@@victiusplays Manually painting and plopping decorations between buildings in CSL is a pain and SC 2013 is even worse with its nonsense zone/plop spacing.
I used to play this game quite a bit. I loved that in this game the empty spaces would get filled in between buildings, also agriculture was quite satisfying and it seems like CS2 is going to same direction with drawing borders and then just have the space filled in! In my memory CitiesXXL wasn't that different from CitiesXL, that came out in 2011 or something. But yeah, its superceeded by Cities Skylines quite a bit
XXL literally just had a new UI and new skybox 😭 the rest was the same, they even forgot to change the name of the .exe when it launched so it still said cities xl
So i actually played A LOT of this franchise. In the years between the release of Cities XL and the release of SimCity 2013 (and even a bit after), this was my go-to city builder, because simply it was the best choice. It was fully 3D with awesome graphics, the maps were huge and it had great mechanics that really helped my creative vision (like curved roads and the ability to draw out zones and parks with a polygon rather than a square, which would fill up empty spaces). The game was a massive upgrade over SimCity 4 and for a few years, it truly was the frontruner. That being said, i went back to it last year and, after playing Cities Skylines for 8 years now (and SimCity 2013 for even longer) i can confidently say that the XL franchise aged an awful lot. I particularly despised how the citizens didn't ever seem to recognize how services and amenities were close to them, endingup unhappy and abandoning town. Also, having reached a certain size, the city would be unbearably laggy and the game would crash from time to time. The games weren't terribly polished but they were fun...for the time.
I thought I remembered it a bit, I know I never played XXL, as I bought it for this video 😂 But it felt very much like XL, I played that a bit when I was younger. But I think for me at least. SimCity and Cities Skylines are more enjoyable, even 2013, but I might be because I played so much of them and so little of this 🤔 XXL is feeling very slow paced in comparison. And I agree it has not aged well 😅
CitiesXL wasn't that good of a game tbh, it's just that it was better than SC4 at the time. Devs were greedy and just re-released the same game over and over again. Thank god that SC2013 wasn't that great of a game either, so that Colossal Orders felt like there is enough of a market for a proper city builder competing with CXL and SC2013 and we got treated with Cities: Skylines. With the release of C:S, CXL had no market any longer and finally was done for good.
@@c0d3warrior Treated with slop? I regret the 20 hours I spent on shitty skylines, the entire model is fundamentally flawed. CS is simply unfun, and SC2013 had launch problems but it was a far better game.
I started off with Cities XL 2011, was very fun when the only other game on the market was SimCity 4, just the fact you could have curved roads was cool. The issue is the dev team was nonexistent and just kept rereleasing the same game with new assets.
I played the one from 09 and 11. Remember I got the platinum version aswell. But I don't think I've ever played that one. But sadly they didn't innovate much for this one 😅
I played Cities XL when it was still an MMO, and its dev team back then was absent too. They ignored so many glaring flaws like people sitting on oil deposits and wrecking the entire market. You could grief an entire server by claiming oil spots and abandoning your city leaving the planet with no way to trade for oil other than the expensive NPC corporation that costs more resources than you get from the oil. The MMO inevitably died and it was sold to an asset flip company that released the same game every time a new city builder came out. They are scammers.
i used to love Monte Cristo's city building games like City Life and City Life 2008 (which is the "upgraded version of City Life). then came Cities Unlimited which was later renamed into Cities XL and that was a HUGE step up when compared to SimCity 2013, you could build significantly larger cities and it didn't have many of the limitations of SimCity 2013. however sometime afterwards Focus Home Interactive acquired Monte Cristo and the Cities XL IP, and they basically tried to turn it into a yearly release - so a year later came Cities XL Platinum which basically was Cities XL with a few more maps to build on, a little over a year later came Cities XXL which again was adding just a few more maps to build in and some 30 weird useless buildings. the reason why Cities XXL failed has nothing to do with Cities Skylines at all, Cities XXL and the Cities XL franchise in general failed because ever since Focus Home Interactive bought Monte Cristo - instead of fixing fundamental issues with the game (such as the game not knowing to utilize more than a single CPU core, the game itself being a 32Bit Application and therefore not being able to access more than 4GB of RAM which means that in larger cities the performance hit is insane, and multiple other issues) and also the numerous bugs it had, all they really did was charge you another 60$ a year later for the same exact game just with a different title screen. had Focus Home Interactive actually listened to fan feedback of the original Cities XL game instead of just re-releasing the same broken crap 2 more times than the franchise might have still been around lol
Thanks for the deep explanation! While playing I thought I felt familiar. I played Cities XL when I was younger, had a weird sense of deja Vu at certain times. I honestly didn't know it was a re-release though, genuinely thought they improved on the game and made it a sequel. Guess if that's the case they can't blame Cities Skylines. Yet I don't think the release of it helped anything either 😅
@@victiusplays actually i was wrong in my original comment, it had been re-released 4 times, not 2. there is Cities XL (original 2009 release), then came Cities XL 2011, Cities XL 2012, Cities XL Platinum and then Cities XXL. All 5 games are basically IDENTICAL just with different title screens, 2 or 3 maps were added in 2011, 4 maps in 2012, 4 more maps and 30 or so buildings in “Platinum” and in XXL the UI was repainted from blue to black, heck they didn’t even put the littlest effort on actually creating a stylized “XXL” logo for the top left game menu like they had from XL to Platinum lol. Other than these minor differences it is the same identical game that have been re-released on a yearly basis. Heck, when I used to play Cities XL 2011 what I would actually do is just download the pirated version of the newer game (2012/Platinum/XXL) and essentially just drag and drop the contents of the models folder to my Cities XL 2011 game installation - the maps and new landmark buildings from the newer “games” would just work normally lol. When Cities Skylines was released I just got rid of Cities XL 2011 and never looked back. Cities Skylines 2 got me so hyped, can’t wait to play it when it launches!
At the time of the release there was a forum where we couldeave feedback. They were proposing ideas, just put the stakes so high so when the game was released and there were disappointment, communication was like I felt "well this is the game how we made it stop whining". I personnally felt betrayed and didn't want to spit out money. Sent bad karma and danced when they went bankrupt. A lot has been written about management and donts with this company.
Didn't listen much to the music, had to turn it down it was way too loud 😂 But I remember a couple of tracks that were nice to listen to in the background.
Never played ANY of the xl/2011/xxl games but it’s abundantly clear that compared to SC4 (at least before CS1 finally dropped), the modding community size was like night & day with SC4 being the obvious winner by a landslide. The NAM/RHW ALONE (very substantially adds to transportation options in various different directions) kept things not only fresh but they routinely added & expanded said mod very accordingly every other year on average. And that’s not counting the countless additional building downloads in addition.
I remember this game franchise getting lot of hype behind it when it was announced. EA and Sim City seemed to be abandoned and this was going to be what we were waiting for. Sadly it wasn't the case. It got lost in the shuffle between Sim City 2013 busting and Cities Skylines.
