Cities XL Platinum

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Cities XL Platinum is a city-building simulation game that offers a vast building area and a huge variety of architectural styles. Experience realistic urban simulation with thorough economic management and transportation planning. Connect with other players online to share resources and accomplishments in this immersive and challenging city-building experience.

Genres & Tags

Play Modes

Reviews

49%

Audience ScoreBased on 1,202 reviews

graphics70 positive mentions

optimization30 negative mentions

Cities XL Platinum offers a vast map size and a variety of buildings, allowing for creative city design.
The game has a solid economic system that encourages players to manage resources and trade between cities.
The graphics are appealing, especially for a city-building game, and the ability to zoom in and explore the city adds to the immersive experience.

The game suffers from severe performance issues and memory leaks, especially as city size increases, making it unplayable at larger populations.
The user interface is clunky and unintuitive, leading to frustration when trying to manage the city effectively.
Many players report bugs and glitches that hinder gameplay, including issues with saving and loading cities.

graphics
155 mentions
45 % positive mentions
39 % neutral mentions
16 % negative mentions
The graphics of the game are generally praised for their beauty and detail, especially considering its age, with some reviewers noting that they surpass those of older titles like SimCity 2000. However, many players report significant performance issues as city sizes increase, leading to lag and choppy visuals, which detracts from the overall experience. While the aesthetics are appealing, the game's outdated engine and poor optimization hinder its graphical potential, leaving some feeling that it looks dated compared to more recent city-building games.
- “The graphics are incredibly beautiful and you can zoom in right up close to the action (like Google Street View) to capture some amazing screenshots of your city.”
- “Beautiful graphics and ground level action adds scale to your gaming experience.”
- “This is one of the best city simulations out there, especially when looking strictly at games with good graphics.”
- “All of the components of a good city-builder are there, but the game's aesthetics and UI have not aged nearly as gracefully as its peers.”
- “While I realize this game was released in 2013, there are 2013 games that had better graphics (i.e. SimCity 5).”
- “A generally disappointing game, from the dated graphics to overly complicated UI.”
gameplay
102 mentions
36 % positive mentions
50 % neutral mentions
14 % negative mentions
The gameplay of Cities XL Platinum is a mixed bag, with some players finding it solid and engaging, while others criticize it for being tedious, buggy, and poorly optimized. Many reviews highlight broken mechanics and performance issues that detract from the overall experience, despite the game's potential and appealing graphics. While some enjoy the city-building aspects, others feel it lacks depth and innovation compared to older titles like SimCity.
- “The gameplay is pretty solid; it has all the main features you'd come to expect from a game like this.”
- “Cities XL Platinum is a decent game, and it has fine gameplay.”
- “The large map space available to build your city on is a great asset and the game mechanics are generally easy to master and understand.”
- “Gameplay is unnecessarily tedious.”
- “So many broken mechanics, runs poorly, and just looks so dated at times even with the graphics at max. If it was optimized better and the bugs and mechanics were fixed, this game would be amazing.”
- “Looks good on the trailer but gameplay sucks.”
optimization
82 mentions
15 % positive mentions
49 % neutral mentions
37 % negative mentions
The game suffers from significant optimization issues, particularly as cities grow larger, leading to severe lag and performance drops after a few hours of play. Many users report that it runs poorly on modern hardware, primarily due to its outdated graphics engine and reliance on single-core processing. Overall, the consensus is that the game is not well-optimized, making it frustrating to play despite its potential.
- “I love this game, but as you will read in many other comments, it's very, very unoptimized.”
- “The game does suffer from performance issues when your city surpasses about 100,000 people because of the single-core processing, but it is still playable with frame rate hiccups here and there.”
- “A lot of people have written that they had issues with performance/optimization, but personally, I'm finding it better than many other games of this genre.”
- “So many broken mechanics, runs poorly, and just looks so dated at times even with the graphics at max. If it was optimized better and the bugs and mechanics were fixed, this game would be amazing.”
- “A collection of unoptimized ones and zeros resulting in a pile of rubbish that maxes out all 16 cores and yet still only manages 10 fps.”
- “Terrible lag due to poor optimization all in all, and there was also the problem of a memory leak.”
stability
52 mentions
0 % positive mentions
0 % neutral mentions
100 % negative mentions
