Back in 2013, EA released the latest game in the <\/span>SimCity <\/span><\/i>franchise. Simply titled <\/span>SimCity<\/span><\/i>, it promised to be the definitive version of everyone\u2019s favourite city-builder, but unfortunately, it fell short of those expectations. There were a few reasons for this; the gameplay was fairly basic and uninvolving, and the game had an always-online requirement that meant many players couldn\u2019t enjoy it as they wanted to. EA and Maxis diligently patched the game, but it was too late for <\/span>SimCity <\/span><\/i>to recover its reputation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Luckily, just two years later, Colossal Order and Paradox released <\/span>Cities: Skylines<\/span><\/i>, which many have since called the unofficial <\/span>SimCity 5<\/span><\/i>. It\u2019s an in-depth city-builder with all the systems and features you\u2019d expect of a <\/span>SimCity <\/span><\/i>game; you can plan and build your city, look after zoning, and watch it grow into a modern metropolis. Eight years on from that game\u2019s launch, Colossal Order and Paradox are once again teaming up for <\/span>Cities: Skylines II<\/span><\/i>. Here\u2019s everything we know about the upcoming city-builder!<\/span><\/p>\n

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Cities: Skylines II <\/i><\/b>release date – when is the game out?<\/b><\/h2>\n

Right now, we don\u2019t know much about the <\/span>Cities: Skylines II <\/span><\/i>release date other than that it\u2019s coming in 2023. Per the description in the official trailer, the \u201csequel to one of the best-selling management games of its decade is coming in 2023\u201d, so we know that we\u2019ll be able to play this hotly-anticipated followup at some point this year. Sadly, it\u2019s probably going to be quite a few months before we actually know when. Expect to hear some more information during this summer\u2019s gaming events, like E3, Summer Game Fest, and Gamescom.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Cities: Skylines II <\/i><\/b>trailer – what trailers have been released?<\/b><\/h2>\n

So far, just <\/span>one trailer<\/span><\/a> has been released for <\/span>Cities: Skylines II<\/span><\/i>, but it\u2019s already racked up over 2 million views, so it\u2019s clear that this is a massively anticipated game. The trailer doesn\u2019t actually show any gameplay, but it honestly looks like many of the images shown during the trailer are in-engine, and that would certainly match with Colossal Order\u2019s desire to make what it calls \u201cthe most realistic city builder ever\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

The trailer is pretty much just an overview of a modern city, cutting between street views and overhead vistas and showing us skyscrapers, parks, planes, and building sites. It\u2019s more of a teaser intended to get people excited for <\/span>Cities: Skylines II <\/span><\/i>than it is a demonstration of what the game will eventually be able to do. Still, just the mere fact of the game\u2019s existence is enough to make us excited, so the trailer has us hyped, which we\u2019re sure is the intention.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Cities: Skylines II <\/i><\/b>features – what will it play like?<\/b><\/h2>\n

As you can probably imagine, <\/span>Cities: Skylines II <\/span><\/i>will pretty much play like a <\/span>Cities: Skylines <\/span><\/i>game. It\u2019ll be a city-builder in which you can construct the city of your dreams, then oversee it as it grows from a nowhere town into a bustling metropolis with huge economic value. At time of writing, Colossal Order and Paradox haven\u2019t revealed much about this upcoming title, but here\u2019s everything we know the game will feature.<\/span><\/p>\n

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• A \u201cdynamic and ever-changing world\u201d. <\/b>Cities: Skylines II <\/span><\/i>will, according to <\/span>its Steam listing<\/span><\/a>, offer a \u201cdynamic and ever-changing world\u201d that will be both challenging and rewarding to navigate. This likely means that you\u2019ll need to meet many and varied challenges that come with running a city, like administration, emergency services, and everything else you might expect from this popular genre.<\/span><\/li>\n
• Realistic and detailed graphics. <\/b>Colossal Order and Paradox are promising that <\/span>Cities: Skylines II <\/span><\/i>will reach an unparalleled level of realism. The two studios say that the game will have \u201cgraphics that are as beautiful as they are detailed\u201d, so it sounds like <\/span>Cities: Skylines II <\/span><\/i>will be a joy just to look at. That\u2019s exactly what you want to hear about a game where half of the fun is in simply watching your city grow as you guide it subtly from on high.<\/span><\/li>\n
• A growing, transforming city. <\/b>As you\u2019d expect from the city builder genre, <\/span>Cities: Skylines II <\/span><\/i>will offer a cityscape that grows and changes over time. Zones will become more populous and will change their appearance as a result. Tourists will flood into your city, adding to the game\u2019s living economy and giving you even more reasons to invest in public infrastructure. <\/span>Cities: Skylines II<\/span><\/i>\u2019s cities will be living entities, and you\u2019ll have to feed them in order to keep them alive (not literally, obviously, but it\u2019ll certainly feel that way).<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

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  Cities: Skylines II <\/i><\/b>platforms – where will you be able to play the game?<\/b><\/h2>\n

  At present, <\/span>Cities: Skylines II <\/span><\/i>has been confirmed for PC, as well as PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X\/S. It seems like this is one of a new wave of games that are leaving the PS4 and Xbox One behind; those machines are likely incapable of keeping up with the kind of visuals that <\/span>Cities: Skylines II <\/span><\/i>wants to have.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

  If you want to play this city-builder, you\u2019ll need a modern current-gen console or a pretty powerful PC, by the looks of things. Colossal Order and Paradox haven\u2019t released the specs for the game yet, so we don\u2019t know what kind of graphics card you\u2019ll need, but expect the recommended specs to match the GeForce RTX 30 series or even higher. The kind of realism that the studios seem to be aiming for must come at a cost.<\/span><\/p>\n

   <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Back in 2013, EA released the latest game in the SimCity franchise. Simply titled SimCity, it promised to be the definitive version of everyone\u2019s favourite city-builder, but unfortunately, it fell short of those expectations. There were a few reasons for this; the gameplay was fairly basic and uninvolving, and the game had an always-online requirement … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9761,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"close","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-videogames"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nerdleaks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9759"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nerdleaks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nerdleaks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nerdleaks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nerdleaks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9759"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/nerdleaks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9766,"href":"https:\/\/nerdleaks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9759\/revisions\/9766"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nerdleaks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nerdleaks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nerdleaks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nerdleaks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}