This was a hard video to watch. Not only do I totally disagree with most of what was said its never good to see a review where the game was played wrong.
Is the manual also badly written perhaps? Someone posted a review of this game on BGG, where he admitted that he made a similar mistake as you mentioned here. The designer responded with an apology for the unclear scenario: boardgamegeek.com/thread/2305108/cities-skylines-review
@@SneakyJ1991 It's possible? But having just re-read the rules, it does say: It sometimes happens that you lose the game. This will be the case if any of the following situations apply: • Costs have to be paid, but you don’t have enough money in your treasury Which I easily took to mean: if you cannot pay for a board, you lose.
I hope Tom updates or removes this review soon, if it really doesn't represent the game. Tom's popular enough to potentially 1. make a lot of players get the rules wrong and 2 tank a game that wasn't the 'game'. There are those who don't read the comments (which, I often don't) can easily miss the info too.
I just can’t get on board with such a harsh critique based on what you expected and think city games should be. That’s like saying Gloomhaven is a bad game because it’s a hard puzzle and dungeon crawlers should be more casual hack and slash game.
To be fair, this is a game based on another game. You can slap an existing brand name on another product to increase sales but that also means you have to accept certain expectations.
I was really puzzled by this review, as I like this game so much. Tom, you did get some rules wrong which could have affected play. Also, I looked up other UA-cam reviews/playthroughs and the ones I found (Ant Lab Games, Slickerdrips, Rahdo) all liked the game. It's fair to say it's not to your liking, but it could be that you were the wrong Dice Tower personality to review this game. How about you let Zee have a crack at it?
A bit disappointed. Haven’t played the game yet, but read the rules. Was looking forward to get you thoughts on it, but as mentioned in previous posts, some major rules were not followed in your review which I feel makes the review kind of pointless. Too bad.
Pierre White No, Im more than happy to listen to conflicting viewpoints. Tom said several things that make it appear he played incorrectly and approached the game with an unfair set of expectations.
I love almost all of your reviews, however, I feel this was very unfair to the game. The component quality issue I will agree with but the complaint about the puzzle aspect of the pieces and being prone to an alpha gamer issue not at all. By nature, every cooperative game is prone to an alpha gamer problem, pandemic can be completely dominated by one player exactly the same way this could.
I disagree. While you’re right about Pandemic, not all cooperative games are equally prone to alpha-gaming. Games that emphasize some amount of creativity or randomness often avoid it due to the fact there isn’t a clear “best” option.
You found it hard because you didn't read the rules correctly and kept resetting your happiness level on the main board to zero after every milestone. I like your reviews but even after just one game I know how to play this better than you. As a pro or semi-professional reviewer you really should learn the game you're reviewing. Also, just take a little more care with punching the pieces out, maybe I just have more nimble fingers than you. Admittedly, it's not the greatest game out there, but it is still fun. At least, I think so.
I haven't played it yet but will this weekend at 4 players. Will try to remember to give my thoughts on it here. What made me preorder it was the fact that it is a city builder (love both SimCity and Cities Skylines games) and that you build one central city as apposed to different "cities" in Suburbia. I have Suburbia and think its decent but don't like the whole building separate zones idea. Feels disconnected.
Does anyone know a way for the game to be more competitive ? So other players have a interest in playing and winning for themselves. It's hard to find someone to coop and also be interested to play again and again; since the game takes long and is hard to complete. On the other hand, solo is tough and I couldn't finish any game. Maybe having two players controlled by me, so more cards would be available, is a solution... or just draw more cards for myself (and roles). And surely more money! I always end with 0 and the game is over... Maybe the game should have other rules to make it more fun.
I highly recommend playing two handed (or maybe even more, if you want). Solo is genuinely a bad way to play the game. This isn’t unique to this game, but I often feel solo rules are haphazardly thrown into games when it’s far better (and sometimes even easier) if you simply do multi handed. It’s the powers (as well as number of cards) that are the issue. As for competitive I feel that’s a different game. In fact, it was a game that was designed, but sadly thrown out. Maybe someday the designer will remake it with a different name. (This was originally a competitive game but that design was scrapped entirely for a coop version. For what is worth, I’m glad they did, I think this is a unique coop and fits the feel of the video game more than a competitive game could.
