Cities: Skylines 2 can't catch a break, as the long-awaited Bridges and Ports expansion is delayed again

Cities: Skylines 2's had a rough ride since it launched in 2023. There's no denying that Colossal Order has made some substantial improvements to the wonky launch build in the nearly two years since it arrived, but it feels like the team is constantly juggling a variety of issues.

In the original post-launch roadmap, which went up to the second quarter of 2024, one asset pack and one expansion were teased. The asset pack, Beach Properties, launched as expected in early 2024, but it was so threadbare and poorly received that Colossal Order and publisher Paradox issued an apology a month later, doled out refunds and gave it to everyone for free.

The first expansion, Bridges & Ports, was expected to appear within a few months of Beach Properties, but that never happened. In September 2024, the team announced that it was delaying the expansion so it could improve the base game. It eventually got a release window of the second quarter of 2025. So around now. Well, that won't be happening either.

"We've spent the last five months working hard on the Bridges & Ports DLC, and towards our upcoming expected release," Colossal Order explained over on the Cities: Skylines 2 forum today. "After reviewing the content ourselves and sharing it with our early access group, we've received consistent feedback: the bridges are super exciting, and the port works well, but there are aspects of the expansion that are not as polished as they could be."

With that in mind, the expansion has been pushed back. "In the meantime, we're assessing feedback from our early access group and mapping out what we want to improve when the expansion launches—which we are now expecting in Q4 of this year."

This does feel a bit inconsistent, though, and the lack of specifics has given me pause. "Polish" is increasingly used as a catch-all term, when it technically suggests that only very minor changes are needed. It's hard to imagine an experienced developer needing four to six months to polish an expansion.

Colossal Order also mentions that it wants to "add more depth", which, again, doesn't feel like a simple polish. And the part about "mapping out what we want to improve" suggests that the issues aren't clear cut at all.

All that said, a delay sounds like a good idea. Cities: Skylines 2's problems started because Colossal Order and Paradox released it far, far too early. It was badly optimised, full of bugs and fundamental features did not work as intended. Players felt like they'd bought into a beta, and while in this age of early access launches that's pretty common, Cities: Skylines 2 was sold as a finished game.

I'm still hopeful that Cities: Skylines 2 will turn into the game I was hoping for. The asset editor will certainly help with that, unlocking so many more possibilities for modders—which was critical to the first game's success. But that still seems like a long way off.

The good news is that the free update that was expected to launch alongside the expansion is still coming soon. It will arrive on June 11, "with a bit of content that gives a slight sneak peek of what is to come in the expansion".