The problem with Cities XXL is that it is just a re-release of Cities XL 2012, which is a re-release of Cities XL 2011, which is a re-release of Cities XL. Each time only minor things changed. Cities XL used to be a MMO City Builder (leftover from that are the planet view and the trading)
Agreed! The graphics are quite good, no complaints there. But the roads... I cut it out of the video but at one point you hear the frustration in my voice 😂
I have both Cities XL and Cities XLL. I got them around the time SimCity 2013 came out and I was annoyed with it. There are some aspects of Cities XXL that I like, and it appears that CS2 is incorporating some of those ideas (like the grid layout). I think the real problem with Cities XLL is that it's unpolished. It feels unfinished and more of a Beta than a Release version. It can also be very overwhelming as well with all the road options and such. One of the things I do like is the variety in the maps you can select from. They are really, really big and it takes a REALLY long time to fill them up. The game could have been a lot better if the developers had put more time and effort into it. But I think, just my opinion, they saw Cities: Skylines release and the massive response to it and it discouraged them from continuing development on Cities XXL.
It sort of feels like, with CS 2. That they looked at what all city builders did well, and are trying to incorporate it into their game! I hope it works out for them, I'm so excited for CS 2 😄
The most enjoyable feature from cities XL or XXL is I can place a small forest or any surfaces within a block, great for creating green spaces. And I love the houses will arrange themselves to use all space of a block. Sadly they didn’t do any updates after that, XL is defo a good game
Never really watched city building videos until I caught on to Cities Skylines. Pretty early on upon release, though I didn't play it much until some years ago I just watched others play while I played WoW. Had a big WoW period for a couple of years there 😂
Cities destroyed their game when they released XXL as a sequel to XL which had no changes. They could have over taken the city building series after Sim City failed.
i never played the newer ones, but my first city builder was their earlier game City Life. splitting the populace into social/wealth groups was a good idea really imo
cities xl, cities xl 2011, 2012 and xxl are the same game, only that year after year they resold it adding a few things instead of releasing it as dlc. I played them a lot between 2009 and 2015 (cities skylines release). At that time it was the closest thing to a Simcity 5 that never came and that all Simcity 4 fans waited for year after year. When Cities Skylines came out we finally had the true spiritual successor.
I thought it felt very familiar while playing it. Tbh it's been many years since I played Cities XL so I didn't think much more of it. But know that people are pointing it out 😂
Very gracious opinion at the end! Gotta say, this game seems like it had time and effort put into it, the graphic are pretty good for 2015... it was just not designed for the average consumer and never took off. Such a shame.
Thanks for watching the video! I really appreciate it! 🙏😄 I think if I had not played so much SimCity and Cities Skylines or if those weren't an option. This game would be a go to, because the graphics aren't bad. It feels pretty in depth as well. But I agree it's not as consumer friendly as other games are 😅
I myself would prefer Cities Skylines, but that being said at least Cities XXL isn't a disgrace of a game like SimCity 5 was, so that for me and a lot of people is a major plus.
I prefer Cities Skylines as well. That being said, I like to go back and try games like this. I played a lot of SimCity 5 recently and in the past. I enjoyed it more this time around because I knew what to expect though 😅
I played Cities XL a good bit after Sim City 4 and it was a good and enjoyable game, so it was interesting to see it's successor. Thank heavens for City Skylines though, incredible difference on two different teams releasing a month apart and their vision for city games.
6 minutes in and I can already say that Simcity is probably better. I just want to ask: will we get a Cities Skylines2 series/gameplay when CS2 comes out?
Ayo, w8in' for you to play Workers and Resources: Soviet Republic. This is a city sim based around Soviet and eastern european urban planning with a huge reliance on walkable micro-districts and such. Also it has a huge emphasis on factory construction and resource management, wonder what you would think about it
@@victiusplaysit is pretty realistic, but you need to micromanage everything especially supply chains, including how the people get their groceries from the store
I played Cities XXL and Cities Skylines at that time. And basicly they had thair superrior sides. After 8 years Cities Skylines comes at this point but whein it first relised, this game beat skylines at soo many things. And still have some features Skylines doesn't have. And whitout mods Skylines still have so much restrictiosn without mods. But Skylines made city building games more comunnity orianted. And basicly people change the game around their taste. Game loved and evolved over time. No body likes restriction espacily on a city builder, which basicly SimCity killed by mostly one tile restriction.
I liked this game, but as you said Skylines came out a little after and dominated the City scene.. This one was also basically a carbon copy of Cities XL before it, which also put it in a bad position in comparison to the newer Cities Skylines that was a fresh take on the old genre.. It wasn't that this was 'bad' it just came with a lot of the annoyances that were in Cities XL and we thought might've been fixed in the sequel that weren't.. Lots of little irritations that added up while Skylines seemed to offer smoother experiences.. Skylines 2 looks amazing though, can't wait to play it.
Never had an issue with the game not starting, I remember playing Cities XL when I was younger. When the city got to a certain size it would lag like crazy 😂 Then again I didn't have a great computer at the time 🤔
I remember Cities XL being ... okay. XXL felt like a total rip-off. There was nothing substantially new compared to XL, and all of the same problems still existed. I was like "how is this a new game?! Where do they get off charging for this?!" Cities XL (and by extension Cities XXL) does have 1 really cool feature though. That is the ability to fill in spaces on the map with one of several textures. This included grass, concrete, market stalls, and a dirt construction zone. This made it very easy to fill in awkward empty spaces with something that looked semi-appropriate, and the dirt construction zones were a great way of filling in a space that I was planning on back-filling later (with stuff that I either couldn't afford yet, or which I hadn't unlocked yet).
The original studio behind the series had a good idea and rather solid engine for its time. There are some really interesting elements there. Unfortunately, the original developers was betting too hard on the interest to pay a monthly subscription fee for what was really a city builder MMO, and bankrupted themselves. Equally unfortunately, Focus, who bought up the franchise, really never developed on the game, nor did they fix the most glaring issues with the game. Considering how utterly disastrous the launch of Sim City 2013 was, Focus had a product they could have fixed up and polished into a decent shape and made into a contender against Sim City. Instead, Focus unfortunately chose to rather release two more "versions" of the game that was little more than map-packs and a handful of cosmetic buildings, both iterations sold at the price of a full game (XL Platinum in 2013 and XXL in 2015). And then this little Finnish upstart called "Colossal Order" who had a solid engine running underneath their interesting little mass traffic games named "Cities in Motion", was able to offer people the more intuitive, more polished fix of city builder goodness later on in 2015, and they are now sitting pretty holding pretty much the majority of the market share of that particular genre.
I went back to playing Skylines after years, and I felt like it was missing features I remembered it having. Think it was because I had also played Cities XL. Seems like Skylines 2 added some of those good things.
I'm really hoping Cities Skylines 2 is good! Wasn't the biggest fan of XXL though, but it might be cause I played so much SimCity and Cities Skylines 🤔
@victiusplays all the new features seem like pretty much everything they needed to add, (except maybe all of your cities existing at the same time/able to be connected). Can't wait to play. Going to be hard to find time though with Starfield and Forza. 😀
I used to play Cities XL and XXL back in the day a lot, since at that time I thought only Cities XL is the best city building game outhere, cause it's the first city game that build without gridline that I ever play.
I had this game and all I remember of it was it was single-core only and had a massive memory leak that made the game unplayable after about half an hour. It was a total waste of money.
calling it a "sequel" is a bit of an exaggeration. It's the same game with a few items more than the previous ones, with no performance, graphics or gameplay updates but rather a few new bugs.
