Cities: Skylines - K-pop Station

I track DLC value the same way I track city budgets: what do I actually get, and does it justify the line item? K-pop Station is a radio music pack for Cities: Skylines, released in November 2022 alongside the Heart of Korea content creator pack. It adds 16 original tracks totalling over 45 minutes of in-game music, piped through the game's familiar radio station interface. The artists, Izzy NooHao, TEN eleven, Yuitzzu, and a fourth group, are not recognizable K-pop acts. Colossal Order commissioned original music in the style of the genre rather than licensing actual South Korean pop songs, which puts this squarely in Sims-Simlish territory: genre-adjacent originals, not the real chart-toppers you might be hoping for. That distinction matters more than it sounds. If you boot this up expecting BTS or BLACKPINK adjacent energy straight from the Korean charts, you will be disappointed fast. The Steam user reviews for this specific DLC sit at Mixed, a significant drop from the base game's near-perfect reception, and the most common complaint is exactly that bait-and-switch feeling. What you actually get is competently produced, upbeat, bubblegum pop instrumentals and vocals that fit the breezy city-building atmosphere well enough, they just carry zero cultural cachet and zero name recognition. From a pure function standpoint, Cities: Skylines already ships with a large roster of radio stations covering jazz, classical, electronic, rock, and more. K-pop Station slips into that lineup without friction. The in-game radio UI works the same way it always has: pick a station, let it loop in the background while you're untangling a spaghetti interchange or rezoning a district grid. The 45-minute runtime is thin by modern DLC standards but technically on par with other music packs in the same series like 80's Downtown Beat or All That Jazz. If you are a Cities: Skylines completionist building a thematic Asian-inspired metropolis alongside the Heart of Korea CCP buildings, the audio pairing makes reasonable aesthetic sense. Who should skip it? Anyone expecting licensed K-pop. Anyone who already runs the game muted with a Spotify playlist. Anyone who owns fewer than two or three music packs and wants the most value per dollar from the audio DLC catalog, there are stronger options in the lineup. Who might genuinely enjoy it? Players deep into a Korean city build who want every ambient detail to feel cohesive, or those who simply like having more variety in the rotation and find the original compositions pleasant enough on their own merits. The songs are not offensive to listen to. They are just not quite what the name implies.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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