Cities Skylines Natural Disasters DLC Review

Cities: Skylines just got even better! This much needed expansion to the game is quite the doozy. The disasters will wreak sweet destruction upon your city and it’s absolutely beautiful to see hours of your work go up in flames. Never have I been so happy to see a tornado tear a path through a residential zone or a tsunami to destroy an entire coastline. This new addition to the game includes a ton of new content to play around with. All of this is quite exciting.

Cities: Skylines was the replacement for SimCity after its tremendous failure but Cities: Skylines was missing one awesome feature that SimCity had, disasters. Disasters add so much flavor to your city. They can create backstories for certain citizens, history for your town, and interesting landmarks to build around. These disasters make it so you can’t just go on autopilot after you’ve established a platform anymore. Now you have to be weary of the everlasting threat of destruction that lurks right behind the next corner.

The disasters can range from something as deadly as a tsunami to smaller threats like sinkholes. Some disasters may be small but they should always be feared. These disasters include a tornado that can rip large paths of destruction through the entire city, an earthquake that will shake the very foundation of your city, a thunderstorm that is a little more menacing than it sounds, and a meteor. These disasters all affect your city differently and you have to guard against each one differently as well.

These disasters are unstoppable, but that doesn’t mean that your city faces certain doom. There are multiple new buildings that you can use to protect the lives of your citizens. The most notable of these is the disaster response center. This building can save the lives of citizens that are trapped in their destroyed homes and clear it for rebuilding. Another way of saving lives is to build an evacuation shelter. These buildings allow you to set evacuation routes to them to save the people. However, these structures are also vulnerable to the disasters so you must be smart about where you place them. Early warning systems are included for nearly every disaster and can provide you with information about that disaster. These extra buildings spice up the planning of the city and offer unique challenges to accommodate them nicely into the city.

Beware that mods will be broken until they update to accommodate the new content. I had major issues with mods like Network Extensions and Traffic++. I spent a while going through my mod list and cutting out loads of incompatibilities. If you are planning on playing with mods I recommend that you wait a week or two to play this to let most of your mods update. You really should do a modless play through. It’s definitely worth it.

Cities: Skylines just became so much more interesting to play. Now there is a true danger that can tear your work apart that you have to be able to counteract. This is one of my favourite content packs for Cities: Skylines just because of the new challenge it offers. It’s also really cool to completely blow your city to bits.