Cities: Skylines

1. Summary

Many reviewers call Cities: Skylines the best city builder they have played, and plenty measure it against SimCity. They praise the freedom to lay out roads, zones and transit however they like, a Steam Workshop full of free mods and assets that keeps the game growing, and a calm loop that eats whole evenings. Reviewers who compare it with Cities: Skylines II and say which they would pick mostly choose the original, often because it runs on more modest PCs and has a decade of community content behind it.

DLC is the main frustration: dozens of paid packs, a full set that reviewers price in the hundreds, and a sense that core features sit outside the base game. DLC comes up in 12% of all reviews and in 34% of the negative ones (438 of 1,292). Reviews turned more negative in March 2025 and March 2026, the two months when reviewers wrote most about a DLC subscription. Other complaints are less common: large cities that crawl or run out of memory, crashes and launch failures, the Paradox launcher and its data terms, and updates that break the mods long-time players depend on. Players disagree about the traffic AI and the learning curve. Fans who bring up the price often give the same buying advice: wait for a sale, pick a few expansions and fill the gaps with Workshop mods.

2. What keeps coming up

What players praise

Freedom to design the city you wantHigh

Reviewers describe starting from a highway exit and growing a metropolis with their own road networks, districts, parks and transit lines. Many call it the best or the "gold standard" city builder, often as the modern successor to SimCity. One review put it this way: "Traffic AI can be quirky without mods, but with the Workshop at your disposal, no other city builder comes close to this level of creative and managerial freedom." There is room both for players who like making cities pretty and for those who like making them efficient. A few reviewers, fans among them, call it a "city painter" with little depth beyond roads, zoning and traffic.

The Steam Workshop and its mods and assetsHigh

Mods or the Workshop come up in 11% of reviews (1,072), often as a reason to buy. Players name staples like Traffic Manager (TM:PE), Move It and Skyve, and talk about running thousands of custom buildings, roads and props. Some who started on console bought the game again on Steam to get the Workshop. How much the game depends on mods, and how updates break them, is covered below.

A relaxing, hard-to-put-down loopMedium

Relaxing, cozy and a way to unwind are common descriptions, and so is addictive: lost nights, the "one more" fix, coming back year after year to start a fresh city. A player who moved over from console wrote: "It is such a nice and relaxing city building game. If I get bored of a city, then i just start a new one."

Preferred over Cities: Skylines IIMedium

The sequel comes up in 7% of reviews (677). Among reviewers who say which one they would pick, the original wins by a wide margin, for its lighter hardware demands, mod support and the size of its content library: "I actually prefer this one over the second game. Generally runs better and has more content available for it via DLC, workshop, etc." A much smaller group recommends the sequel, a few of them for Windows players, while Mac players note that only the original runs on their machines. Negative reviews bring up the sequel in mixed ways: some say to buy it instead, others call it a mess, and some feel the original is being left behind to push players toward it.

Where players are split

Traffic: the best puzzle or a broken AIMedium

Traffic comes up in 5% of reviews (509), and it pulls both ways. Some fans treat it as the real game: tuning interchanges, roundabouts and transit lines to keep cars moving. "I bought a city builder and somehow became a full-time traffic engineer." Others, often players with dozens or hundreds of hours, say vehicles crowd one lane and ignore the rest, so big cities choke: "it doesn't matter if you have one lane or a million lanes, The traffic AI will only ever use one". Some, fans included, say traffic takes over until the game feels more like a traffic simulator than a city builder. Fans often point to the TM:PE mod as the fix.

How much the game leans on modsMedium

Players agree that mods make the game better and disagree on whether that is a strength or an excuse. Fans call vanilla solid and mods a bonus. Critics say the base game needs mods to fix traffic, tools and quality-of-life gaps, and some fans say the same; one positive review warns: "Close to unplayable without the mods, so make sure you get to know Steam Workshop for this game." A few note that mods disable achievements, and newer players report mod setups that crash or refuse to load.

Learning curve and tutorialMedium

The learning curve, the tutorial, confusion or going bankrupt come up in 3% of reviews. Positive reviewers often call the curve steep but rewarding once systems click. Complaints come most often from players with only a few hours: no real tutorial, unexplained water, sewage and power problems, early debt, and small text with no way to scale it. A player who tried it on a free weekend and uninstalled wrote: "Atrocious intro/tutorial system that spams you with walls and walls of tiny text that I couldn't bother to decipher." Another put it more briefly: "Maybe this game is great, but the font size is to small to read so I'll never know".

Depth once the city is runningLow

A smaller group says the challenge fades: money stops being a problem, buildings are unlocked within hours, and the loop repeats. "Later it just turns into you waiting for money to roll in". Others enjoy that slower sandbox phase.