Tom. please note dekka3k's comments. He is correct, you played these aspects wrong. I wish that mission one was not mission one, because it's the hardest. I agree with your assessment of the piece quality. When I was unboxing this game that was a serious detractor for me. I find this game to be more fun with 2 people than 1, it's harder with one due to a smaller number of cards on the table. I haven't played this with 3 or 4 yet. I think that the weird shapes and challenges of them will increase the replayablility of this. Sometimes you want to play weird shapes first so that easier to use and smaller shapes will be available later, yes it would be soo much easier if all the shapes were squares and rectangles but it's part of the challenge. I feel that you were very negative in tone on this review. I understand that you don't like this game but that came out more than I've seen in any other review of yours. Please retry this with another person or two with all of the game components, if you only play mission 1 that is not what this game is like with it all together. The missions are their way of teaching this and in some ways I wish the book gave the rules without those missions and just laid it all out there.
Played the Game in Essen and had the same thoughts as Tom had. A solo Player game. Mostly it has only one choice what a Player should do if his turn should make sense. Really disappointing as I am a huge Fan of the Video Game.
100% my opinion! The base mechanic is kinda cool, but the puzzle part makes me hate this game. I am thinking about house ruling the option to rearrange every tile (like bulldozing and rebuilding in the video game). Because every time we built something, that person had to grab ALL the pieces and test every possible way to place the new thin just to find an optimized solution.
it might not be so relevant but comparing C:S to SimCity is a not fair comparison. SimCity is an easy city builder C:S is more complex and almost a city building simulator
I thought SimCity was about the people in the city. C:S is about building itself. I would not have thought to even compare these games. I enjoy C:S but Sim City never appealed to me. C:S is unlike any other board game I have and in the computer gaming world, the closest game that I've played to it is Pharoah from like a decade ago or more but comparing it to Pharoah is also a stretch.
Interesting expectations, Tom. You expected a cooperative city building board game to ........? If the game just allowed you to optimize your city, If there were no restrictions on what you could build when, there would be only one way to play and it would get boring fast.
Its why I was hesitant when I heard cooperative city building. Suburbia does exactly what a city building game should do. Gives you restrictions, but almost everything you do is also pushing your city forward to make it better as well. Seems like this is a total single player game with no real clear win condition. Just a chart that says you did a little better or worse than last time. Like I see he got some of the rules wrong, but still, I'm not impressed and will probably stick to other city builders.
Wow, a lot of people on here acting like Tom said their kid was ugly. Get over it! He doesn't like the game! I've played it and feel like Tom makes some great points, and his one or two rules goof's really doesn't change anything. The game is 100% theme-less puzzle. You never get that "sim-city" feel because it's the furthest thing from a sandbox. It's a punishing "deal with collapsing resources before you croak" quandary. "Oh, you built a police station... I guess you lose now."
I don't think many people are complaining about that. I think people are complaining that a potentially major rule was played wrong. Perhaps it wouldn't change his mind. But still best to play the game right and present it right, especially when you are one of the number one board game reviewers. Lots of people may not play this wrong.
Suburbia, which coincidentally is about to release a nice-looking collector's edition. Have played the original, it's WAY more thematic of actually building a city, and a more interactive puzzle.
Actually I am looking for SimCity game that is unlike Suburbia. Suburbia is more like an accounting game that you need to keep track of all the small details about numbers, from the beginning to the end. I have played the Android version and hell no.
Suburbia is not an equivalent replacement. I don't enjoy Suburbia because of needing to keep track of all the adjacency bonuses when you place tiles. And building a city should be a cooperative venture.
Honestly I played it and felt like it did a decent job. The constant struggle to balance population, job demand, traffic, utilities etc is captured quite well. Its not a perfect game but I really enjoyed it and don't think Tom represented it all that well.
This was a hard video to watch. Not only do I totally disagree with most of what was said its never good to see a review where the game was played wrong.
Rules error: You DON'T reset your happiness to zero when ending a milestone! Doing so makes this game much harder than it should be!
Correct! Plz Tom, give this game another try this way
This game is very thematic... We've played with 3 or 4 players and found it to be fun and tense.
Rules error: When ending a milestone you MUST pay for a new tile to build on. If you cannot afford it, you lose immediately.
Is the manual also badly written perhaps?
Someone posted a review of this game on BGG, where he admitted that he made a similar mistake as you mentioned here. The designer responded with an apology for the unclear scenario: boardgamegeek.com/thread/2305108/cities-skylines-review
@@SneakyJ1991 It's possible? But having just re-read the rules, it does say:
It sometimes happens that you lose the game. This will be the case if any of
the following situations apply:
• Costs have to be paid, but you don’t have enough money in your treasury
Which I easily took to mean: if you cannot pay for a board, you lose.