I played this in the BETA when it was still an MMO, and its sad what happened to it. Servers were called "planets" we were supposed to have something called GEMS which were buildings that could be expanded like simcity 2013. That never happened. The gameplay was so unbalanced and it killed what little community it had. Players would claim oil deposits and be robber barons asking for huge amount of resource tokens for even a single oil token. In order to trade, they needed to manually approve it, so when they got bored and left the entire server would die with them too. There was an omnicorp that sold oil, but the cost was even higher than what the robber barons asked for. Players got so angry they started abandoning the game IN BETA and the forums turned into a ghost town before launch. It died almost immediately and was sold not soon after to an asset flip company.
That's probably not great for a game to be abandoned in beta 😂 I actually didn't know it used to be an MMO, didn't play it until it was Cities XL and don't remember it being online 🤔
@@victiusplays The game released as an MMO in october 2009 for like 15 dollars a month, online was shut off in march 2010 and it became an offline game. Barely 6 months. 2 months later in May 2010, Monte Cristo sold to Focus Home interactive and declared bankruptcy. The MMO did not last even a year and neither did the devs, and I remember people being angry the devs werent listening to how major the problems were. If they lowered the token cost for omnicorp, that would remove the power of the robber barons but they didnt even want to do that because that would remove the trading mechanic that was a big feature. It was flawed from the ground up.
This game could have benn great on its basic version on 2009 if they never shut down the Online mode and they never charged you a monthly subscription to play online, actually the free month I got to play the game online was amazing, but when they removed Online they broke the game because most of the time the balance of resources was heavily dependant from your neighboring cities, and in offline mode building a self sustainable city is incredibly challenging without runnin in some kind resource deficit that in the end it will force you to buy resources to megacorp which doesnt selle resources cheap generating a huge hole in your budget, in the online mode there was a free market where every player had freedom to sell its resources to others at whatever price they wanted. And to make it worse, the original developers (Monte Cristo) went broke and then they were bought by Focus who just relauched the same game multiple times with very few new content and without fixing the biggest issue the game had that it wasnt compatible with multi core CPUs which at that time where the newest tech upgrade on PCs, making the game almost unplayable when you had a city fo arround 300K or 500K inhabitants
I don't think I ever made it that far to reach over 100k population. I played Cities XL when I was younger. But my PC at the time wasn't good and could barely handle 30k population 😅
This game is really just a refresh of a 2011 game, so that probably explains your frustrations a bit more. The ambitions with this game was huge, you were supposed to be able to play a large variety of other sim-games within the context of your cities. Imagine a hospital sim game inside your existing city builder. I'm not entirely sure what happened, but the game that came out in the end was really just the basics to facilitate this sim ecosystem.
I love this game; the atmosphere while walking in the streets in first-person view is awesome. I believe I've spent at least 500 hours on it since its release.
The street view is a cool feature no doubt! Glad they put that in Skylines 2. It's awesome to hear that some have actually spent hours playing this game! 😄
I've played CitiesXL, but it looks very similar in my memory. I've forgotten vast majority of a gameplay, but I remember how badly optimized this game was.
In 2011 playing Cities XL, I was amazed by the beautiful graphics of it - nothing came close actually. Even Skylines wasn't that awesome looking when it came out. If XL have had better road building system, it may had turned out differently, which city building game people play today :) The gap filling and agricultural system is still superior in XL than in Skylines...
I was gonna buy this game after trying Simcity (2013) with all the DLC. I picked up Cities Skylines after hearing the good press, and never put it down afterward.
Your biggest mistakes: Industries need to sell their good so you need to export the excess. This is multi-city game. So you need to plan (for) multiple cities. Example: There is desert map with tons of fuel and nothing else. There I like to build offices+fuel(buffed) for export and high-tech+recycling(buffed) to cut imports. 500k pop and 1000 fuel tokens exported is easy to reach. Just try to build one type of Industry and one type of utility in one city unless you have freight constraints. Never buff offices an high-tech because those buildings make tons of cash.
I think Cities XXL was so maligned for 2 main reasons: It was sold as full price "new" game when it was just a re-skind of Cities XL and it also had massive fps issues when your city grew larger. However I always had a soft spot for it because there where quite a few things I thought it did well. For example Farming areas/fields were large areas that you created on the map by dragging just like Cities Skylines 2 now seems to be doing. You could build really large cities with millions of people although as stated before the performance suffered. I liked that there was a need for different types of housing for different people, something that, yet again, CS2 seems to also be doing now. Also I liked that fairly large variety of different building models and unique special buildings the game had, it was definately a lot more than vanilla CS. Also you could trade with other cities on the world map for resources and more. So yes overall a lot of great ideas but plagued by lots of technical problems and also some very shady business practices.
It looks like they are taking many ideas from various games and putting in the CS2. Really a good decision actually, the agriculture zones were even in SimCity 4. They kinda added it with the industry dlc for CS1. My biggest hurdle with this game was the road building, with no snapping tool or directional lines it was quite hard to tell the length of the roads 😂
I played and still play a lot of this game and I really enjoy messing around in it. I am aware that Cities: Skylines is much better with stuff but for me, it eats a lot of space and it's slow as hell. I'm happy with older and now overshadowed city builders, because in each of them I always find something interesting and unique that Cities: Skylines lacks. It's nice to see someone made a review/gameplay after a long time since LGR made one. But I suggest that everyone should give it a try. They can refund games on Steam afterall.
@@jackalenterprisesofohio I think I will look up some videos of the games. Normally I have only played modern time city builders. So going back in time could prove to be fun 😅
dude, Cities XXL is sort of expansion/sequel/re-release of Cities XL, which was initially released in 2009. And XXL was not much different, so I don't consider it a sequel per se. While it was 'released' close to CS, it wasn't even close to being created at the same time.
The railway system(not the metro or subway) in this game is dysfunctional and they decided to remove it out entirely. No fun to me to not have the playable railroad network for my city.
I was so excited for this game, I pre-ordered it. Got it home, got it in the CD drive, thing woudln't take me past the menu screen. It'd crash whenever I tried to start a game. My computer far exceeded the required specs, had all the space and then some, attempted all the trouble shoots. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Went on to the interwebs to ask learned geeks what the issue coudl be? No answers there either, but it seemed to be a common glitchy thing. I'm still annoyed about it, and strangely, I still have the physical game, because it's not like people were clammering to buy it second hand.
Cities XL probably inspired CS tbh. It was the next gen 3D city builder at that time. It has some great features and logic behind it. Also CS vanilla is not an amazing City builder, it feels dumbed down and i only enjoyed it heavily modded. CS 2 seems to bring that serious tone i personally prefer.
Honestly Cities XL was the game that got me into city builders so I have a lot of nostalgia when I see this franchise, but ngl when I played XL the road building seemed better than here but maybe I got used to modded cities skylines idk
I did play Cities XL after this, and the snapping of the roads actually felt better than XXL. Couldn't figure out if it was just me or because I got used to it 😅
yeah I actually played Cities XXL too. But like you said it was way to slow compared to Cities Skyline. I also actually liked Sim City but yeah the decision to only build small cities was stupid. And ever since City Skyline no other City builder game did hold my interest. Now City Skyline 2 is my next City Builder Game, I already preordered.
