Reviews

• gamedeal user

  Oct 5, 2021

  Contrary to many reviews, this is a fun, enjoyable game for building urban transportation systems. But the original Cities in Motion was better, even though it was *very* limited, and had numerous technical problems and simplifications that this game improved on, for one simple reason: The cities in this game have no soul. In the original Cities in Motion, you felt like you were in a living, breathing city, with some history and presence. Its versions of Berlin, Vienna, London, etc are obviously simplified, but they are built like their namesakes, and they *feel* like the cities that inspired them: wide plazas sit in front of churches and public buildings, gardens peep through in strange corners, and large train stations connecting the city to the wider world see locomotives steaming in and out, while the occasional airplane from the airport buzzes overhead and the barge traffic on the river chugs past. In CiM2, all of that extra depth is gone, completely lost in favor of procedurally generated cities that, by virtue of potentially being able to exist "anywhere" give you a sense of being nowhere. I'm sure that this change made the game *way* cheaper to make, but honestly, it is a major loss for what could have been a beautiful and unique game. Instead it is just a transit-focused city simulator without zoning.
• gamedeal user

  Aug 28, 2014

  Love the idea of city-building and management games, especially when transport is involved. But as much as I want to love this game, I simply cannot, because its controls and mechanics are infuriating and extremely frustrating. It is so damn annoying to do anything in this game. After an hour I was convinced that the game is deliberately doing everything the way I don't want it to, from camera movement to adding bus stops to setting schedules to building these damn metro tracks from hell that never go the way you want them to. It's amazing how counter-intuitive the controls are. It is extremely hard to see the roads. Underground view is not really underground view, it's ground view + metro tracks, which makes both roads AND metro tracks impossible to see. Finding your bus stops is even worse, since their tiny transparent icons blend nicely into the background. Conclusion: You can't see anything. It all blends together. Building metro tracks in this game is just the worst thing ever. They never remember or understand the elevation you chose. They don't want to connect to each other. If they do, they do it wrongly. Connecting a track to an underground depot is impossible, since the depot track is under the depot, rendering it invisible, so when you try to connect it, the track decides it now has to surface. After 10 minutes of this farce, I closed the game, promising myself to never play this again. And this could be fixed by a patch. Only that it won't be, because the developers are adding new cosmetic DLC instead of actually fixing the broken game. I'd love to play and like this game, but I can't, because every time I do, it leaves me frustrated and angry at it.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 13, 2014

  This game is great for those of us who enjoy just to manage the transport aspect of a city, and for those of us who love efficiency. The game is not a city builder in the traditional sense--you can build roads and expand your cities around them, but that isn't the primary focus of the game. That being said, there are some pretty serious challenges to the game, and the mechanics as well. I do have several concerns with the game in general, but I'll get to those in a bit. Here's a breakdown: The good: -Seriously challenges you to be efficient -Engine is good -Large variety of possibilites, you can make your own city, workshop is available too -Variety of transportation methods -Building engine is easy to use and cool Bad: -Game is DLC-Based -Stops are unrealistic---vehicles leave without being full when people are obviously running to the stop. -Cars are stupid: they do not take advantage of multiple lanes going to the same place. -Height of buildings are not realistic (It maxes out at about 35 stories). -When building new roads, game is prone to developing tons and tons of elementary and high schools, forcing the player to demolish them so houses can be built. -People are stupid: all vehicles yield to them--ALWAYS. -Traffic lights make no sense -No easy way to make central hubs. -No control over individual lanes in roads. -No right turn on red. -No arrows. All you really need to get money in a game is one good Metro line, then you can just hit fast forward for tons of money. I like the game, but it gets boring and repetitive very quickly. Even with all of the DLC, it's really easy to just fall into the same rut over and over again. The game does a good job for those of us who enjoy city management, however that aspect of the game is fairly half-baked and automated. The content leaves a lot to be desired. I do not reccommend the game to any of my friends.
• gamedeal user

