Subnautica: Below Zero

very good game the original subnuatica was better but not by far it was more scarier and the story was better but i recommend to give it a try

Really good survival game with a story and it's just as good as the first Subnautica game.
10/10

Voiced main character ruins the game experience. My only complaint, everything else is great and keeps up with the first game or is even improved. But the voiced character ruins immersion in the story

fantastic under water survival, no real combat. I have a lot of hours into different survival games and this one just has such a warm feeling to it that i always come back too.

Instantly went looking for a mod to mute robin (the main character) and change the PDA voice, found one for PDA but couldn't delete robin's annoying ass voice, so yeah fk that shit

A new Subnatica? Yes, please! Unfortunately this feels more like an add-on than a proper sequel but first things first.

The gameplay: If you played any game in the crafting- survival-genre you know the drill. You collect some resources, use those to craft tools and equipment to explore more dangerous areas and collect more advanced materials and craft superior equipment. All while watching your hunger and thirst meter. Since this is Subnatica you are also in danger of drowning because most of the game takes place under the sea. I say mostly because Subnatica: Below Zero adds icy land areas to break up the formula of the original game. On land drowning is no threat but you are in danger of freezing to death.

The story: Your goal is to find out what happened to your responsible sister and why her employer blames her for the destruction of a research station. Unfortunately this story tread is abandoned pretty fast for something else and degraded to an optional sidequest.

The problems: The game was designed as a dlc for the original Subnatica and then turned into a stand-alone expansion and this shows. The world is much smaller, some animals, plants and equipment are reused and the main new feature, the land exploration, is not that exciting.

The thumps down verdict might be a bit hard because Subnatica: Below Zero is not a bad game. It’s just no proper full-fledged sequel and this disappoints.

spent an hour and a half trying to find marguerits greenhouse. didn't even finish the game because the land exploration is boring and everything overall gives no motivation to complete the story.

only buy if on sale, nowhere near as good as the first game.

Subnautica was amazing and is a must play. Once finished.... wait for subnautica 2. NO do not worry about below zero... just wait for 2. Below zero is painfully boring and everything is just slow. Slower swimming, slower sea truck and the prawn suit is bad. Story is lame, find myself saying who cares or tuning out. Just download mods and play subnautica 1 again.

Cringy dialogue. No feeling of dread, isolation or thalassophobia. It feels small, cramped and generally to easy. If you liked the first one and want more of that I would unfortunately skip this one as it completely misses the mark.

Significantly less engaging and enjoyable than the original. I'm making myself play through this game all the way to see if my opinion changes - if this review never updates, then I couldn't bear to finish it.

really mid subnautica 1 is better buy that instead of this game does not have enough content map is short and it gets boring pretty quickly theres only 2 leviathans that actually hurt you and gets repetitive and also the game does not contain good history compared to the other one.

Although It was not even close to being as good to the orginal to be fair thats hard to beat however it was pretty fun I had a great time beating the game even though I will never forgive them for making all the reapers basically just big fish would play if you where more into the story of the first game if not I would still play it cause its still subnatica.

This game is just a disappointment to me after Subnautica; the immersion isn't there - the fact that the character you play actually "talks" is just off putting and just brought me out of the whole "I am alone and on the hunt" arch.

This game feels like it's designed to be easier than Subnautica because some people had complaints about the first one being difficult and scary. I am a scaredy cat like crazy but LOVE LOVE the oceans in any way shape of form so it felt like a good deal - Below Zero is just incredibly anti-climactic to me and had none of the charm the 1st Subnautica had sadly. :(

Same formula as the base game, new content. Great experience overall, minus the land exploration parts.

I love the first game but below zero completely removes the thalassophobia from it by making the map smaller and less open which was why the first game was so enjoyable.

Up until I got to the mostly land-based glacier section of the game, my biggest complaint was the characters. I don't like the voiced protagonist on principle for this kind of game, I don't like the art style of the character designs, I don't like the writing which is often dumb and cringy, and so on. All of it just ruins the mood, and it almost seems that was intentional.

The above was all detrimental enough that I might have left a bad review, but the glacier segment is where I started to wonder if I'd even finish the game. I hate it. It's boring, there's nothing to it but white. The cave system is an unmappable maze. Moving around on foot in this game feels TERRIBLE, even the exclusively land-based vehicle controls terribly.

I can't believe this thing got reviewed mostly positively. It's so tedious and dull, this part of the game, and nothing in the story makes me even care what happens next enough to power through. Vastly, vastly inferior to the first one.

