Citystate II Review (MoistThomas_)
I like the concept and whats here is alright, and I did have quite a bit of fun with it, but since the game feels clunky, it gets kinda boring after a while, there are several bugs I ran into, and considering this game is seemingly abandoned in favor of Citystate 3 development, I'd recommend against getting this game. A lot of what the dev has said about how this game is different from cities skylines and other city builders is that it's an economic simulator, which I think is an interesting and pretty cool take on city builders. It gets a lot right and is probably the best part of the game, but becomes kinda boring after you figure out how to make money and then it just kinda becomes a numbers game of supply and demand. The politics component is a pretty generic left-right kinda deal with a bunch of policies that are essentially just stat boosts, with no political parties and no elections, basically just a mile wide but an inch deep. It doesn't help that the actual city itself seems dead with few cars and a very empty and generic feel, and does not change in any way to reflect the ideology or climate of your city. Also, the actual ways you can design your cities are fairly limited, with no diagonal roads, no roundabouts, no ped-only paths, only two public transport options (and even then, buses are pretty bare-bones), a limited selection of road types (not even one way streets) and few decorative structures, it just ends up being all boring grids. Roads and public transport are also kinda hard to gauge the effectiveness of due to a lack of visual traffic feedback, just the green, red and blue overlay that is frankly not really helpful in understanding why there is a traffic problem and how to fix it. I know the dev has said that the game isn't about urban planning and is focused on economic simulation, but a pure simulation can only capture my attention for so long, and allowing people to engage in some urban planning and design a beautiful city would make the simulation better, since in real life urban planning does have a lot to do with economics and does have a large impact on the economy of an area, and would also make the game more engaging. It also doesn't help that this game is pretty buggy, and albeit most bugs I ran into were minor, some were really really annoying, like one where I had and still have a piece of bugged highway in one of my cities I just cannot remove no matter what I do. In all, a decent city builder game that gets pretty boring after a while and will probably not see another meaningful update.
I'm probably not going to buy Citystate 3 even though it has the potential to be a big improvement on all the things i found lacking in 2, because if this game is getting abandoned, and the first one was also seemingly abandoned, it's likely the next game will also be unfortunately abandoned in a similar state as well.