I hope Tom updates or removes this review soon, if it really doesn't represent the game. Tom's popular enough to potentially 1. make a lot of players get the rules wrong and 2 tank a game that wasn't the 'game'. There are those who don't read the comments (which, I often don't) can easily miss the info too.
I just can’t get on board with such a harsh critique based on what you expected and think city games should be. That’s like saying Gloomhaven is a bad game because it’s a hard puzzle and dungeon crawlers should be more casual hack and slash game.
To be fair, this is a game based on another game. You can slap an existing brand name on another product to increase sales but that also means you have to accept certain expectations.
I was really puzzled by this review, as I like this game so much. Tom, you did get some rules wrong which could have affected play. Also, I looked up other UA-cam reviews/playthroughs and the ones I found (Ant Lab Games, Slickerdrips, Rahdo) all liked the game.
It's fair to say it's not to your liking, but it could be that you were the wrong Dice Tower personality to review this game. How about you let Zee have a crack at it?
Oh please, the overall reviews for Tom's much better than theirs
A bit disappointed. Haven’t played the game yet, but read the rules. Was looking forward to get you thoughts on it, but as mentioned in previous posts, some major rules were not followed in your review which I feel makes the review kind of pointless. Too bad.
I was searching up city skylines then this popped up
same i have no idea why tho lol
For anyone looking for information on this game I’d suggest searching rahdos playthrough/final thoughts. He gives a more accurate representation.
Read: he has more of my opinion on it.
Pierre White No, Im more than happy to listen to conflicting viewpoints. Tom said several things that make it appear he played incorrectly and approached the game with an unfair set of expectations.
I love almost all of your reviews, however, I feel this was very unfair to the game. The component quality issue I will agree with but the complaint about the puzzle aspect of the pieces and being prone to an alpha gamer issue not at all. By nature, every cooperative game is prone to an alpha gamer problem, pandemic can be completely dominated by one player exactly the same way this could.
I disagree. While you’re right about Pandemic, not all cooperative games are equally prone to alpha-gaming. Games that emphasize some amount of creativity or randomness often avoid it due to the fact there isn’t a clear “best” option.
Dude! Your complaints are literally that the game is too real to real world land use planning
Happiness is a struggle. Truer words were never spoken.
You found it hard because you didn't read the rules correctly and kept resetting your happiness level on the main board to zero after every milestone. I like your reviews but even after just one game I know how to play this better than you. As a pro or semi-professional reviewer you really should learn the game you're reviewing. Also, just take a little more care with punching the pieces out, maybe I just have more nimble fingers than you. Admittedly, it's not the greatest game out there, but it is still fun. At least, I think so.
I haven't played it yet but will this weekend at 4 players. Will try to remember to give my thoughts on it here.
What made me preorder it was the fact that it is a city builder (love both SimCity and Cities Skylines games) and that you build one central city as apposed to different "cities" in Suburbia. I have Suburbia and think its decent but don't like the whole building separate zones idea. Feels disconnected.
Has less pieces then the video game has DLC...
We played it in Essen as one of our hottest wishes and were pretty disappointed.
Does anyone know a way for the game to be more competitive ? So other players have a interest in playing and winning for themselves. It's hard to find someone to coop and also be interested to play again and again; since the game takes long and is hard to complete.
On the other hand, solo is tough and I couldn't finish any game. Maybe having two players controlled by me, so more cards would be available, is a solution... or just draw more cards for myself (and roles). And surely more money! I always end with 0 and the game is over...
Maybe the game should have other rules to make it more fun.
I highly recommend playing two handed (or maybe even more, if you want). Solo is genuinely a bad way to play the game. This isn’t unique to this game, but I often feel solo rules are haphazardly thrown into games when it’s far better (and sometimes even easier) if you simply do multi handed. It’s the powers (as well as number of cards) that are the issue.
As for competitive I feel that’s a different game. In fact, it was a game that was designed, but sadly thrown out. Maybe someday the designer will remake it with a different name. (This was originally a competitive game but that design was scrapped entirely for a coop version. For what is worth, I’m glad they did, I think this is a unique coop and fits the feel of the video game more than a competitive game could.