It's sad that so many people s*it on this game. I still feel that the graphics and details of the buildings are far superior to Cities Skylines where the buildings feel flat with no textures and the contrast is cranked up all the way. The buildings had a unique look and it didn't feel like a copy-paste of the same boring neon box giving you the ability to create interesting spaces rangin from Chinatown to Germanic old town to modern metropolis and beyond. I really appreciated how the game fixed awkward spaces and gave you the ability to fill them with plazas or green spaces making zoning feel more organic. Also the maps looked great and were enormous with scaling done well. Granted, it was buggy, laggy and had a whole variety of issues but it really felt that the the city building aspect was the main focus of the game not an afterthought. I've found that in other similar games they put too much emphasis on trivial stuff like generating too much info about eah citizen or micro-managing traffic. I still fondly remember pouring hours into this game creating a city of 5m+ people that felt like a bustling city not a small town with 2/3 of the map still free to be developed. I wish these guys would get proper funding and put out a polished new entry.
All I remember from playing this game is frustration and confusion. No idea how to make money, no idea how to make citizens happy, fps in the low teens when C:S was reaching 60 fps easy.
I played Cities XL and when Cities XXL came out 3 years later with and a version of cities XL coming out inbetween these and not seeing a lot of iteration or improvement I lost interes in the game. Cieties Skylines just brought more new stuff to the table. With cities Skylines 2 around the corner they have already previewed a lot of cool improvements to the game.
I kinda love how the lots draw themselves. Idk I hate how lots arrange themselves in CS where if you aren’t doing some sort of golden ratio shit lot distribution gets all wonky. Hopefully they fix that in the new game Edit: they didn’t do the best job in this game but my point still stands
I can't play city skylines, I hate how bad pedestrian paths connect to roads and the lack of traffic control (without mods), luckily, they seem to have fixed it in city skyline 2.
_Cities XL_ and _Cities XXL_ dragged themselves slowly across the remains of the battlefield so _Cities: Skylines 2_ could fly Super-Man style over the horizon. o.o
Cities XL's performance was horrid when it released, but I still managed to play it 44 hours according to Steam. I wasn't even aware that there was a Cities XXL. But it was fun finding some 12 year old screenshots I apparently took back then 😅 I even made a comment going "This is why Cities XL > SC4" cause it didn't look terrible for when it came out.
Yup, i don't think I build a road without being frustrated 😅 But then again, I'm used to the help in Skylines and SimCity. I may just be damaged from quality of life changes 🤔
I think the most annoying part was the road building. The zone of stuff actually felt very good once you got used to the difference compared to SimCity 5 and Cities Skylines 😅
I clicked on this video specifically because it was a name I knew, but never really saw anyone make any content with. There seems to be a lot of fantastic features in the game that the competitors should implement, my favorite being the ability to go to street level first person view, that's just too cool. Of course, the negative trade-offs negate any real reason to play it I'd wager. The worst is how damn slow x5 is. Dear lord.
please do a series on this. This was an awesome game best graphics of city builder to date. If this game has some some of the mechanics of CS1 just the road mechanics and the agents system and it would be awesome
This originally started as an MMO and I got it when it first came out. It was awesome. Everyone built on the same planet and you could travel to players cities using an avatar. The MMO only lasted a couple of months before it shut down.
Em CitiesXXL is exact copy of CitiesXL with improved performance and some added assets. And that game was released in 2009. So you are comparing a 2009 game with a 2015 Cities Skylines game. Also CitiesXL was an online game.
Yeah I found out... Played Cities XL when I was younger and it felt very familier 😅 Still the game is branded as a sequel released in 2015. But I guess that's why it wasn't all that successful 😂
cities skylines is the better game, but to me this game looks more pleasing aesthetically excluding the UI . the buildings and streets just look better cant exactly point out why though
The tool to fill in awkward spaces between buildings with parks is such a good feature.
Definitely! In Skylines I always just fill the space with trees 😂
@@victiusplays Manually painting and plopping decorations between buildings in CSL is a pain and SC 2013 is even worse with its nonsense zone/plop spacing.
And the vast amoint of roads, especially non-symmetrical roade
Was just about to comment this myself. I wish C:S did something similar, that was a really good idea.
@@nFyrin What minutes does that fill tool appears please?
I used to play this game quite a bit. I loved that in this game the empty spaces would get filled in between buildings, also agriculture was quite satisfying and it seems like CS2 is going to same direction with drawing borders and then just have the space filled in! In my memory CitiesXXL wasn't that different from CitiesXL, that came out in 2011 or something. But yeah, its superceeded by Cities Skylines quite a bit
That is definitely a neat feature.
Usually in Cities skylines I just fill the spot with trees 😂
XXL literally just had a new UI and new skybox 😭 the rest was the same, they even forgot to change the name of the .exe when it launched so it still said cities xl
@@gabrielkline2581 i noticed that too.. they refurbished lots of files from previous game and call it new game..
So i actually played A LOT of this franchise. In the years between the release of Cities XL and the release of SimCity 2013 (and even a bit after), this was my go-to city builder, because simply it was the best choice. It was fully 3D with awesome graphics, the maps were huge and it had great mechanics that really helped my creative vision (like curved roads and the ability to draw out zones and parks with a polygon rather than a square, which would fill up empty spaces). The game was a massive upgrade over SimCity 4 and for a few years, it truly was the frontruner. That being said, i went back to it last year and, after playing Cities Skylines for 8 years now (and SimCity 2013 for even longer) i can confidently say that the XL franchise aged an awful lot. I particularly despised how the citizens didn't ever seem to recognize how services and amenities were close to them, endingup unhappy and abandoning town. Also, having reached a certain size, the city would be unbearably laggy and the game would crash from time to time. The games weren't terribly polished but they were fun...for the time.
I thought I remembered it a bit, I know I never played XXL, as I bought it for this video 😂
But it felt very much like XL, I played that a bit when I was younger. But I think for me at least. SimCity and Cities Skylines are more enjoyable, even 2013, but I might be because I played so much of them and so little of this 🤔 XXL is feeling very slow paced in comparison. And I agree it has not aged well 😅
@@victiusplays oh yes they are absolutely more enjoyable
CitiesXL wasn't that good of a game tbh, it's just that it was better than SC4 at the time. Devs were greedy and just re-released the same game over and over again. Thank god that SC2013 wasn't that great of a game either, so that Colossal Orders felt like there is enough of a market for a proper city builder competing with CXL and SC2013 and we got treated with Cities: Skylines. With the release of C:S, CXL had no market any longer and finally was done for good.
@@c0d3warrior Treated with slop? I regret the 20 hours I spent on shitty skylines, the entire model is fundamentally flawed. CS is simply unfun, and SC2013 had launch problems but it was a far better game.
I started off with Cities XL 2011, was very fun when the only other game on the market was SimCity 4, just the fact you could have curved roads was cool. The issue is the dev team was nonexistent and just kept rereleasing the same game with new assets.
Even earlier, XL was released in 2009
I played the one from 09 and 11. Remember I got the platinum version aswell. But I don't think I've ever played that one.
