Reviews

• gamedeal user

  Jan 14, 2022

  Below Zero was a truly wonderful experience for me after Subnautica, but you may want to be prepared for some differences. Without going into spoilers, I think the important ones are: 1. The story is very different. Do not go into BZ expecting the same emotions as Sub. As an analogy, Alien (1979) was a horror film, but Aliens (1986) was an action film. Both are exquisite, just not the same genre of story. BZ is not "action" to Sub's "horror", but the stories are very different energies like that. 2. The setting and technology is not the same. BZ is not just another story in the same setting. It is the same planet, and there are a lot of familiar elements, as a result, but the location and technology are different in many ways. I won't give specifics, just don't expect to navigate the map in the same ways, or experience the same kinds of dangers. With that said, I want to talk about some of the other reviews and address many of their criticisms for folks who haven't played the game yet, to give you some context. I feel that many other reviewers are unreasonably expecting a sequel to magically recreate an experience that was dependent on everything being new. If you played Sub, then you already know so much about the setting. BZ fundamentally cannot be the same experience, but that does not mean it can't be incredible in its own way. That said, many of those other reviewers sound like they really power gamed or min/maxed Sub, and if you're that kind of player then their reviews may actually be helpful for you. But if you are in it for the story, and aren't trying to unlock literally everything before completing the game, then my comments may be helpful. My points above already address several criticisms, but here are some more specific ones (very mild spoilers): 1. "These vehicles suck. Sub vehicles were better." -- for Sub vehicles, I can't think of a single bad thing about the seamoth, it was wonderful, but the cyclops and prawn suit were pretty awkward and restrictive. But I didn't even care. They were just what they were. I loved my cyclops and prawn suit. I lived with the awkwardness and embraced what was wonderful about them. BZ vehicles are no different. There are good things and bad things about them. I don't think their shortcomings are any different than Sub vehicles, they're just different. 2. "The map was so much more confusing, and important stuff was harder to find or more hidden." -- I literally had to look up a guide to finish Sub because I couldn't find a key item. In BZ not one single blueprint or item that I actually acquired was as hard to find. They weren't just sitting in the open, but it wasn't in some secret cave I wasn't going to find without a scanner room. Both games do have an element of randomness in the form of how much you actually just explore your environments. I got stuck a couple times in BZ looking for some blueprints, but I just went to the places I knew I hadn't explored yet and easily stumbled across the blueprints. Same as in Sub. But hey, you can also just use scanner rooms to find stuff. That's what they're for. 3. "The story is a mess." -- I truly have no idea how people can say this. Maybe they played an earlier build that was different (if early builds were even that different), but the story I experienced in the first 2 weeks of Jan 2022 was perfectly coherent, understandable, and enjoyable. Not everyone is going to like every story, that is incredibly valid, but I think the story is far from a mess. Sub's story was incredible, and I was really affected by the end. Well I loved BZ's story and how it ended, too. As I mentioned above, it's a very different story, so you may not like it, but I think it's wonderful in its own way. 4. "The world isn't as spooky/scary" -- I think there's a minor element of truth to this, but I also think folks are taking for granted that they learned to deal with a lot of scary elements by playing Sub. First time going to many areas in BZ were real scary to me, but once I realized what the dangers were, and got to see all the creatures, I quickly fell into late stage Sub energy, where I could travel around pretty freely without worry. Sub just taught me how to handle those fears. The only exception is the big leviathan you have to contend with late game, which I always treated with a healthy amount of extreme caution. Hope this helps someone.
• gamedeal user

  May 1, 2022

  If you loved the original Subnautica, you'll at least like this game. I found that, throughout my entire play through, the whole experience didn't feel nearly as mysterious and terrifying as the first game. In BZ, they replaced the huge, open map with a small, almost linear one. While some may like that, I didn't personally; I loved the huge areas of purely dark water with no visible bottom (obviously excluding the void) and the excitement of exploring these uncharted waters. In BZ, however, since there was an entire team of scientists, engineers, etc. in the area to begin with, it feels like the entire map's already been explored, which discouraged me from exploring it. The biomes don't feel nearly as unique as they did in Subnautica; they almost blend together. The story is okay. It's nothing life changing. Now, the original's wasn't either, but it was at least different. There are two main story lines in BZ: the one regarding the death of Robin's sister and the one about helping AL-AN. The latter has an interesting ending, and goes into the Architects in greater detail, but the one with Sam is just boring. I didn't care at all about the Sam story line; I had no incentive to find out what happened to her. It was, frankly, boring. Overall, if you loved the original you should definitely try BZ; while it's not as good, it gives you more of the Subnautica experience, but in a different fashion. While the original is a 10/10, BZ is probably a 7/10 for me.
• gamedeal user

