I gave it the old college try, but I’ve hit a roadblock in Cities: Skylines II

The launch state of Cities: Skylines II is awful, to say the least. Even as a fan of the first game and of city builders in general, I’m not going to defend it. The game should not have been released in this state.

However, I was determined to enjoy it as much as I could. So, I broke ground on the future site of the Misery Metropolitan Area and did what I could. However, I finally hit a bump in the road I can’t drive over, so I’m hanging it up until there’s a patch.

In a Steam recent post, Mariina Hallikainen, the CEO of Colossal Order, acknowledged three major issues the Cities: Skylines II developer is looking to address. First, citizens aren’t buying all types of commercial goods, which has some commercial areas reporting that they don’t have enough consumers. That’s a relief. I’ve seen that even in the busiest parts of my city, and I had no idea how to fix it.

The second problem is that education enrollment is misreported in the UI. It’s specifically stated that this is a problem with College/University enrollment, but the problem I’m seeing is no one is going to high school. My elementary schools are packed to the rafters, my colleges and universities are educational sardine cans, but my high schools are barren of students.

However, those weren’t enough to stop me from pushing past a population of 100,000 (the population is abbreviated; we’re talking a pretty big city here). But then the third issue kicked in: garbage.

I noticed that my sanitation facilities were starting to back up after working efficiently for most of its growth. I initially thought my city had just outgrown its sanitation infrastructure, so I plopped down a few recycling facilities and another incinerator and figured that would be good.

Except it wasn’t. The storage on the incinerators filled in no time flat.

I was determined to avoid using landfills, so I built a third incinerator, funded more recycling facilities, and still, they couldn’t keep up with demand. So, I implemented strict recycling laws around town and removed the Advanced Pollution Policy, which gave the residents of Misery cleaner air at the expense of producing more garbage.

Finally, I caved. I created a great big landfill. And then watched it fill up in minutes, right before my eyes.

I tried troubleshooting. I even got myself dirty and dug into the Steam discussions (always a mistake), researching if other people were having the problem. People tried breaking down the systems behind garbage production to figure out what was happening, scrambling to find solutions. One suggestion was to ensure cities were broken into districts so you can restrict garbage facilities to only take waste from within your city limits, even though there doesn’t seem to be any setting to import garbage from other cities. No effect whatsoever.

So, the city of Misery began drowning in garbage, and I am powerless to do anything about it. I just have to wait until the bug causing this problem is fixed.

Cities: Skylines II came out over a week ago. Forget the fact that it runs like a golf cart on Jell-o wheels. Never mind the horrible visual oddities that see shadows flicker and wobble on stationary buildings. I’m not going to even mention the fact that when I move the camera close to the ground, the game starts reverting everything to its lowest level-of-detail, causing everything to become blurry, non-euclidean monoliths to the Elder Gods of PS1. Wait, I did mention it, so while we’re on the topic, I had to take these screenshots really quick before reality began collapsing in on itself.

The game has been out for a week, and there are still unaddressed showstopping bugs. This is hardly a reasonable state to push a game into Early Access, let alone full release alongside a deluxe edition upgrade. This “release now, fix later” mentality is garbage. The sort of garbage that my residents are drowning in.

I have to wonder who’s to blame here. Not that pointing fingers helps matters, but in the publisher-developer relationship, it’s on the publisher to set deadlines and release dates. Communicating a need for delays or extensions is, of course, on the studio, but there’s a dynamic there where dates are set in stone despite creative’s concerns. Again, finger-pointing doesn’t solve anything now. It’s not going to salve my immense disappointment or get a patch out quicker, but at some point, leadership made the call to ship as is, and Cities is clearly worse for it.

At times like this, I can only rely on my patience and sarcasm.

Oh, and watch out for its fourth notable bug. Some residents will apparently abandon their dog, which results in “a huge dog pack just stranded in the city.” Even the citizens of Cities: Skylines II are morally bankrupt.