Paradox how could you

I mean, there are some nits I can pick.

Places don't feel as alive as they did in the original. The original was still deeply flawed, mind - but this goes even further than that.

A great example - when there was a firetruck putting out a fire in the original, you could see little dudes squirting water. CS2 doesn't even have guys come out; the fire just magically goes away. Multiply this by... everything.

There's no bikes (at least as far as I can tell), and the pedestrian path tooling seems to be a huge step back (the only dedicated pedestrian path I can find is technically considered a 2-lane road, but it doesn't allow cars).

The music has these cute little segments inbetween. But there's only like... 5 of them. Once you hear all 5, you've heard everything and they start to grate. The other 2 "radio stations" don't have the NPR segments, but they do have "ads"... and by "ads" they mean exactly 1 ad that you hear every time for "Spaz Electronics". You can turn the ads off but I'd expect more than just a single one.

Everything overreacts to anything you build. If you upgrade a road, it technically disconnects power + water + sewage for a hot second. Then you get a bunch of spam about "I don't have any power!" blah blah even though the game was paused and they absolutely had power.

It's really hard to see what trips Cims are taking. The original let you see the paths Cims took throughout your city, which let you make informed decisions around public transport. Now you can just see... how much traffic there is? Which doesn't tell you anything about where Cims are going, just where you have bottlenecks. It very much encourages a "just 1 more lane, bro" kind of thinking.

Not having a wide variety of public transport options is a bummer. It feels like they left some stuff out for a future DLC (e.g. monorails).

There's no light shining from the camera at nighttime, so it can get actually literally pitch black at night. Like "turn off the day/night cycle because this is unplayable" levels of dark. A subtle light coming from the camera when not in photo mode would've done wonders.

The zoning information is really hard to read. I can't tell what areas I have zoned with something else because it colors areas from other zones as white and unzoned areas as clear... on a mostly white background. It's really really hard to tell at-a-glance what needs to still be zoned in some cases.

The more I play it, the more it feels like CS1 is the sequel and CS2 is the original. There's just so much that's not done as well or that's simply not there. The stuff they added is cool, sure... but like, I wish it was additive on top of what we had before, and not "back at square one". It just makes me want to play the original.

I mean, it does have infinite less content, because it still lacks of the flood of DLCs, so it can't be better in that not so unimportant regard.

It's just not finished yet, and I have no problem waiting for a year or two, you don't have to defend them.

I have no issue playing. It runs smooth. I did encounter several bugs though. But that's usual for games released nowadays. I hope those get patched soon. Although I'm happy it works for me, I'm sad to see so many people have much worse experiences. Game developers aren't what they used to be. Except Larian Studios, they are great.

The original ran like shit too and its UI was garbage compared to any SimCity. Never understood the love for that game. SC3KU was the peak of city sim games.