Edited on November 6th, 2023:
After putting in about 8 hours I can say that the game is very okay. I enjoy a lot of things about it, like the new road placing system once I figured it out; the game looks much better than CS:1; and lots of QOL changes that make the game more streamlined and less time consuming.
However, there's also a lot I don't like about the game. It's selling point, the in-depth simulation, is flawed. Cims wander around aimlessly; they show up to work only to just leave once they get there and children don't actually go to school. Import and exporting is run in the background and is completely out of your control. It's cool to have Cims be more fleshed out but it seems so underutilized that I question why it's this "in-depth simulation" is ever here.
The game also feels very bare bones compared to CS:1due to it stripping a lot of the DLC content ala how The Sims handles it's expansion packs; keep it out of the game and re-sell it back to you. CS:2 is feeling very empty due to, still, no mod support. Colossal Order aren't giving me a lot of reasons to play CS:2 over CS:1; one has much more content is a lot cheaper to buy. Plus it's hard not to talk about how I still only get 20-30 FPS in CS:2. I know they're fixing it and it's not the worst performance, but damn does it hinder the experience a bit.
Overall, CS:2 is just not worth the buy...yet. Give it a couple years and I could see it being much better than CS:1 and the best city-building game on the market. However it just ain't there yet.
After putting in about 8 hours I can say that the game is very okay. I enjoy a lot of things about it, like the new road placing system once I figured it out; the game looks much better than CS:1; and lots of QOL changes that make the game more streamlined and less time consuming.
However, there's also a lot I don't like about the game. It's selling point, the in-depth simulation, is flawed. Cims wander around aimlessly; they show up to work only to just leave once they get there and children don't actually go to school. Import and exporting is run in the background and is completely out of your control. It's cool to have Cims be more fleshed out but it seems so underutilized that I question why it's this "in-depth simulation" is ever here.
The game also feels very bare bones compared to CS:1due to it stripping a lot of the DLC content ala how The Sims handles it's expansion packs; keep it out of the game and re-sell it back to you. CS:2 is feeling very empty due to, still, no mod support. Colossal Order aren't giving me a lot of reasons to play CS:2 over CS:1; one has much more content is a lot cheaper to buy. Plus it's hard not to talk about how I still only get 20-30 FPS in CS:2. I know they're fixing it and it's not the worst performance, but damn does it hinder the experience a bit.
Overall, CS:2 is just not worth the buy...yet. Give it a couple years and I could see it being much better than CS:1 and the best city-building game on the market. However it just ain't there yet.