Modders have really turned this game into impressive visual feast. Many of the screen shots and videos shared on the reddit thread are incredibly photorealistic. https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/ Almost all of them hand place everything now, but this youtube series demonstrates an aesthetically pleasing city without using any mods.
Look at 4:52, you can see the standard cloverleaf is pretty broken (merging traffic is crossing two lanes of oncoming traffic, creating a jam). Compelling reason to use mods, I guess.
So there is Park Life and Park Life Plus and I can’t tell what the difference is via the Steampage. It kinda sounds like you have to buy the more expensive version to have the full package which is really crappy thing to do:
Cities: Skylines - Parklife Plus is a playful combo pack, making your city more alive with new amusement parks, nature reserves, custom parks, gardens and zoos, and adding a country radio station for good measure.
With everything from roller coasters and campsites to flower beds, fountains and flamingos, Parklife adds new ways to play, with the introduction of a new park area tool and level-up features that increase your parks property values, along with five new maps and a ton of assets in play.
Cut out half the content so you can offer a lower price… then people realize they’re missing all the content that is in the preview trailers and are forced to buy the more expensive “plus” version?
Reading it this way made it sound like roller coasters and zoos would be in the Plus version along with the radio station, and the standard version would be generic park zoning enhancements etc.
I’ve seen some youtubers who received an early copy using it - really has a lot useful additions, not the least of which is you can now have parks (from Parklife) that do not require roads. I think the zoo and nature reserves are especially cool.
The DLC appeals to me so much: zoos, nature reserves, city parks! This will be the thing that gets me back into the game. I only wish that wildlife appeared in the nature reserves.
There are wildlife spawn points that can be placed when editing maps (I shamelessly admit to moving them before starting a map if an area is going to end up being developed.) I figure if you know where a nature reserve is going to go, add in some spawn points. :)
I was thinking about getting back into this, because its been a long time. Can anyone tell me what the must have DLCs are today? Any of them passable? I already have Snowfall and Afterdark, so I am wondering about the other 4…
GMG has a sale on all the DLC, so I did some research and it seems that these are the best in terms of quality and content:
Snowfall (we own this) AfterDark (we own this) Green Cities Mass Transit High-Tech Buildings
Natural Disasters I am on the fence with this one, the reviews on Steam mention it causes a lot of forest fires for the player to combat, in addition to other disasters. So this could turn every game into California Wildfire Fighting Simulator. Not sure if that something I want.
Parklife looks fun, but its pretty new and I am waiting for 50% off or more sale.
IMHO all the dlc for this game is double what it probably should cost, hence the wait for sales. :)
The remaining music and cosmetic dlc are probably not worth it, I don’t feel they add anything that is MUST HAVE.