But sadly they didn't innovate much for this one 😅
Yep, they just fixed minor bugs (and just that) and changed the UI a bit... and that's it, BOOM "new game"!! give us money. @@victiusplays
I played Cities XL when it was still an MMO, and its dev team back then was absent too. They ignored so many glaring flaws like people sitting on oil deposits and wrecking the entire market. You could grief an entire server by claiming oil spots and abandoning your city leaving the planet with no way to trade for oil other than the expensive NPC corporation that costs more resources than you get from the oil.
The MMO inevitably died and it was sold to an asset flip company that released the same game every time a new city builder came out. They are scammers.
Well the developer Monte Cristo filed for bankruptcy in May 2010 so that there might have been the problem with the re-releases
i used to love Monte Cristo's city building games like City Life and City Life 2008 (which is the "upgraded version of City Life).
then came Cities Unlimited which was later renamed into Cities XL and that was a HUGE step up when compared to SimCity 2013, you could build significantly larger cities and it didn't have many of the limitations of SimCity 2013.
however sometime afterwards Focus Home Interactive acquired Monte Cristo and the Cities XL IP, and they basically tried to turn it into a yearly release - so a year later came Cities XL Platinum which basically was Cities XL with a few more maps to build on, a little over a year later came Cities XXL which again was adding just a few more maps to build in and some 30 weird useless buildings.
the reason why Cities XXL failed has nothing to do with Cities Skylines at all, Cities XXL and the Cities XL franchise in general failed because ever since Focus Home Interactive bought Monte Cristo - instead of fixing fundamental issues with the game (such as the game not knowing to utilize more than a single CPU core, the game itself being a 32Bit Application and therefore not being able to access more than 4GB of RAM which means that in larger cities the performance hit is insane, and multiple other issues) and also the numerous bugs it had, all they really did was charge you another 60$ a year later for the same exact game just with a different title screen.
had Focus Home Interactive actually listened to fan feedback of the original Cities XL game instead of just re-releasing the same broken crap 2 more times than the franchise might have still been around lol
Thanks for the deep explanation! While playing I thought I felt familiar. I played Cities XL when I was younger, had a weird sense of deja Vu at certain times.
I honestly didn't know it was a re-release though, genuinely thought they improved on the game and made it a sequel. Guess if that's the case they can't blame Cities Skylines. Yet I don't think the release of it helped anything either 😅
@@victiusplays actually i was wrong in my original comment, it had been re-released 4 times, not 2.
there is Cities XL (original 2009 release), then came Cities XL 2011, Cities XL 2012, Cities XL Platinum and then Cities XXL.
All 5 games are basically IDENTICAL just with different title screens, 2 or 3 maps were added in 2011, 4 maps in 2012, 4 more maps and 30 or so buildings in “Platinum” and in XXL the UI was repainted from blue to black, heck they didn’t even put the littlest effort on actually creating a stylized “XXL” logo for the top left game menu like they had from XL to Platinum lol.
Other than these minor differences it is the same identical game that have been re-released on a yearly basis.
Heck, when I used to play Cities XL 2011 what I would actually do is just download the pirated version of the newer game (2012/Platinum/XXL) and essentially just drag and drop the contents of the models folder to my Cities XL 2011 game installation - the maps and new landmark buildings from the newer “games” would just work normally lol.
When Cities Skylines was released I just got rid of Cities XL 2011 and never looked back.
Cities Skylines 2 got me so hyped, can’t wait to play it when it launches!
At the time of the release there was a forum where we couldeave feedback. They were proposing ideas, just put the stakes so high so when the game was released and there were disappointment, communication was like I felt "well this is the game how we made it stop whining". I personnally felt betrayed and didn't want to spit out money. Sent bad karma and danced when they went bankrupt. A lot has been written about management and donts with this company.
The best thing of Cities XL to me is its theme soundtracks. I can't remember when I played this game last time, but they're still on my playlist☺️
Didn't listen much to the music, had to turn it down it was way too loud 😂
But I remember a couple of tracks that were nice to listen to in the background.
Never played ANY of the xl/2011/xxl games but it’s abundantly clear that compared to SC4 (at least before CS1 finally dropped), the modding community size was like night & day with SC4 being the obvious winner by a landslide.
The NAM/RHW ALONE (very substantially adds to transportation options in various different directions) kept things not only fresh but they routinely added & expanded said mod very accordingly every other year on average. And that’s not counting the countless additional building downloads in addition.
I remember this game franchise getting lot of hype behind it when it was announced. EA and Sim City seemed to be abandoned and this was going to be what we were waiting for. Sadly it wasn't the case. It got lost in the shuffle between Sim City 2013 busting and Cities Skylines.
The problem with Cities XXL is that it is just a re-release of Cities XL 2012, which is a re-release of Cities XL 2011, which is a re-release of Cities XL. Each time only minor things changed.
Cities XL used to be a MMO City Builder (leftover from that are the planet view and the trading)
Ahhh...what a nostalgia!!! Now I want to play that again...
I really like the way this game looks at ground level but those roads are a killer...
Agreed! The graphics are quite good, no complaints there.
But the roads... I cut it out of the video but at one point you hear the frustration in my voice 😂
I have both Cities XL and Cities XLL. I got them around the time SimCity 2013 came out and I was annoyed with it. There are some aspects of Cities XXL that I like, and it appears that CS2 is incorporating some of those ideas (like the grid layout). I think the real problem with Cities XLL is that it's unpolished. It feels unfinished and more of a Beta than a Release version. It can also be very overwhelming as well with all the road options and such. One of the things I do like is the variety in the maps you can select from. They are really, really big and it takes a REALLY long time to fill them up. The game could have been a lot better if the developers had put more time and effort into it. But I think, just my opinion, they saw Cities: Skylines release and the massive response to it and it discouraged them from continuing development on Cities XXL.
It sort of feels like, with CS 2. That they looked at what all city builders did well, and are trying to incorporate it into their game! I hope it works out for them, I'm so excited for CS 2 😄
it could be another Cities XXXL ! 🤣🤣
@@bagussriadjipamekas4286No. CS2 will not be a Cities XXXL.
I like the way you can automatically build districts in this game, saves some time on city planning. UI looks gross though
The most enjoyable feature from cities XL or XXL is I can place a small forest or any surfaces within a block, great for creating green spaces. And I love the houses will arrange themselves to use all space of a block. Sadly they didn’t do any updates after that, XL is defo a good game
6:44 my mom talking about me to her friends
I remember LGR did a review/video of XL or XXL. But I haven't checked it out myself. Might check it out thanks to your video!
Glad you enjoyed the video! 🙏😄 Don't think I saw LGR's video, usually do though. I enjoy his reviews very much, at least the Sims reviews 😅
I use to watch LOADS of Cities XXL, I wasn't even aware of Cities Skyline's existence until a lot later!
Never really watched city building videos until I caught on to Cities Skylines. Pretty early on upon release, though I didn't play it much until some years ago I just watched others play while I played WoW. Had a big WoW period for a couple of years there 😂
Cities destroyed their game when they released XXL as a sequel to XL which had no changes. They could have over taken the city building series after Sim City failed.
i never played the newer ones, but my first city builder was their earlier game City Life. splitting the populace into social/wealth groups was a good idea really imo
I only played the original one from 09. Well before the other day when I played this 😂
Hope you enjoyed the video! 😄
@@victiusplays always enjoy your videos !! love small creators!!
