The first Cities Skylines 2 patch has pushed the city builder's performance from unplayable to merely bad

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It's a substantial improvement, but not a miraculous one

Cities: Skylines 2
(Image credit: Paradox Interactive)

Cities: Skylines 2 launched earlier this week with some massive performance problems, and developer Colossal Order has already issued a patch with some dramatic improvements - though even with those improvements, the city-building game still isn't up to standard.

You can read the patch notes if you want the full details on what this hotfix addresses, but the basics are that it includes a variety of optimizations and tweaks to get the game running more smoothly. Of particular interest for me are these two notes: "optimized stutters when buildings spawn/level up" and "optimized various stutters across all systems."

For my money, those stutters were the worst of CS2's many technical problems. As I noted in my Cities: Skylines 2 review, I'd often have stretches in my larger cities where, every five seconds or so, the game would freeze for a half-second, effectively rendering it unplayable. Post-patch, those stutters only occur once every couple of minutes. That's still bad, but it does at least get the game out of 'unplayable' territory.

Judging by the response to the patch on Reddit and Steam, most players have seen some very substantial improvements to general performance, too. Mileage seems to vary based on specific setups, but reports of improved frame rates are pretty widespread. Anecdotally, I can at least confirm that, at 1440p on an RTX 3080, I can sometimes reach 60 FPS if I look at my city at just the right angle on low settings.

On a technical level, Cities: Skylines 2 is still well below par, but seeing a substantial performance patch arrive this soon after launch does give me hope that Colossal Order can get it there sooner rather than later. I'd rather it have launched in a hearty state to begin with, of course, but now that it's in players' hands it's good to see the game improving.

If you're waiting for more Cities: Skylines 2 patches, check out the best city-building games to play in the meantime. 

Dustin Bailey
Dustin Bailey
Staff Writer

Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.