Cities in Motion 2 Review

Change is never easy, but always necessary. The first Cities in Motion was an interesting enough game, more of a proof of concept than anything else, but it lacked a lot in the long-term game, even with the linear evolution of the cities, and so going into the second game Colossal Order had to shake things up a bit. Like I said though, change is never easy – Cities in Motion 2, whilst ultimately a step in the right direction – is still lacking in a couple of areas. That’s not to say it’s a bad game, but you have to take its strengths with its weaknesses, especially considering you have to devote a lot of hours to get anywhere.

The changes in Cities in Motion 2 are few, but pointed, and stand as a fairly significant departure from how things were in the first game. For starters, you don’t start in the past and progress through the ages – everything is fixed in the modern era. City maps are also much, much larger, and give a more varied and interesting landscape for you to work around. Cities also evolve dynamically now, instead of via a set progression path – players can plonk down their own roads and access-ways, and houses will spring up around them. The City AI will also react to where you start plonking down transport lines as well, so there’s a very to-and-fro dynamic going on. There are also a lot of minor tweaks, most notably in the management of your company and the lines themselves. Timetables, which you’ve probably heard a lot of by now, is one such change, and it allows you to tailor your routes specifically depending on the habits of the AI population.

Personally, I think the AI struggles a little bit with getting the population to chain routes. For example, jumping off at this tram station here and then jumping on the ferry

Such a departure is not without its consequences though – what Cities in Motions 2 gains in more long-term, large scale gameplay, they lose in short-term, focused gameplay. When presented with your first, large city, it can be quite hard to know where to start. Even if you do do the tutorial, which teaches you the basics of how to place down lines etc..., it doesn’t really provide much insight into the WHERE of placement. There are graphs and data overlays you can consult, that show where the various population types work, live and ‘play’, and it’s a good idea to start connecting some of those up, but again, the where can sometimes be daunting. Still, CiM2 tries to waylay this by giving a number of dynamically generated ‘short-term’ goals. Establish a certain percentage of coverage, build a line that goes to a certain destination etc... this give you more focused tasks with which to sink your teeth into, and they always come with a cash reward to help off-set some of the costs.



Sadly, there are still some issues with the game as it stands on launch – a clunky interface, some bugs that need ironing out, the usual. The side objectives, which are meant to give some structure and guidance to your play, are a little few and far between for my liking. Further to this, the ones that ask you to provide a certain percentage in coverage don’t seem to update properly, so it’s hard to clear them out. There’s also the fact that it can be hard to figure out how to make any money – some of the playtests we did in this review just seemed to be little more than exercises in watching your money trickle down to zero. We think the old adage of “spend money to make money” applies well here, and you do really have to invest (and possibly take loans) to get anywhere, but it can be hard to keep someone interested if they’re not making any profit for the first five hours of a game. This is a game where you really have to settle down for the long-haul, and patience is going to become your new best friend.

The campaign city. This does a good job at highlighting the new size and terrain challengers players can face in CiM2. A lot of different areas to deal with and connect up

In the long term though, I think Cities in Motion 2 will turn out to be a far better game than the original one was. Once the team get rid of the rest of the bug fixes, and fix that problem with short-term gameplay to pull people through, then this should become one decent transport simulator. From here, it shouldn’t be too hard to add in more interesting systems and content, from new types of vehicles, to entirely new types of transport, and even new maps and map locations – I personally would love to see the tourist & business side of the game be developed further, so you could have shuttle-runs to the airport, or freight trains for cargo etc… but that’s just wishful thinking on my part.

There’s no reason you can’t jump into CiM2 now: there’s still a deep, detail-orientated game for you to sink your teeth into, and micro-managers will love the amount of tweaking and fine tuning options you can make to individual lines. Once you get into the right frame of mind, there’s hours upon hours of game time to have, with the campaign map as well as the other ‘skirmish’ maps, so getting your money’s worth isn’t a problem either. Those of you wanting to watch your pennies, perhaps wait for a steam sale, or news of some worthwhile DLC or a patch or something, but again I have to point out there are worse things to spend your money on. A promising start to a new chapter in this franchise, let’s just hope they roll out new content quick enough.

It’s not really the kind of game that provides individual moments, but getting your first metro line up-and-running does feel a little bit like an achievement, given the cost etc...