@@dull_scythe Really appreciate the support! It means a lot 🙏❤️
cities xl, cities xl 2011, 2012 and xxl are the same game, only that year after year they resold it adding a few things instead of releasing it as dlc. I played them a lot between 2009 and 2015 (cities skylines release). At that time it was the closest thing to a Simcity 5 that never came and that all Simcity 4 fans waited for year after year. When Cities Skylines came out we finally had the true spiritual successor.
I thought it felt very familiar while playing it. Tbh it's been many years since I played Cities XL so I didn't think much more of it. But know that people are pointing it out 😂
Very gracious opinion at the end! Gotta say, this game seems like it had time and effort put into it, the graphic are pretty good for 2015... it was just not designed for the average consumer and never took off. Such a shame.
Thanks for watching the video! I really appreciate it! 🙏😄
I think if I had not played so much SimCity and Cities Skylines or if those weren't an option. This game would be a go to, because the graphics aren't bad. It feels pretty in depth as well.
But I agree it's not as consumer friendly as other games are 😅
I myself would prefer Cities Skylines, but that being said at least Cities XXL isn't a disgrace of a game like SimCity 5 was, so that for me and a lot of people is a major plus.
I prefer Cities Skylines as well.
That being said, I like to go back and try games like this. I played a lot of SimCity 5 recently and in the past. I enjoyed it more this time around because I knew what to expect though 😅
I played Cities XL a good bit after Sim City 4 and it was a good and enjoyable game, so it was interesting to see it's successor. Thank heavens for City Skylines though, incredible difference on two different teams releasing a month apart and their vision for city games.
6 minutes in and I can already say that Simcity is probably better. I just want to ask: will we get a Cities Skylines2 series/gameplay when CS2 comes out?
Definitely had a lot more fun with SimCity even though it has it flaws 😅
Cities Skylines 2 will definitely have a spot on this channel! 😄
Ayo, w8in' for you to play Workers and Resources: Soviet Republic. This is a city sim based around Soviet and eastern european urban planning with a huge reliance on walkable micro-districts and such. Also it has a huge emphasis on factory construction and resource management, wonder what you would think about it
I have heard of it, but actually never seen a video or played it before 😅
Is it any good?
@@victiusplaysit is pretty realistic, but you need to micromanage everything especially supply chains, including how the people get their groceries from the store
If i remember correctly this was just a re-release of Cities XL from 2013 with minor improvements.
I played Cities XXL and Cities Skylines at that time. And basicly they had thair superrior sides. After 8 years Cities Skylines comes at this point but whein it first relised, this game beat skylines at soo many things. And still have some features Skylines doesn't have. And whitout mods Skylines still have so much restrictiosn without mods. But Skylines made city building games more comunnity orianted. And basicly people change the game around their taste. Game loved and evolved over time. No body likes restriction espacily on a city builder, which basicly SimCity killed by mostly one tile restriction.
I liked this game, but as you said Skylines came out a little after and dominated the City scene.. This one was also basically a carbon copy of Cities XL before it, which also put it in a bad position in comparison to the newer Cities Skylines that was a fresh take on the old genre.. It wasn't that this was 'bad' it just came with a lot of the annoyances that were in Cities XL and we thought might've been fixed in the sequel that weren't.. Lots of little irritations that added up while Skylines seemed to offer smoother experiences.. Skylines 2 looks amazing though, can't wait to play it.
Another one is the City Life game that came out in 2006 and another edition in 2008, was quite fun, and the ancestor to Cities XL.
Never heard of City Life, might have to look that one up 🤔
City Management is my cup of tea, i hope you'll play CS:2 in its release, I'd be happy to watch you all day. Nice voice tho, here's my sub
I will definitely play CS2! 😄
Thanks for the kind words and the sub! Hope you will stay around 🙏
I loved this game but it was so buggy I finally couldn't even get it to start.
Never had an issue with the game not starting, I remember playing Cities XL when I was younger. When the city got to a certain size it would lag like crazy 😂
Then again I didn't have a great computer at the time 🤔
I played this game a lot because my laptop did not support cities skylines at that time and I loved this game.
I remember Cities XL being ... okay. XXL felt like a total rip-off. There was nothing substantially new compared to XL, and all of the same problems still existed. I was like "how is this a new game?! Where do they get off charging for this?!"
Cities XL (and by extension Cities XXL) does have 1 really cool feature though. That is the ability to fill in spaces on the map with one of several textures. This included grass, concrete, market stalls, and a dirt construction zone. This made it very easy to fill in awkward empty spaces with something that looked semi-appropriate, and the dirt construction zones were a great way of filling in a space that I was planning on back-filling later (with stuff that I either couldn't afford yet, or which I hadn't unlocked yet).
The original studio behind the series had a good idea and rather solid engine for its time. There are some really interesting elements there. Unfortunately, the original developers was betting too hard on the interest to pay a monthly subscription fee for what was really a city builder MMO, and bankrupted themselves. Equally unfortunately, Focus, who bought up the franchise, really never developed on the game, nor did they fix the most glaring issues with the game. Considering how utterly disastrous the launch of Sim City 2013 was, Focus had a product they could have fixed up and polished into a decent shape and made into a contender against Sim City. Instead, Focus unfortunately chose to rather release two more "versions" of the game that was little more than map-packs and a handful of cosmetic buildings, both iterations sold at the price of a full game (XL Platinum in 2013 and XXL in 2015). And then this little Finnish upstart called "Colossal Order" who had a solid engine running underneath their interesting little mass traffic games named "Cities in Motion", was able to offer people the more intuitive, more polished fix of city builder goodness later on in 2015, and they are now sitting pretty holding pretty much the majority of the market share of that particular genre.
I went back to playing Skylines after years, and I felt like it was missing features I remembered it having. Think it was because I had also played Cities XL.
Seems like Skylines 2 added some of those good things.
I'm really hoping Cities Skylines 2 is good!
Wasn't the biggest fan of XXL though, but it might be cause I played so much SimCity and Cities Skylines 🤔
@victiusplays all the new features seem like pretty much everything they needed to add, (except maybe all of your cities existing at the same time/able to be connected). Can't wait to play. Going to be hard to find time though with Starfield and Forza. 😀
I used to play Cities XL and XXL back in the day a lot, since at that time I thought only Cities XL is the best city building game outhere, cause it's the first city game that build without gridline that I ever play.
I remember playing and thought "was this made by disney?"
I had this game and all I remember of it was it was single-core only and had a massive memory leak that made the game unplayable after about half an hour. It was a total waste of money.
Damn, didn’t know CXL had a sequel
Sure did, never played it though. Only the original game 😅
calling it a "sequel" is a bit of an exaggeration. It's the same game with a few items more than the previous ones, with no performance, graphics or gameplay updates but rather a few new bugs.
I played this in the BETA when it was still an MMO, and its sad what happened to it. Servers were called "planets" we were supposed to have something called GEMS which were buildings that could be expanded like simcity 2013. That never happened. The gameplay was so unbalanced and it killed what little community it had. Players would claim oil deposits and be robber barons asking for huge amount of resource tokens for even a single oil token. In order to trade, they needed to manually approve it, so when they got bored and left the entire server would die with them too. There was an omnicorp that sold oil, but the cost was even higher than what the robber barons asked for.
