Last few years I’ve been excitedly waiting for sequels from several small-to-medium sized studios that made highly acclaimed original games—I’m talking about Cities: Skylines, Kerbal Space Program, Planet Coaster, Frostpunk, etc.—yet each sequel was very poorly received to the point I wasn’t willing to risk my money buying it. Why do you think this happens when these developers already had a winning formula?
CS2 looks and performs better than the original now that a lot of the bugs have been squashed and optimizations are in place (in my experience, anyway). Its memory management in particular is way better than CS1. I don’t get the simulation slow down to the same extent that I did in CS1 as the population increases.
The new road tools alone are reason enough for me to never go back to CS1. The service building upgrades are an added feature that’s a big plus as well. I also find that the economy is a little more functional and transparent than in CS1 (again, after multiple patches).
I don’t find the lack of bike lanes, quays, or modular industry to be so important as to ruin my enjoyment of what is otherwise a state of the art city building game.