Last few years I’ve been excitedly waiting for sequels from several small-to-medium sized studios that made highly acclaimed original games—I’m talking about Cities: Skylines, Kerbal Space Program, Planet Coaster, Frostpunk, etc.—yet each sequel was very poorly received to the point I wasn’t willing to risk my money buying it. Why do you think this happens when these developers already had a winning formula?
I would be inclined to agree with you, except that the simulation is one of the weakest parts of the second game.
But also part one did not have the same ludicrous number of game-breaking bugs on release.
CS2 has gotten better for sure, and will keep doing so over time, but I’ve given up on wanting to buy it because it seems fundamentally worse than its predecessor.
If they ever add DLCs for true simulation of the economy and for showing fire, police, and ambulance crews at work as well as re-adding bicyclists I might reconsider.