I’m in the mood for a city builder. Which is better: this, or the new SimCity?
This by about a billion.
This.
I think most players that have tried both games will say Skylines is better overall, but I think SimCity does a couple things better. For example, I think SimCity models crime better. Crime and police in Skylines is almost a non-issue unless you let everything else go to shit in your city. SimCity also doesn’t have the weird micromanagement of garbage and cemeteries.
That said, support for SimCity has pretty much stopped. I think EA is kind of glad to move on and put that fiasco behind them. Skylines, on the other hand, will likely enjoy updates for the next couple of years at least if the dev and Paradox hold true to their normal DLC/patch pattern.
I think Skylines is the better game like Telefrog, but I didn’t get past my initial city before the entire thing felt rather dull. Laying streets and trying to adjust for traffic is fabulous, but the rest of the simulation is pretty bland. Simcity also had more interesting building options with the upgrades you could tack on. I’m hoping the game feels a little more sophisticated with some patches or DLC.
If you like just building cities for aesthetic reasons than I think you might be more satisfied with Skylines than I was. I found it solid but not really enticing me to play more - kinda a thumbs up with reservations.
It’s the fastest selling paradox game ever (over 1m copies so far), so I definitely think it’ll be supported.
Yeah, unfortunately I agree. There isn’t much meat to the gameplay. It’s rather simple and easy, even on hard mode. This is more a creative city builder. Their recent patching doesn’t seem to be focusing on gameplay much either instead adding more stuff to build like tunnels. That isn’t a bad thing but I’d rather have changes/additions I mentioned previously.
Ha! I love the roundabout over the water!
Yeah, I ended up making two roundabouts on my two big bridges and built a giant bridge/boulevard over the water to connect them. I did this because there is so much money in the game there was basically no penalty for doing so. :/
I also do not own SimCity 4. Is that a better option than SC5 or Skylines?
From reading the reviews, I’m not sure that Skylines has what I’m looking for (I’ve been a fan of the SimCity depth), but it also seems like SimCity 5 took a jump off a cliff.
This is way better than sim city. get this.
And it can be far more “artsy”, too. ;)
The sheer size of the cities you can build in Skylines makes it a more enjoyable game than SC5. SC5 feels downright confining compared to Skylines.
What’s “missing” in Skylines compared to the various SimCities?
Always-online and Facebook integration! (I kid … mostly)
edit - to be more fair, SimCity 4 has tons of highly polished mods, not to mention “flavor enhancers” like disasters.
The thing with Skylines is that it’s very easy to stay in equilibrium. At no point will you really feel the kind of pressure that you might in SimCity to balance RCI or taxes or really much of anything other than pollution and traffic. Even both of those are pretty forgiving. You can pretty much build, tear down, and rebuild to your heart’s content, which is why many players find it more of a city creator instead of a city builder.
Skylines is still far and away the better of the two in my opinion, if only because the developer hasn’t abandoned the game.
So, does Skylines follow the SimCity model of “if you build it, they will come” where you plop down a residential plot and watch it grow?
Yes. You paint RCI areas, and the buildings pop up as demand fills.
Any sense of challenge. A reason to build more than one city. A metagame outside of your city. Meaningful systems other than traffic.
I like Cities: Skylines, and I certainly recommend it over the last SimCity, but I think a lot of people going ga-ga over it are approaching it like a model train set: “hey, look at all the hustle and bustle of these cute graphics!”
-Tom