Cities Skylines: Shopping Malls – Content Pack Review

Cities Skylines continues on round 2 of its world tour, this time with the Shopping Malls Content pack from KingLeno. This is one part of three new content packs, so be sure to check the reviews for Africa in Miniature and Sports Venues as well.

Commercial districts are usually about 1/3rd of the cities we create, and while we’ve seen the additions of designated office blocks, shopping centres have always been the backbone of a commercial centre, so what better what to expand than with the designated “Shopping Malls” content creator pack.
Coming in at £4.99 it’s the standard price for Content packs.

This pack brings us 4 unique buildings – Shopping Plaza, Large Grocery Store, Medium Grocery Store and the Mall of Marvels, these are all well detailed and will suit just about any theme you have in your city and seem ideal for use both downtown and on the outskirts.
My only complaint about the appearance of these is the massive Mall of Marvels, feels a little bland at night, with very little lighting. Having visited quite a few large malls like this, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one trying to be discreet, they want to be seen, they want customers and having barely any lighting isn’t the best way to show people you’re open for business.

Beyond the unique buildings, there’s over 50 growable buildings added to the commercial zone, and if a district, you can also force the “Shopping mall” style to give a greater showing of the included content.

There’s a number of props on hand, but the main showcase of this pack are those unique buildings and especailly being able to have a designated shopping mall styled district, something Africa in Miniature sadly didn’t offer.

You could argue that a large city might only really utilise one large mall, but on the flip side, I think it’s fair to say pretty much every city will be able to utilise at least part of this content pack.

With some well detailed content, I would have liked to see just a few more unique buildings to build a specialised shopping district around, but with the four we have, there’s at least a nice range in size, if not design.
In comparison with the other packs released alongside Shopping Malls, I definitely feel there’s a lot more useable content here than the Africa in Miniature Pack, but it’s definitely the Sports Venues which provides the most content for the price tag.

Shopping Malls delivers what you expect, but not much more, there could have been a little more unique options to base a commercial district around, so while you may be using the same assets on multiple maps, it’s at least content you’re likely to be utilising on most of your maps.

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