  Nov 2, 2014

  Cities in Motion is a game about transporting people within a single city. You are doing this by building trams, buses, metros and boats. This is in difference to games like Railroad Tycoon, Transport Tycoon and most recently Train Fever where you transport people and goods between cities. The base premise of the game works well with a well executed economy and people having regular destinations and are able to use several different lines to get to those destinations. The game offers a pretty limited set of trams, metro trains, buses and boats. As far as I can make out if you want more you have to buy DLC:s. The game has a campaign that is reasonable and also acts as a tutorial. It is not very special though. Although it is possible to build a profitable tram network, if you want to make as much money as possible, it is almost always best to borrow money to build a couple of metro lines, which will make you enough money to build more metro lines. This makes the game a little bit more boring since not all options are viable. The ingame time is something pretty confusing, since all lines take strange amount of time. It is easy to build 12 hour lines even in quite small city. And passengers are often quite happy to go to work in lines that take several hours. It leaves the impression that people in these cities are spending all of their time transporting themselves.
• gamedeal user

  Apr 3, 2015

  I enjoyed the first Cities in Motion and completed 100% of the achievements and campaigns. CIM2 retains some of the themes but rearchitects the engine and simulation. I eagerly picked it up, played through a little bit, enjoyed what I saw but found some of the controls difficult and frustrating, so it languished for awhile. Then I started reading all of the excitement about Cities: Skylines in its prerelease phase, saw the simularities in the look and feel of C:S, and thought I'd take another look. Applying myself a little more, I found I was able to overcome some (but not all) of the frustration with the user interface of CIM2 and in belated retrospect, it is a very enjoyable simulation. I'm planning to finish the campaign (and in a sale, maybe pick up some DLC) before moving on to Cities:Skylines, which I fully expect to build and expand on the CIM2 experience.
• gamedeal user

  Jul 28, 2013

  If you liked TTD (Transport Tycoon Deluxe) back in the days, you will most likely like this game as well. The goal is to transport people across a city in multitude of ways. The real challenge comes from efficency and you can really grind down in to the details. You can change the layout of the city by creating new roads (one way, avenues, with or without sidewalks or bus lanes) or you can adjust the individual time tables (frequency, what type of vehicle, times etc.) of busses and other transports. It's a good deal of fun, and the simulation is really good. I can only recommend for those who liked TTD.
• gamedeal user

  Sep 4, 2015

  Sure this game is not for everyone, but for me this is a great game. It actually has a very high learning curve and I didn't even enjoy playing it until a long time after buying it(about 30 hours) because its difficult to learn. I'm sure you can find a good tutorial on youtube how to play this. The only downside is multiplayer. Multiplayer tends to lag, and also goes out of sync with you knowing. I would preorder CIM3 no question.
• gamedeal user

