The first Cities Skylines 2 patch has pushed the city builder's performance from unplayable to merely bad
Oct. 26, 2023It’s a substantial improvement, but not a miraculous one
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
Cities: Skylines 2launched earlier this week with somemassive performance problems, and developer Colossal Order has already issued a patch with some dramatic improvements - though even with those improvements, the city-building game still isn’t up to standard.
Cities Skylines 2 not enough customershow to rotate buildings in Cities Skylines 2Cities Skylines 2 high rent
You can read thepatch notesif you want the full details on what this hotfix addresses, but the basics are that it includes a variety of optimizations and tweaks to get the game running more smoothly. Of particular interest for me are these two notes: “optimized stutters when buildings spawn/level up” and “optimized various stutters across all systems.”
For my money, those stutters were the worst of CS2’s many technical problems. As I noted in myCities: Skylines 2 review, I’d often have stretches in my larger cities where, every five seconds or so, the game would freeze for a half-second, effectively rendering it unplayable. Post-patch, those stutters only occur once every couple of minutes. That’s still bad, but it does at least get the game out of ‘unplayable’ territory.
Judging by the response to the patch onRedditandSteam, most players have seen some very substantial improvements to general performance, too. Mileage seems to vary based on specific setups, but reports of improved frame rates are pretty widespread. Anecdotally, I can at least confirm that, at 1440p on an RTX 3080, I cansometimesreach 60 FPS if I look at my city atjustthe right angle on low settings.
On a technical level, Cities: Skylines 2 is still well below par, but seeing a substantial performance patch arrive this soon after launch does give me hope that Colossal Order can get it there sooner rather than later. I’d rather it have launched in a hearty state to begin with, of course, but now that it’s in players' hands it’s good to see the game improving.
If you’re waiting for more Cities: Skylines 2 patches, check out thebest city-building gamesto play in the meantime.
Sign up to the GamesRadar+ Newsletter
Weekly digests, tales from the communities you love, and more
Stardew Valley creator says he had his reasons to announce Haunted Chocolatier so early, and “if I don’t post for a while, it doesn’t mean I have abandoned the game”
Eric Barone says he just can’t “let go” of Stardew Valley “to work on something that isn’t already established and meaningful to people”
Todd Howard “rolled his eyes” at the idea of Troy Baker playing Indiana Jones in the Great Circle, but the Bethesda boss later told him “you’re doing a hell of a job”