The game suffers from significant stability issues, with frequent bugs, crashes, and memory leaks that render it nearly unplayable, especially as cities grow in size. Users report persistent freezing and glitches in key systems like the economy and road building, leading to frustration and a lack of intuitive gameplay. While the game has potential and enjoyable mechanics, its numerous technical problems overshadow the experience, prompting many to recommend alternatives.
- “Slow, buggy, and has a memory leaking problem which makes this game unplayable.”
- “It freezes often regardless of video quality, roughly every four minutes, up until you ctrl+alt+del then cancel.”
- “The game has promise, but it is just too buggy.”
music
33 mentions
73 % positive mentions
18 % neutral mentions
9 % negative mentions
The music in the game is generally well-received, with many players praising its upbeat and enjoyable soundtrack that complements the graphics and gameplay. However, some users noted that the intro song plays too frequently, and there are mentions of repetitive elements in the music. Overall, the soundtrack enhances the gaming experience, earning ratings around 7.5 to 8 out of 10.
- “The developers used awesome upbeat music and awesome graphics even for today.”
- “The graphics are pretty, the music is enjoyable, and the game design is easy to get used to.”
- “Though it does lack the 'driving mission' feature of SimCity 4 Rush Hour, this game is a superior rendition in almost every sense of the word to SC4, is highly moddable, gorgeous looking and comes with a solid soundtrack to boot.”
- “The intro song does play a bit too much though.”
- “It might have fairly nice graphics and some catchy music, but it runs poorly and the controls I find unintuitive.”
- “Same lag, same engine, same intro, same music, same everything... just some added new buildings, new maps, and what not.”
story
18 mentions
17 % positive mentions
67 % neutral mentions
17 % negative mentions
The story in this city builder is generally criticized for being cringy and poorly integrated, detracting from the gameplay experience. Many players feel that the narrative overshadows the tutorials, making it difficult to learn the game mechanics effectively. Despite these issues, the game is praised for its city-building elements and overall quality, often compared favorably to SimCity.
- “It is a city builder with a story.”
- “Though it does lack the 'driving mission' feature of SimCity 4 Rush Hour, this game is a superior rendition in almost every sense of the word to SC4, is highly moddable, gorgeous looking, and comes with a solid soundtrack to boot.”
- “A couple of minor issues such as inflexible plot sizes and low difficulty don't detract from a solid city building game.”
- “Once you get past the story and figure out how to play it alone because of the cringy story, it is about as good as SimCity.”
- “Don't make people suffer through a story like that.”
- “The storyline does not even gel well!”
grinding
10 mentions
0 % positive mentions
0 % neutral mentions
100 % negative mentions
Players find the grinding aspect of the game to be overly tedious and complex, with numerous city stats that lack meaningful connections and minimal real-time feedback. Tasks such as bridge building and trading between cities are described as cumbersome and unnecessarily complicated, contributing to a frustrating gameplay experience. Overall, the grinding mechanics detract from the enjoyment of the game.
- “It is a numbers grinding game where you have a ton of city stats that don't relate to anything and there's little real-time response to them.”
- “Gameplay is unnecessarily tedious.”
- “Trading with various cities is also a task that is more complicated than it needs to be, and it starts to become yet another tedious part of this game after a while.”
humor
4 mentions
100 % positive mentions
0 % neutral mentions
0 % negative mentions
The humor in the game is described as creatively funny, particularly in the tutorial, but some users find the attempts at humor—especially through stage directions and childish jokes—frustrating and distracting, leading them to prefer a more straightforward approach to gameplay.
- “The fun tutorial is creatively funny.”
- “The attempts at humor with their stage directions and childish humor make me really want to get stuck in and find out for myself.”
monetization
2 mentions
0 % positive mentions
0 % neutral mentions
100 % negative mentions
The monetization strategy includes in-game advertisements for a well-known French supermarket chain, which has received mixed reactions from users.
- “In-game ads for a famous French supermarket chain... :-/”
atmosphere
2 mentions
0 % positive mentions
50 % neutral mentions
50 % negative mentions
The atmosphere of Cities XL is characterized by a blend of classic management game elements reminiscent of the SimCity series, enhanced by a more realistic ambiance. However, the artistic style has been noted as lacking in impressiveness.
- “Cities XL looks like an old-style management game similar to the SimCity series with the addition of a more realistic atmosphere, although its artistic style is not impressive.”
replayability
2 mentions
150 % positive mentions
-50 % neutral mentions
0 % negative mentions
Users consistently highlight the game’s high replayability, indicating that it offers numerous opportunities for players to engage with the content multiple times.
- “This game offers a tremendous amount of replayability.”
- “There are countless ways to experience the game, making it highly replayable.”
- “The variety of choices and outcomes ensures that each playthrough feels fresh and engaging.”