Players got so angry they started abandoning the game IN BETA and the forums turned into a ghost town before launch. It died almost immediately and was sold not soon after to an asset flip company.
That's probably not great for a game to be abandoned in beta 😂
I actually didn't know it used to be an MMO, didn't play it until it was Cities XL and don't remember it being online 🤔
@@victiusplays The game released as an MMO in october 2009 for like 15 dollars a month, online was shut off in march 2010 and it became an offline game. Barely 6 months. 2 months later in May 2010, Monte Cristo sold to Focus Home interactive and declared bankruptcy. The MMO did not last even a year and neither did the devs, and I remember people being angry the devs werent listening to how major the problems were.
If they lowered the token cost for omnicorp, that would remove the power of the robber barons but they didnt even want to do that because that would remove the trading mechanic that was a big feature. It was flawed from the ground up.
This game could have benn great on its basic version on 2009 if they never shut down the Online mode and they never charged you a monthly subscription to play online, actually the free month I got to play the game online was amazing, but when they removed Online they broke the game because most of the time the balance of resources was heavily dependant from your neighboring cities, and in offline mode building a self sustainable city is incredibly challenging without runnin in some kind resource deficit that in the end it will force you to buy resources to megacorp which doesnt selle resources cheap generating a huge hole in your budget, in the online mode there was a free market where every player had freedom to sell its resources to others at whatever price they wanted.
And to make it worse, the original developers (Monte Cristo) went broke and then they were bought by Focus who just relauched the same game multiple times with very few new content and without fixing the biggest issue the game had that it wasnt compatible with multi core CPUs which at that time where the newest tech upgrade on PCs, making the game almost unplayable when you had a city fo arround 300K or 500K inhabitants
I don't think I ever made it that far to reach over 100k population.
I played Cities XL when I was younger. But my PC at the time wasn't good and could barely handle 30k population 😅
I remember when this game was called "Cities Unlimited"
Actually never knew it was called that 😅
I remember Cities XL that works on only one cpu core, i hope this one works on more.
This game is really just a refresh of a 2011 game, so that probably explains your frustrations a bit more. The ambitions with this game was huge, you were supposed to be able to play a large variety of other sim-games within the context of your cities. Imagine a hospital sim game inside your existing city builder. I'm not entirely sure what happened, but the game that came out in the end was really just the basics to facilitate this sim ecosystem.
Say what you guys want about Cities XXL, at least you don't need a terabyte of RAM like Cities Skyline
I love this game; the atmosphere while walking in the streets in first-person view is awesome. I believe I've spent at least 500 hours on it since its release.
The street view is a cool feature no doubt! Glad they put that in Skylines 2.
It's awesome to hear that some have actually spent hours playing this game! 😄
I've played CitiesXL, but it looks very similar in my memory. I've forgotten vast majority of a gameplay, but I remember how badly optimized this game was.
If we combined Cities XXL’s graphic with Cities Skylines tools and gameplay. It would be a bomb game
In 2011 playing Cities XL, I was amazed by the beautiful graphics of it - nothing came close actually. Even Skylines wasn't that awesome looking when it came out. If XL have had better road building system, it may had turned out differently, which city building game people play today :) The gap filling and agricultural system is still superior in XL than in Skylines...
I'm surprised how few people don't know about this game. It was at that moment that I discovered that SimCity's would end
I was gonna buy this game after trying Simcity (2013) with all the DLC. I picked up Cities Skylines after hearing the good press, and never put it down afterward.
Your biggest mistakes:
Industries need to sell their good so you need to export the excess.
This is multi-city game. So you need to plan (for) multiple cities.
Example: There is desert map with tons of fuel and nothing else.
There I like to build offices+fuel(buffed) for export and high-tech+recycling(buffed) to cut imports. 500k pop and 1000 fuel tokens exported is easy to reach.
Just try to build one type of Industry and one type of utility in one city unless you have freight constraints.
Never buff offices an high-tech because those buildings make tons of cash.
I think Cities XXL was so maligned for 2 main reasons: It was sold as full price "new" game when it was just a re-skind of Cities XL and it also had massive fps issues when your city grew larger. However I always had a soft spot for it because there where quite a few things I thought it did well. For example Farming areas/fields were large areas that you created on the map by dragging just like Cities Skylines 2 now seems to be doing. You could build really large cities with millions of people although as stated before the performance suffered. I liked that there was a need for different types of housing for different people, something that, yet again, CS2 seems to also be doing now. Also I liked that fairly large variety of different building models and unique special buildings the game had, it was definately a lot more than vanilla CS. Also you could trade with other cities on the world map for resources and more. So yes overall a lot of great ideas but plagued by lots of technical problems and also some very shady business practices.
It looks like they are taking many ideas from various games and putting in the CS2. Really a good decision actually, the agriculture zones were even in SimCity 4. They kinda added it with the industry dlc for CS1.
My biggest hurdle with this game was the road building, with no snapping tool or directional lines it was quite hard to tell the length of the roads 😂
@@victiusplays For sure it's a good thing they are taking a lot of inspiration from lots of other games, which is a very good idea.
I played and still play a lot of this game and I really enjoy messing around in it. I am aware that Cities: Skylines is much better with stuff but for me, it eats a lot of space and it's slow as hell. I'm happy with older and now overshadowed city builders, because in each of them I always find something interesting and unique that Cities: Skylines lacks. It's nice to see someone made a review/gameplay after a long time since LGR made one.
But I suggest that everyone should give it a try. They can refund games on Steam afterall.
I played XL quite a bit for a while. I always liked how it handled zoning more than any of the other games.
The zoning was not bad, once I got used to it, it felt very natural just different to what I was used to 😅
If you’re able to see your cities and connect them from planet view similar to simcity 4’s region system then that would actually be sick
Will you show some Anno games in the future?
I was actually looking at Anno 1800 earlier today. Never played the series 🤔
But I'm definitely open to giving it a try 😄
@@victiusplays I played one of the Anno games and to me, it gave me oldschool facebook games vibes.
@@jackalenterprisesofohio I think I will look up some videos of the games. Normally I have only played modern time city builders. So going back in time could prove to be fun 😅
I think Cities XL 2012 was the best modern city builder of it's time. Not for very long though. 😄
dude, Cities XXL is sort of expansion/sequel/re-release of Cities XL, which was initially released in 2009. And XXL was not much different, so I don't consider it a sequel per se. While it was 'released' close to CS, it wasn't even close to being created at the same time.
The railway system(not the metro or subway) in this game is dysfunctional and they decided to remove it out entirely. No fun to me to not have the playable railroad network for my city.
I was so excited for this game, I pre-ordered it. Got it home, got it in the CD drive, thing woudln't take me past the menu screen. It'd crash whenever I tried to start a game. My computer far exceeded the required specs, had all the space and then some, attempted all the trouble shoots. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Went on to the interwebs to ask learned geeks what the issue coudl be? No answers there either, but it seemed to be a common glitchy thing.
