Cities: Skylines II - Feelgood Funk Radio

I'll be honest with you: reviewing a radio station DLC for Cities: Skylines II forces me to talk about the base game first, and that conversation is not comfortable. Cities: Skylines II launched in October 2023 promising the most ambitious city-builder ever built, and on paper the simulation bones back that up. Traffic routing is more granular, the economic model tracks supply chains with more fidelity, and the map scales are genuinely staggering. The problem is that the game shipped in a state that had players documenting bugs in core systems, including broken pathfinding, economy logic that produced nonsensical outcomes, and performance that punished anyone not running high-end hardware. The Steam review score sitting at 56% positive across over 91,000 reviews is not the kind of number you ignore, and player feedback throughout 2024 consistently pointed at simulation-layer problems rather than missing content. Feelgood Funk Radio slots into this context as a cosmetic audio DLC, nothing more. It adds a single in-game radio station built around a '70s funk and disco aesthetic: soulful basslines, loose percussion, and the kind of warm, slightly hazy production style you associate with that era. It pairs, according to Paradox's own materials, with the Leisure Venues Creator Pack, which is the logical pairing if you are building entertainment districts and want the ambient soundtrack to match the vibe. That is genuinely pleasant when it works. City-builders live or die on atmosphere during those long mid-game stretches where you are watching traffic patterns and tweaking zoning, and having a coherent musical backdrop is not nothing. But let's be precise about what this DLC is and is not. It adds no mechanics. It adds no buildings, no roads, no simulation depth, no scenarios. It is background music. For players who have already resolved their personal verdict on the base game and are comfortable in it, this is a minor quality-of-life amenity, the kind of thing you grab in a bundle rather than seek out independently. The Steam user reviews for the DLC itself mirror the base game's 50% split almost exactly, which tells you the audience picking this up is split between fans who are content to decorate their sessions and players who feel the DLC pipeline should have been paused until the simulation foundations were solid. As someone who cares deeply about decision-making depth and simulation quality, I find it difficult to recommend spending money on audio cosmetics for a game that still has unresolved core-loop issues. The funk station will not fix the economy. It will not improve late-game performance. It will not make your transport network sort itself out. If you are a returning player who has found peace with the game's current state and genuinely clocks long sessions, the additional radio variety is a harmless and modestly enjoyable extra. If you are still on the fence about whether Cities: Skylines II deserves your time at all, this DLC should not be the thing that tips the scales.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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