Cities Skylines 2 road building looks, quite frankly, fantastic. One of the trickier elements of the original city-building game, Colossal Order and Paradox have totally overhauled roads, traffic, highways, and even motorist behavior for CS2, and the result appears to be a much more streamlined and seamless set of design tools than ever before. As the Cities Skylines 2 release date grows near, we’ve gotten a deeper look at road tools and management, as well as maintenance and block building. From what we can tell, Cities Skylines 2 gameplay looks amazing.
Cities Skylines 2 roundabouts make road building infinitely easier than the original game. Likewise, the new tools for creating on and off ramps for highways, as well as a feature that lays instant water and electrical lines under any road that you build, make clean, crisp design in CS2 a lot more straightforward. We’ve noticed a small issue with Cities Skylines 2 houses, but judging by the new footage from Colossal Order, there’s not much to worry about.
“For Cities Skylines 2, we wanted to keep the experience familiar but also we’ve expanded the road tools from the ideas from the fans, and we’ve also wanted to make road tools more flexible,” Colossal Order game designer Lauri Jääskeläinen explains. “In Cities Skylines 1, when you wanted to build a road through a road, you had to stop at that road. Now you can just continue building through the road without stopping.”
You can see the new road building tool in action. All you have to do is drag and drop a road, just like normal, and it will intuitively and seamlessly flow through any existing roads it crosses. We can also see the new parallel road tool in action.
Rather than laboriously lining up to straight roads one next to another, there is now a dedicated tool for laying two lanes, parallel to each other. You can also select whether to have each lane traveling in the same direction, or to make the two lanes of traffic face one another. Either way, it’s just a case of drag and drop.
“I remember I spent countless hours in Cities Skylines perfecting my road network and making my traffic flow as smooth as possible”, map designer Igor Olechnowcz says. “So, I’m happy to say that with all the new tools in Cities Skylines 2, like parallel road building, acceleration and merge lanes, and sunken roads, you can truly master the traffic engineering.”
The new look at Cities Skylines 2 gameplay also shows off the new placement tool, which allows you to easily add bus and tram lanes to existing roads. You can also designate exclusive pedestrian streets, breaking up the road network within your cities and providing more space for your citizens.
The ready-made intersections look like an absolute blessing, too, allowing for complex highway building without having to meticulously – and aggravatingly – lay out your own ramps and turnpikes.
On smaller roads, you can now easily add crosswalks, traffic lights, and other lanes. All in all, it seems like every issue we might have had with roads in Cities Skylines has been addressed in CS2, and seeing it all in action, it looks remarkably simple and efficient. We can’t wait.
In the meantime, ensure your PC is ready with the full Cities Skylines 2 system requirements. You might also want to try some of the other best management games available now.