Tom. please note dekka3k's comments. He is correct, you played these aspects wrong. I wish that mission one was not mission one, because it's the hardest. I agree with your assessment of the piece quality. When I was unboxing this game that was a serious detractor for me. I find this game to be more fun with 2 people than 1, it's harder with one due to a smaller number of cards on the table. I haven't played this with 3 or 4 yet. I think that the weird shapes and challenges of them will increase the replayablility of this. Sometimes you want to play weird shapes first so that easier to use and smaller shapes will be available later, yes it would be soo much easier if all the shapes were squares and rectangles but it's part of the challenge. I feel that you were very negative in tone on this review. I understand that you don't like this game but that came out more than I've seen in any other review of yours. Please retry this with another person or two with all of the game components, if you only play mission 1 that is not what this game is like with it all together. The missions are their way of teaching this and in some ways I wish the book gave the rules without those missions and just laid it all out there.
This is a bad review which misrepresents the game, almost completely.
Played the Game in Essen and had the same thoughts as Tom had. A solo Player game. Mostly it has only one choice what a Player should do if his turn should make sense. Really disappointing as I am a huge Fan of the Video Game.
Is there an outer space version of this game?
You could pretend You're building your city on the SDF1 from Robotech. :-)
Luckily, the PC game this is based on is a lot better.
100% my opinion! The base mechanic is kinda cool, but the puzzle part makes me hate this game. I am thinking about house ruling the option to rearrange every tile (like bulldozing and rebuilding in the video game). Because every time we built something, that person had to grab ALL the pieces and test every possible way to place the new thin just to find an optimized solution.
it might not be so relevant but comparing C:S to SimCity is a not fair comparison.
SimCity is an easy city builder
C:S is more complex and almost a city building simulator
I thought SimCity was about the people in the city. C:S is about building itself. I would not have thought to even compare these games. I enjoy C:S but Sim City never appealed to me. C:S is unlike any other board game I have and in the computer gaming world, the closest game that I've played to it is Pharoah from like a decade ago or more but comparing it to Pharoah is also a stretch.
Interesting expectations, Tom. You expected a cooperative city building board game to ........?
If the game just allowed you to optimize your city, If there were no restrictions on what you could build when, there would be only one way to play and it would get boring fast.
Its why I was hesitant when I heard cooperative city building. Suburbia does exactly what a city building game should do. Gives you restrictions, but almost everything you do is also pushing your city forward to make it better as well. Seems like this is a total single player game with no real clear win condition. Just a chart that says you did a little better or worse than last time. Like I see he got some of the rules wrong, but still, I'm not impressed and will probably stick to other city builders.
Haen ok. It is getting quite positive reviews from others. Rahdo just listed it as his fourth favorite city builder of all time.
Rahdo has Suburbia as his 6th greatest city builder of all time... while Cities: Skylines is number 4!
To be fair Cities : Skyline the video game is pretty hard too. Also Rahdo finds it too easy and wanted it to be less "gateway" to quote him.
Wow, a lot of people on here acting like Tom said their kid was ugly. Get over it! He doesn't like the game! I've played it and feel like Tom makes some great points, and his one or two rules goof's really doesn't change anything. The game is 100% theme-less puzzle. You never get that "sim-city" feel because it's the furthest thing from a sandbox. It's a punishing "deal with collapsing resources before you croak" quandary. "Oh, you built a police station... I guess you lose now."
I don't think many people are complaining about that. I think people are complaining that a potentially major rule was played wrong. Perhaps it wouldn't change his mind. But still best to play the game right and present it right, especially when you are one of the number one board game reviewers. Lots of people may not play this wrong.
7:09 Exactly what i thought after watching many playthroughs and the main reason i didnt pick this one up.
Just play the computer game with infinite money, that is fun.
Do you have a better alternative? A game to suggest?
Suburbia, which coincidentally is about to release a nice-looking collector's edition. Have played the original, it's WAY more thematic of actually building a city, and a more interactive puzzle.
@@DreyfussFrost Yes, Suburbia is great fun, more interactive, and looks great.
but Suburbia is not a Coop. To me that is the major appeal of this game.
Actually I am looking for SimCity game that is unlike Suburbia. Suburbia is more like an accounting game that you need to keep track of all the small details about numbers, from the beginning to the end. I have played the Android version and hell no.
Suburbia is not an equivalent replacement. I don't enjoy Suburbia because of needing to keep track of all the adjacency bonuses when you place tiles. And building a city should be a cooperative venture.
Can you review superclub? New football manager boardgame
Nice review Tom.
This game doesn't seem to capture the feel of the video game at all.
Honestly I played it and felt like it did a decent job. The constant struggle to balance population, job demand, traffic, utilities etc is captured quite well. Its not a perfect game but I really enjoyed it and don't think Tom represented it all that well.