I'm still annoyed about it, and strangely, I still have the physical game, because it's not like people were clammering to buy it second hand.
these brown boxy cars sure look realistic lol
i love how you edited this video..
I always believed Cities Skylines was the sequel to this game and Cities XL, and that's what initially put me off it.
Cities XL probably inspired CS tbh.
It was the next gen 3D city builder at that time.
It has some great features and logic behind it.
Also CS vanilla is not an amazing City builder, it feels dumbed down and i only enjoyed it heavily modded. CS 2 seems to bring that serious tone i personally prefer.
Honestly Cities XL was the game that got me into city builders so I have a lot of nostalgia when I see this franchise, but ngl when I played XL the road building seemed better than here but maybe I got used to modded cities skylines idk
I did play Cities XL after this, and the snapping of the roads actually felt better than XXL. Couldn't figure out if it was just me or because I got used to it 😅
I thought your accent sounded a bit similar to a Danish youtube friend of mine, and I was right! You are Danish.
Dannebrog for altid!! 🇩🇰🇩🇰🇩🇰
Can't hide from that 😂🇩🇰
yeah I actually played Cities XXL too. But like you said it was way to slow compared to Cities Skyline. I also actually liked Sim City but yeah the decision to only build small cities was stupid. And ever since City Skyline no other City builder game did hold my interest. Now City Skyline 2 is my next City Builder Game, I already preordered.
It's sad that so many people s*it on this game. I still feel that the graphics and details of the buildings are far superior to Cities Skylines where the buildings feel flat with no textures and the contrast is cranked up all the way. The buildings had a unique look and it didn't feel like a copy-paste of the same boring neon box giving you the ability to create interesting spaces rangin from Chinatown to Germanic old town to modern metropolis and beyond. I really appreciated how the game fixed awkward spaces and gave you the ability to fill them with plazas or green spaces making zoning feel more organic. Also the maps looked great and were enormous with scaling done well.
Granted, it was buggy, laggy and had a whole variety of issues but it really felt that the the city building aspect was the main focus of the game not an afterthought. I've found that in other similar games they put too much emphasis on trivial stuff like generating too much info about eah citizen or micro-managing traffic.
I still fondly remember pouring hours into this game creating a city of 5m+ people that felt like a bustling city not a small town with 2/3 of the map still free to be developed.
I wish these guys would get proper funding and put out a polished new entry.
All I remember from playing this game is frustration and confusion. No idea how to make money, no idea how to make citizens happy, fps in the low teens when C:S was reaching 60 fps easy.
Maybe you can try citystate 2 too. I think it’s a good game too
It's funny someone mentioned it in aa earlier video of mine aswell. I have never heard of it 😅
But definitely open to take a look at it 😄
I played Cities XL and when Cities XXL came out 3 years later with and a version of cities XL coming out inbetween these and not seeing a lot of iteration or improvement I lost interes in the game. Cieties Skylines just brought more new stuff to the table. With cities Skylines 2 around the corner they have already previewed a lot of cool improvements to the game.
I played Cities XL. It was the first city builder that I know of that you could make bus routes which I thought was amazing. I didn't get hooked tho.
this game got me hooked to city building games
I kinda love how the lots draw themselves. Idk I hate how lots arrange themselves in CS where if you aren’t doing some sort of golden ratio shit lot distribution gets all wonky. Hopefully they fix that in the new game
Edit: they didn’t do the best job in this game but my point still stands
I can't play city skylines, I hate how bad pedestrian paths connect to roads and the lack of traffic control (without mods), luckily, they seem to have fixed it in city skyline 2.
umm didn't this game get shadowed by simcity 4?
_Cities XL_ and _Cities XXL_ dragged themselves slowly across the remains of the battlefield so _Cities: Skylines 2_ could fly Super-Man style over the horizon. o.o
All I can say is Skyline can mod, this one won't
Cities XL's performance was horrid when it released, but I still managed to play it 44 hours according to Steam. I wasn't even aware that there was a Cities XXL.
But it was fun finding some 12 year old screenshots I apparently took back then 😅 I even made a comment going "This is why Cities XL > SC4" cause it didn't look terrible for when it came out.
This game was the best stopgap after simcity and before cities skylines.
i haven't played Cities XL & XLL since i was a kid and teenager that game is probably still a good & confusing game lol
Commenting for the holy TH-cam algorithm
Appreciate the support! 🙏😄
I played this game when it was called city life - then it became Cities xl and then cities xxl but basically the same game.
Wow, only a few minutes in and the road building is so bad. No wonder this failed.
Yup, i don't think I build a road without being frustrated 😅
But then again, I'm used to the help in Skylines and SimCity. I may just be damaged from quality of life changes 🤔
Immediately noticed the Danish accent 😂
Love the video tbh though
I mean... what can I do 😂
Thanks! Really appreciate it 🙏😄
had this game a long time ago.
i believe there is feauture that u can walk like pedestrian, it was fun game anyways
It was cool to see the city in a first person view. I think you need a mod for that in Cities Skylines 😅
I can see why this game didn’t make the cut. Sim City is even better than this game, let alone all the control of Cities Skylines
I think the most annoying part was the road building. The zone of stuff actually felt very good once you got used to the difference compared to SimCity 5 and Cities Skylines 😅
As I remember this game had very serious optimization issues. Especially after you build a big city, the game was freezing and was unplayable.
I used to play a lot of Cities XL before, but after I discovered Cities Skylines I never play Cities XL any more......it's so much better
I did play Cities XL when I was younger, but definitely spent the most time in SimCity. Both 4 and 5 until Skylines came out
I clicked on this video specifically because it was a name I knew, but never really saw anyone make any content with. There seems to be a lot of fantastic features in the game that the competitors should implement, my favorite being the ability to go to street level first person view, that's just too cool. Of course, the negative trade-offs negate any real reason to play it I'd wager. The worst is how damn slow x5 is. Dear lord.
which better this or cities skyline 1
Personally I would have to go with Cities Skylines 😅
The building models look so much better than cities skylines lol
please do a series on this. This was an awesome game best graphics of city builder to date. If this game has some some of the mechanics of CS1 just the road mechanics and the agents system and it would be awesome
This originally started as an MMO and I got it when it first came out. It was awesome. Everyone built on the same planet and you could travel to players cities using an avatar. The MMO only lasted a couple of months before it shut down.
So I was told, though I don't remember that. I think I played XL for the first time after it became single player 🤔
Em CitiesXXL is exact copy of CitiesXL with improved performance and some added assets. And that game was released in 2009.
So you are comparing a 2009 game with a 2015 Cities Skylines game.
Also CitiesXL was an online game.
Yeah I found out... Played Cities XL when I was younger and it felt very familier 😅
Still the game is branded as a sequel released in 2015. But I guess that's why it wasn't all that successful 😂
I remember not being able to run this game on my PC 😑
Yeah, had that problem with Cities XL when I was younger on my potato laptop 😂
Cities XL served me well till Skylines came out, but comparing the two games now, XL looks so lifeless.
cities skylines is the better game, but to me this game looks more pleasing aesthetically excluding the UI . the buildings and streets just look better cant exactly point out why though
the autofill area function absolutely should be copied by other developers.
Yea, that I actually really liked. Made the city feel a bit more immersive and finished, plus it was easy and convenient 😄