John Matthew Fernandez	8.1 / 10	06-11-2015	In conclusion, Cities: Skylines fills the void that the recent Sim City failed to live up to, and even with its short comings, it is a good city-building game and is one of the best in recent years.	Read review
Softpedia	Andrei Dumitrescu	8 / 10	03-16-2015	Cities: Skylines is the best experience for a gamer who wants to play a modern city builder that has a solid set of mechanics and manages to avoid all the traps that have sunk the reboot of SimCity created by Maxis and Electronic Arts.	Read review
SpazioGames	Valentino Cinefra	8 / 10	08-15-2017	Even on PlayStation 4, Cities: Skylines is still the greatest city builder around.	Read review
Stevivor	Stuart Gollan	8.5 / 10	04-21-2017	If you harbour even the slightest desire to build then you have to experience Cities: Skylines. It provides most of the complexity of Maxis’ 2013 Sim City but isn’t bogged down with restrictive city size and a focus on co-operative building. The customisation and mods will keep this game alive for a long, long time and Colossal Order are due great praise for their embracing user created content.	Read review
The Digital Fix	Steven McCullough	9 / 10	03-25-2015	Uptown fun.	Read review
The Escapist	Jonathan Bolding	5 / 5 stars	03-09-2015	The finest city builder in over a decade, Cities: Skylines’s few flaws are so minor I only noticed them after hours of enjoyment.	Read review
The Games Machine	Daniele Dolce	8.7 / 10	04-20-2017	Finally, Xbox One players have the chance to enjoy one of the finest city builders released last year. The conversion is excellent, and almost indistinguishable from the PC version. The After Dark expansion is included in the game, but the two DLCs (Snowfall and Natural Disasters) are not.	Read review
TheSixthAxis	Stefan L	8 / 10	03-10-2015	Despite some technical issues brought about by Cities: Skylines’ transition to Xbox One, it remains an enthralling city builder, and one which has virtually no competition on console. The most keenly felt loss is the ability to fast-forward through time, but for those who succumb to its more relaxed pace, Cities: Skylines is liable to remain the best home console city builder for some time.	Read review
TheXboxHub	Gareth Brierley	4.5 / 5 stars	04-25-2017	If you love taking charge, want to manage worlds, balance budgets and take on a heavy load in your quest to become god, then this is the game for you.	Read review
Thumbsticks	Daniel New	4 / 5 stars	09-11-2017	Cities: Skylines takes a classic game design template and updates it with minimum fuss and considerable style. It might not be the type of game you’d normally want to take over the family TV, but it’s hard to imagine a better console execution.	Read review
USgamer	Mike Williams	4 / 5 stars	03-12-2015	Cities: Skylines isn’t perfect, but it’s an excellent city builder and a great launch for developer Colossal Order. There a few control issues, a lack of key features explanations for new players, and the building currently lack the complexity found in SimCity 4 or SimCity (2013), but I still sunk hours into the game and will sink many more. With a strong mod community, I’m sure Cities: Skylines will look great for years to come.	Read review
Windows Central	Jez Corden	4.5 / 5 stars	04-21-2017	I am resoundingly impressed with how well the control schemes have translated to a controller, and it gives me hope that we could one day see more complex management-type games hit Xbox One, now that Cities: Skylines has shown us the way forward.	Read review

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Game Info

Game Description / Storyline:

Cities: Skylines is a modern take on the classic city simulation. The game introduces new game play elements to realize the thrill and hardships of creating and maintaining a real city whilst expanding on some well-established tropes of the city building experience. From the makers of the Cities in Motion franchise, the game boasts a fully realized transport system. It also includes the ability to mod the game to suit your play style as a fine counter balance to the layered and challenging simulation. You’re only limited by your imagination, so take control and reach for the sky!

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