  Jul 9, 2022

  It's Diet Subnautica, not Subnautica 2. Had I not played the original Subnautica first, I would have thought this was a pretty great game, and likely wouldn't have had any issues with it at all. But I did play the original first, and that set the bar for my expectations -- especially given that the two games are the same price. It's gorgeous. The coding is tighter, the animations are smoother, it is WAY better optimized -- no more chugging and chunking while distant objects struggle to render. The weather effects are great, and the addition of temperature as a survival mechanic is neat. There is a lot of new lore (with an interesting cast of characters), plenty of new flora and fauna to scan, great new base building pieces, and a lot of new decor options. Now here comes the bad: The map is TINY compared to the original. And extremely shallow -- you can go almost everywhere that matters with the first depth module for the seatruck and a bit of free diving. The survival elements feel poorly balanced. I got the tank upgrades very quickly, and never felt concerned with hunger or thirst thanks to slightly overtuned edible plants being so easy to access, and food/water being in so many of the numerous crates scattered across the map. The progression curve feels flat compared to the first game -- the upgrades come too quickly, and don't feel as rewarding. The Cyclops allowed you to go DEEP. Well, there is no "deep" to explore, here. And no reason to do so anyway, as all the endgame crafting materials are very plentiful and are able to be picked up very early in. You unlock some things at weird times. Some too early (like the multipurpose room), some too late (like the decorative plant walls -- which you can only scan from one specific area, despite encountering them in more than one place). You are able to scan a lot of new plants, but the ones you can actually take seeds/samples from and grow for yourself are EXTREMELY limited. Why? Even if they were just decorative elements at your base, with no other use, that would still be SOMETHING. There aren't many creature eggs to find, either. It almost feels like the game was pushed out early, with less content than originally planned. Props from the first game are used as decor in the second game, but are unable to be scanned or picked up (all the lab equipment, many island plants). This makes no sense to me. The assets are already there, in use in the game world. Slap an inventory icon on it and let us use them! There aren't many uses for the spy pengling. At all. It could have added a lot of exploration value, but it's mostly a waste of inventory space. Same for the snowfox, which I used approximately once and then discarded -- it really needed to be able to hover on water, to make it worth zipping around on. There aren't as many leviathans, and they aren't as scary. The game in general isn't as scary. I never felt alone. I never got lost in an utterly black void, a cave system some 1000m down, unable to orient myself and running out of air, water, or flashlight battery. The player character legit sounds like she is edging a big fat orgasm when she eats (UNNHHHH, MMMMM, AAAHHH). There is no way someone didn't bring this up during playtesting. It is absolutely ridiculous. Overall, it's fun and polished enough (and I got it cheaply enough) for me to give it a thumbs up. But if you pay full price for this and expect it to be just like the first one, you're gonna be disappointed -- there just isn't enough of it. Once they finish backporting the building elements from this game into the original and fixing up the older code, I'll never touch this game again. tl;dr - Super pretty, but it feels like a DLC, not a sequel.
• gamedeal user

  Jul 21, 2022

  I have 291 hours in original game. I have 28 hours in this one. I'm not going to thumbs down the game... but I'll let you decide what I mean by the above.
• Neko boy-14

  Nov 12, 2022

  Subnautica 2
• Mr Opposite

  Nov 13, 2022

  water
• josh3c

  Nov 13, 2022

  A great successor and continuation on the original.
• phil_is_afk

  Nov 13, 2022

  make more subnautica games :sobb: they are so good
• stonycorn

  Nov 13, 2022

  I think it`s save to say that i had a lot of fun in my almost 80 hours of playtime with this wonderful game. Below Zero has some of the most amazing world/map design i have EVER seen in a video game and i really did enjoy the story as well. Robin`s and Al-An`s dynamic was very nice and i wish i could have seen a bit more of it. I felt really sad to actually finish my play through because i had gotten so attached to the home i built and the environment around it too... The soundtrack is wonderful as well and (in my opinion) a big upgrade from the first game`s (same with the base building). But there are also some not so great things i encountered which i`ll quickly list below: - Below Zero`s map is a lot smaller than the first game`s. Although still very fun to explore it feels very small very fast, especially with the amount of land area they added (which you`ll NEVER return to after finishing your business there). - It felt a bit rushed at certain points in the story and many things did not feel important enough to even exist if that makes sense (for example the alien portal that connects the land area with the frozen leviathan and the one with the ice worm... i used it like... once). There are also so many cool materials you rarely if ever need. Kyanite definitely did not feel important enough to me. I know that some people also don`t like how different the whole game feels from the former one (less scary, more story driven, way way more dialogue,...) but i don`t really mind that. As a stand alone game it would be an almost perfect game to me but i know it is very hard to live up to an amazing game like Subnautica in the first place. The Seatruck goes SO DAMN hard.
• brad

  Nov 14, 2022

  i am gods drunkest seatruck driver