What frustrates players

The volume and price of DLCHigh

No other complaint comes close in negative reviews: 34% of them (438 of 1,292) bring up DLC, as do 8% of positive ones. Reviewers count 70 or more packs, put the full set in the hundreds of dollars or euros, and say features like industries, transit options, snow, parks or extra maps belong in the base game. A few add that the main menu advertises packs they do not own. Positive reviewers often agree on the price and work around it: buy on sale, pick a few core packs (Industries, Mass Transit and Natural Disasters are the ones named most), and fill gaps from the Workshop. "However! To have the best experience, I'd say you would need like 3-5 DLCs." One positive reviewer suggests a bundle of the base game and the main expansions, leaving out the music and asset packs.

Performance and memory in large citiesMedium

Frame rate, lag, RAM or optimization come up in 3% of reviews (329). Players describe big or heavily modded cities running at 20 to 30 fps, some of them on new hardware, the game filling 16 or 32 GB of RAM once assets pile up, and long load times. One player hit it on a fresh city with no mods: "Constant 20 fps on a brand new save." Even fans joke about it: "It runs like hot garbage, but we make it work." A few ask for better use of modern multi-core CPUs.

Crashes, freezes and failure to launchMedium

Crashes, freezes, black screens or a game that will not start come up in 2% of reviews (180). Some blame mods or assets, but a few say the game crashes with no mods at all, on Linux through Proton or on Steam Deck. Lost progress makes it worse, since autosave is off by default (see below).

The DLC subscriptionMedium

Half of the 152 reviews that mention the subscription (76) were written in March 2025 or March 2026, and it comes up in 10% of the negative reviews (124 of 1,292). Reviewers object to renting content for a single-player game more than a decade old: "Subscription for decade old DLC's is crazy work." A few positive reviewers tried every pack through it, while others advise: "Don't buy the subscription, buy outright."

The Paradox launcher, account and data termsLow

Returning players say they were met with a launcher, an account prompt and a data agreement they had to accept to play: "If you opt out of data collection you cannot play the game." Complaints about the launcher or the privacy terms come up in 1.2% of reviews (120). Others report a launcher that breaks after an update or on Linux, and one says the store page does not mention it. A couple share the Steam launch option that skips it. One negative review ends: "10/10 city builder 0/10 corporate ecosystem".

Updates that break mods and savesLow

This complaint is rare overall, but it comes almost entirely from long-time players and they describe it as severe. Veterans with heavily modded cities say updates tied to new paid content (several name the Race Day update) disabled their mods and left saves unloadable. "Latest update broke 270 installed mods. I will not be playing again." A few ask for a supported way to stay on an older version.

Autosave off by defaultLow

Autosave is not enabled out of the box, and a handful of players say they lost hours of building to a crash or a quit because of it. "AUTOSAVE IS NOT ENABLED BY DEFAULT, BRO WHY"

3. The player conversation

Most reviews are a line or two of affection ("the city builder", "can't stop playing"), while the longer ones, positive and negative, spend their words on DLC, mods and traffic. Many negative reviews open by praising the game before turning to its price structure or a technical problem, so a good share of the thumbs-down reviews are verdicts on the DLC model with the city building left alone.

Who raises what follows playtime closely. Reviewers under two hours talk most about the learning curve, the tutorial, tiny text and the DLC list on the main menu, and they raise learning-curve problems far more often than players past 200 hours. Traffic comes up more often as playtime grows, and players past 200 hours are almost the only ones who report updates breaking their mods and saves. DLC comes up in every group, most often among players under two hours and those past 50 hours.

Outside two dips, monthly sentiment stayed between about 87% and 95% positive from April 2025 to September 2026. March 2025 fell to 83%, a month in which reviewers mention the tenth-anniversary discount, a free weekend and the start of the DLC subscription. March 2026 fell to 80%, and the week of 2 March 2026 alone to 66.5%, as reviewers wrote about a second round of subscription news, new paid content and a mod-breaking update. Both dips recovered within a few weeks, and the complaints in them centred on monetization and updates.

4. What the developers could do

1. Offer a fairly priced bundle of the core expansions. DLC is the top complaint in negative reviews, and fans who discuss the packs say a handful (most often Industries, Mass Transit and Natural Disasters) are needed for the full game, so a permanent bundle of those, separate from music and asset packs, would answer both groups better than a subscription does.
2. Improve performance and memory use for large cities. Some players on new hardware report 20 to 30 fps and RAM filling up as cities grow, and a few ask for better use of multi-core CPUs.
3. Rebuild the tutorial and add UI and text scaling. Early quitters describe unexplained water, power and money problems and text too small to read, and a few say they gave up within the first hour.
4. Make the launcher and data terms optional and disclose them. Returning owners say they could not play without accepting data collection, and others report the launcher failing on Linux or after updates.
5. Fix crashes and launch failures on clean installs. A few crash reports say the game crashes with no mods installed at all.
6. Ship updates that keep mods and saves working, with a supported rollback. Veterans with hundreds of hours say paid-content updates broke their mods and saves with "no directly supported way to roll back versions".
7. Teach vanilla traffic to use every lane. Several players describe cars queuing in one lane while the others sit empty, and fans often point newcomers to TM:PE to fix it.
8. Turn autosave on by default. A handful of players say they lost hours of work to a crash or a quit without saving.