Game: Cities: Skylines Plazas & Promenades DLC, & Content Creator Pack: Modern Mid-Century buildings & Content Creator Pack: Seaside Resorts
Genre: Simulation, Strategy
System: Steam (Windows) (also available for Epic, Xbox One, & PS4)
Developers | Publishers: Colossal Order Ltd | Paradox Interactive
Controller Support: Partial
Price: US $ 14.99 | UK £ 11.39 | EU € 14.99
Release Date: September 14th, 2022
Review code used, with many thanks to Johnny Atom PR.
Anyone who is a frequent visitor to LadiesGamers will know I’ve been playing Cities: Skylines since the game was released on PC and the Nintendo Switch. I’ve also written about it on numerous occasions, Best Ranked DLC and a Beginners guide as well as an Essential mods guide. It is one of the best city-building games there is on PC.

Plazas & Promenades and a Whole Lot More
The cities community has been eagerly awaiting an announcement on Cities: Skylines 2 being developed, but Colossal Order is keeping their plans under their hats. Instead, a few weeks ago, we were all treated to a promo video announcing Cities: Skylines Plazas & Promenades, a new expansion pack for the game. However, that’s not all, as a couple of Content Creator packs and two new radio stations (Shoreline & Paradise) were also announced.
So after spending the last few weeks playing the new expansion pack, it’s time for a review. This review will also cover the two content packs being released simultaneously as the Cities: Skylines Plazas & Promenades, they are Content Creator Pack: Modern Mid-Century Buildings and Content Creator Pack: Seaside Resorts.

Many New Features
The Plazas & Promenades bring many fun features to the game that you and your cims will enjoy. The main one, as the name suggests, is the ability to create neighbourhoods with almost no traffic using
the new pedestrian area and streets. I’ve always wanted to do this in the game as the cims love to walk. It increases walkability and frees up the traffic on the roads by having fewer vehicles as everyone is so happy to walk.

You can create a Plaza by painting an area in your city using the new pedestrian district in the menu. Then you can choose between their different styles Sandstone, Bluestone, and Cobblestone, and two different widths of pedestrian streets and use any existing zoned buildings for the area or zone with the new wall-to-wall specialization buildings with their cool designs.
If you place down some residential streets without using the district tool the streets automatically draw the district in, which is handy, you can also turn this off and apply it yourself using the tool.

In addition, there are new service buildings for the pedestrian area; these come in three sizes, services, garbage collection and cargo. The new service point buildings transport cargo and garbage on pedestrian streets and help keep the cims happy.

As is usually playing the game in vanilla, you’ll have to meet the requirements to unlock new buildings, such as zone-specific landmark buildings. Pedestrian areas are available once your city reaches the level of Tiny Town at 1,500 cims. Also, you can use older park assets with the new parks and plazas, giving you even more items to decorate.

Zone Residential, Commercial and Offices
You can make your plaza areas entirely residential if you wish, or you can mix the zoning. Using the new district, you can give your city a unique look with the latest high-density district specializations for residential, commercial, and offices featuring new wall-to-wall buildings. I love the new buildings in the DLC; they are bright and modern with random vibrant murals appearing on the buildings when placed, bringing the city up to date.

There are new parks and decorations in the form of benches, statues, and park furniture. New transport options include a new train station and three metro stations for your city.
You can enact specific policies, including Slow Driving on all roads in the pedestrian zone, except highways, and get a speed limit of 20 miles/hour. The Sugar Ban policy increases the average lifespan of citizens in the pedestrian zone but decreases their happiness. Street Music policy increases happiness and noise pollution in pedestrian commercial zones.

Make Them Walk
While playing with the DLC, I’ve really enjoyed building large pedestrian areas in my city. It adds a whole new feel to the game. The pedestrian areas reduce traffic, and sitting back and watching the cims scurry about their new pedestrian areas is fantastic.

New Roads
Various new roads have been added to the game in a free update with some fixes to the game. The roads feature medians, wide sidewalks, and bus lanes. Also, there are now one-way metro tracks. In addition, the new bus-only highway roads have lanes dedicated only to buses, which allows you to create an express bus network system in your city.

Content Creator Pack mid-Century Modern
On top of that, we have the two content creator parks, which add many unique assets and beautiful-looking buildings. Adding a new district style for growables, with three Hotels and two restaurants and more than thirty additional decorations such as fences, furniture, and yard decorations.

The mid-Century Modern content pack by Rev0 is inspired by the American design movement of the same
name, and the houses look slick and impressive. Each residential home has a little backyard with a pool that any of us would wish to live in. Lucky cims!
We also have carports as a form of car parking, something the vanilla game has been missing for a long time; they come in a few different sizes.

Content Creator Pack Seaside Resorts
The Seaside Resorts by Gèze brings the spirit of the classic seaside resort towns, boulevards and piers that flourished in 19th century America to Cities: Skylines. These buildings are beautiful and can give an old-worldy feel to your beach areas. There are also deckchairs, beach chairs, smaller props and many decals to add to your builds.


Five New Maps
Want to try out a new map? You can, as five new maps have been added to the game. They are Cape Apple, a long peninsula with easy access to the surrounding landmasses. Coastal Gem, features long wide beaches and lots of open space to build a city on. Gondola Islands, made up of a cluster of islands of varying sizes connected to the mainland by a bridge. Oracle Lake offers a large valley filled with forests and lakes for you to build your city on and Splitz Tributary, where you can build your city at the foot of the mountains or along the banks of the rivers.
I’ve tried out some new maps, and I like them; they feature long beaches, islands, rivers, and mountain valleys with natural resources. They all have different things to offer and plenty of room to let your creativity loose and build the city of you of your dreams.

I usually play with some quality-of-life mods installed. However, as expected, most don’t work with the Plaza & Promenades. Though I’m sure it won’t be long until the mod community gets to work updating them. In addition, the expansion ran well on my laptop, there weren’t any significant framerate dips, and the game didn’t crash.

Conclusion
Those players looking for a brand new Cities: Skylines 2 game will be disappointed that this is just another expansion being released to add to the long list of additional expansions already out.
However, I’m not one of those people. After playing the expansion, I think that Cities: Skylines Plazas & Promenades and the two creator packs are some of the best additions (along with Airports, Industries and Mass Transit DLC) that Colossal Order has made for the game. I love that I can add more walkability to my cities, make large and small pedestrian areas or cover the entire city with pedestrian streets if I want to. If you are a Cities: Skylines player like myself who finds great enjoyment in beautifying your city, you’re going to love Plazas & Promenades as much as I do.
Final Verdict: Two Thumbs Up