  Feb 3, 2016

  For those who come from the newer game from the devs, [i]Cities: Skylines[/i] wondering what this previous games of theirs is like: In short, CiM2 is [still] the best public transport simulator out there. In [i]Cities: Skylines[/i] you get a way bigger map area, better and faster engine, more possibilities for building a city - but its public tr. system is simplified, whereas CiM2 is completely built around that with lots more options. [h1]Pros:[/h1] [*][b]Schedules[/b]: Creation schedules is incredible, you can tailor each line to demand. Also worth setting different lines from a same depot to leave with a delay (e.g. fist buses leaving each line at 4:30,4:35,4:40 respectively, for instance) to avoid queuing, jams, etc on the roads nerby. Don't forget to buy enough vehicles for every depot, for servicing. Don't buy too many either because they won't fit in and just deteriorate over time, waiting on the streets. [*][b]Street types:[/b]: Building roads is incredible, you can curve the range of different types (avenues, one-way streets-bus lanes, and a large combination of these) at any angle and arc, more diversely than in Cities:Skylines. [*][b]Vehicle parameters:[/b] Acceleration, capacity, maintenance cost, fuel consumption, attractiveness. You can choose to invest in attractive vehicles early on to increase usage. You can choose smaller capacity vehicles running more frequently, or big ones running paced out. [*][b]Finances:[/b] You can set driver/reparimen/inspector wages (and nr. of inspectors). The sweet spot for inspectors tends to be 11 credit wages, and an amount so that they catch ~33% of freeloaders. This yields maximum income. The income from inspection nicely balances the loan payment amount usually [h1]Cons:[/h1] [*][b]Loans:[/b] This is almost like cheat. will have almost unlimited money: You take a huge loan, and set a long nr of installments. It means you can build an infrastructure of metros straight away and guarantee decent income while never actually repaying it (as it may take ~50 in-game weeks or more). Have the decency to work with the 100k starting money, and also don't burn it on metros or trams. Start with buses and replace them later with trams/metros. [*][b]Campaign:[/b] The game jumps you into "Berlin", a huge city with a lot of tasks to do. It should start with a small village. Also the campaign scenarios are short, and not really diverse. Custom, free, Steam workshop user-created maps are great to try but offer no missions. Still it's fun to play this game as sandbox, like Cities: Skylines is also, basically. [*][b]Performance:[/b] On larger maps or a large nr. of lines the game likes quite a bit. It is actually caused by the overlay (floating icons for vehicles, stops, lines, depots) which can be turned off but cumbersom (individually). Also it is heavily CPU based, so even an 8-core AMD 8350 struggles on 3x speed (you don't play on 1x usually). When the CPU can't handle more, 3x feels like 1,5x. Not necessarily FPS drop but simulation speed is sluggish. [*][b]Vehicles:[/b] While there is a nice selection of vehicles, there is one ultimate one in each category, meaning I never actually tried most of the buses/trams as they are inferior. [*][b]Gameplay:[/b] While I put some 100+ hours into the game (therefore safe to say it is addictive) it is a grind sometimes. Also can't seem to change the default schedule to something better (2 hour frequency is really bad). [*][b]AI:[/b] The citizens very rarely glitch into circling some vehicle at a crosswalk when too many of them want to cross the road. [*][b]Road upgrade:[/b] Unfortunately, as good and diverse the road types are, you cannot upgrade them, but need to demolish and rebuild. [*][b]Ticket prices:[/b] The game allows you to set ticket prices for vehicle type vs zones, and for single ticket and passes. While this is great to be flexible, it also becomes a grind. Basically a huge table of 6*5*2 cells that you continually need to monitor and update because as you build new lines, demand changes and hence the prices (really complicated system, you will see. The game gives you hints whether a price is below or above the normal. Per cell. With an alert at notification bar every time there is a single cell (ticket combination) that deviates moderately. Ouch.) [*][b]Stop interest:[/b] The circle area of a stop that you place (which attracts only the buildings inside) is a little disappointing. A better solution would be the method in Train Fever where citizens will decide how much they need to walk, and they still choose a stop even if it's far, if it means they still get from A to B faster (that game starts from horse carriages are though). Overall I greatly recommend the game, with its flaws there is still a ton of plus, and is a fantastic simulation for anyone loving traffic, public transportation, or just plain management games! Support a small company :)
• gamedeal user

  Aug 26, 2016

  Cities in Motion 2, hollymolly! I think it was one of the games i was really the most excited about since its release aaaaand ...? Did i get dissapointed? No i didnt. People always compare this game to the first Part of the series but thats not what i will do. In my opinion, this game has changed so much since the first part that we can see it as a complete new series, but if you ask me for my personal opnion .... i enjoyed this game more then the first one but there is still a few things which ... kinda bothered me in this game. Since i am really deep in that kind of Stuff like planning puplic transport solutions due to my studies i would like to see some minor things added like for examples: -catenarys for the trams (this is actually the thing that annoyed me the most) -Depots of an actuall "real" size -more realistic catenary for te trolley Well .... there is still a few veeeery little things but still ... all in all this game is very well made and is deffinitively one of my favourites in my library! Btw ... if any of you know any mods to improove/add the things i posted above, pls let me know :) PS: Sorry for my bad english! Its not my mother language!
• gamedeal user

  Mar 31, 2017

  Once I had a VERY good time with this game when it worked, although some heavy bugs have never been fixed like multiple monitors, different loading issues. I play the linux version. €19.99 for the game in its actual buggy state is way too much. I would have recommended this game in 2014, but cannot recommend it at the moment. A fair price for this 7 year old game, with no devs working on it any more for years, would be in the range €5 - €10.