Cities: Skylines II launches October 24, but you'll need a beefy rig for the best experience

[Shawn Knight]

Why it matters: The highly anticipated sequel to arguably the best city building game now has a firm launch date. Developer Colossal Order has also shared its official PC hardware requirements for Cities: Skylines II. Unsurprisingly, you are going to need a pretty stout system to run the sim.

Cities: Skylines II is scheduled to arrive on October 24 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and Windows PC. The standard edition is available to pre-order on Steam for $49.99. The Ultimate Edition commands a bit more at $89.99 but includes an expansion pass with eight additional assets that will unlock at regular intervals over the following year.

Those who pre-order will also get the landmark buildings pack, a set of nine unique buildings based on famous landmarks from around the globe.

Before pushing the purchase button, you will want to make sure your machine is up to the task. Minimum and recommended hardware requirements are as follows:

Minimum:

• Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
• OS: Windows 10 Home 64 Bit
• Processor: Intel Core i7-4790K | AMD Ryzen 5 1600X
• Memory: 8 GB RAM
• Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 (3 GB) | AMD Radeon RX 470 (4 GB)

Recommended:

• Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
• OS: Windows 10 Home 64 Bit | Windows 11
• Processor: Intel Core i7-9700K | AMD Ryzen 5 5600X
• Memory: 16 GB RAM
• Graphics: Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti (11 GB) | AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT (16 GB)

Colossal Order and publisher Paradox Interactive announced the follow-up back in March but it wasn't until just a couple of days ago that we got our first look at actual gameplay footage.

Everything seen thus far looks incredible and just as you would expect from a AAA game in 2023. I sunk a ton of hours into the original and would love to do the same with this new game, but unfortunately my dinosaur PC does not even come remotely close to meeting the minimum specs. Ah well, maybe one day.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/99070-cities-skylines-ii-launches-october-24-but-youll.html

 

[Puiu]

For what settings, resolution and FPS are the recommended specs?

 

[dangh]

Can't wait. One of the best games I was playing, and best city builder (I mean, there is no any competition but they still work hard to make it better). Day one for me.

 

[gingerbill]

System requirements are too high so I wont be buying. Makes me concerned it wont run well.

I am not interested in better graphics. The road system still looks rubbish and the same few roads.

 

[DukeJukem]

$650 usd roughly to meet their recommended CPU and GPU specs for a city building game? Why would you build a computer that costs that + more for the rest of the parts just for reskinned sim city?

 

[dangh]

Everything in this game is an agent interacting with other agents. Each curve and each piece of road is a set of agents interacting with everything. Main mods in first part were related to road representation, management, traffic control. All those are set on agents and number of agents was limiting factor to size of the city. Therefore, we need more agents or have won't be responsive to user's choices. This mean processing power requirements.
Graphic is the 2nd one topic. Number of agents means number of interacting objects which I want to see and enjoy. I build a city and I want to see a city, not Excel columns. I want to see result of my work, I want to see living, breathing city, and I don't care about people with 10 years old gpus. Their inability or indifference to invest in gaming hardware should not affect my experience. It they have an issue - buy xss, it apparently will support this game for half the price of a gpu, enjoy.
And there is no need to play this game. If someone think this do not match their expectations - great, you have other games or first part, it's still a lot of fun.
... And again... Gtx 780 and 8gb ram made people mad? What are yours GPU? This is quite ancient ffs.

 

[Porkous]

The lighting in the trailer makes it seem as is a cinematic scene rather actual in game footage. Nevertheless, seems pretty good looking in details.

 

[scavengerspc]

$650 usd roughly to meet their recommended CPU and GPU specs for a city building game? Why would you build a computer that costs that + more for the rest of the parts just for reskinned sim city?

Brother, you have just shown us all why you don't get it!

 

[loki1944]

Willing to bet it will run well on far lesser specs cpu wise; like pretty much any game coming out in the last 5 years....unless they implement the denuvo drm from later Ubisoft games (like AC Origins).

 

[ID10T]

Wow to the above being turned off by the minimum’s
, seems super reasonable to me.