This is the first game in a very long time I actually finished from beginning to end. I did not leave a review until I completed it. I LOVE the subnautica games as a whole so far and I can't wait until Sub2 finally comes out. It's on my Wishlist! If your wondering if you should get this game, it's an easy YES for me. I'ts a great game and very addicting... the story is pretty good too. The cons? There aren't many.... but... I did not like the Snow Fox at all. I hope I never see that thing again.. it's a pain in the butt to drive and I avoided it until the last minute of the game. Just get rid of that thing or replace it with a different land vehicle cause it was horrible. I tried to put it in my inventory and then take it out when I needed it, but it fell into the earth and i couldn't get it back... I just said "Good riddance Snow Fox!" and left it stuck in the earth the rest of the game. I didn't even care cause it was so annoying. Be nice if they fixed the bug where it gets stuck 45m in the earth cause I saw several other people have the same issue. I really didn't even need it to finish the game... it was easier to just run. Others said they used the Prawn suit... I didn't. Every place is a maze in this game... the main ice area (dnt remember all the names) where the ice worms are, was a nightmare to navigate and figure out where you are and where to go... games, as a whole, like to make every area a big maze for some reason. The only other con was the truck... which wasn't a total negative. I did like the truck. I loved being able to make several add-on compartments, that was really cool... but the truck became sooo long that it was hard to navigate through some of the tight spaces you need to go in this game. I was really looking forward to the Aquarium compartment, but it was a bit disappointing cause I thought I could save eggs in it, especially the giant ones that take up so much space. It was cool that it collected random fish I could put in tanks... so not a total negative... but it was also wider than the other compartments and at one point, I had to pull it off and dump it somewhere just to get where I needed to go in the deeper waters then go back and get it later. It was just too fat... lol. The last con to the truck was not being able to look around you while driving. It was very hard to see down, up, or to the left and right to see what you were looking for or where to go. I had to get out of the truck and look around ALOT. I hope in Sub2, they make the window all around the front... more like the seamoth. I didn't have that issue in the seamoth. The truck had too many blind spots for me. Those are the ONLY two or three negatives I found in the game. Everything else was great and I really enjoyed it. I wasn't a big fan of the character I had to play or the story with the sister.. no spoilers here... so that could have been better. I also hope we can make our own character in the next one. I loved the seamoth and the sub in the first game... missed those in this one. Overall, I really loved this game. I can play it over and over and not get bored. I didn't actually complete the first storyline in Subnautica 1, so I want to go back and complete that one too when I have the time. Building in this game was amazing... could be buggy at times... but I always found a way to make it work. TIP on building that I couldn't find anywhere online.... when u add something to a building or whatever and you didn't finish that part cause you ran out of materials (like a window or plant holder or whatever you added to it), you can't build anything else in or on the building until you complete the making of the first thing. Like if you started to add a window, but didn't have all the materials to complete it, it will not let you place a second window or a hatch or anything else until you go back and finish the first window that you never completed. Took me a while to figure that out and once I did... I had a lot of fun building my base. Great game..... worth full price! Make sure you get the Jukebox, speakers, and CD's cause the music was great and addicting to listen to while in ur base. I really hope Sub2 also has music like this one had. But give us a radio in our vehicles! I want to listen to the music while driving around too!. Overall, Loved it!

The time you spend on ice will make you feel terrible, it will hurt your eye vision. The tunnels underwater are designed too much detailed like a maze. Other than that new items, vehicles, etc. are good. Storyline is not bad. But compared to first Subnautica, this one is nowhere near it. First one was masterpiece.

Great game to play if you want a good story and more subnautica.

It's a worthy entry to the franchise and is enjoyable to play (once), but obviously can't help but be compared to Subnautica itself and in that comparison it does fall short in places. It's clear that the intent in Below Zero was to create something tighter, more streamlined and more narrative-driven than Subnautica, but in doing so they managed to strip away a lot of the features that made the original so compelling. With a smaller map, more linear paths between locations and fewer overall options (in crafting, vehicle choices and even base locations) the game loses some of the sense of open exploration in favor of being guided along to the conclusion of a pair of storylines (discovering the truth behind your sister's death, and discovering the story behind the planet's previous alien inhabitants). Chasing after the truth of what happened to your sister is the main reason Robin finds herself on the planet in the first place, but the conclusion of that storyline feels hollow and unsatisfying. In my playthrough I just happened to stumble into the final set piece of that story, clicked a couple of buttons and then was treated to dialog that made it sound like the game was over. The alien storyline has a more fleshed out conclusion but is also bogged down in the middle by relying on you just stumbling onto a number of locations to move that story along.

Many of the biomes and sub-biomes are hidden away down single entry points, narrow tunnels or other easily-overlooked entrances. More than once I had felt like I'd seen the deepest or most central area of a biome only to wander around for a few hours and eventually find that there was some other path tucked away where the storyline was allowed to continue. Certain resources (particularly nickel ore) are also annoyingly hidden away in singular small caves and alcoves, easily missed and essential for moving to deeper depths. I don't enjoy having to rely on wikis to figure out the next step in a game but more than once in Below Zero I found myself faced with a choice of retracing my steps and wasting hours looking in every corner of the map for something I might have missed, or checking on the wiki where I can find a certain resource.

To that end, the map, while relatively small and linear, isn't crafted in a way that naturally leads the player from one area to the next. Simply following the contours of the terrain and exploring often brings you into dead-ends or the limits of the map itself. Where Subnautica featured multiple entry points which would eventually converge on key locations deeper down, the map in Below Zero is more segregated with a single way in to most areas that can sometimes be difficult to chance across.

The vehicles are a bit more limited as well. While the trusty Seamoth and Cyclops are replaced by the SeaTruck, which can be customized to an extent with various modules that extend its length and add functionality and fill the overall roles of both vehicles, the penalties for doing so get severe. While the design of the SeaTruck seems to allow it to be segmented and articulated like an eel, able to weave and flex through the many, many narrow gaps and tight tunnels in the game, it's instead locked in as a rigid pole that gets harder and more frustrating to maneuver through the map as you add modules. There's a convenient lever to detach the train and use only the more nimble cab for exploring, but at that point it's easier to just climb out and do it in the Prawn exosuit or as a free dive. The Seatruck then fails to really shine as either a mobile base or an exploration craft, and instead ends up as an unsatisfying compromise between the two.

The large number of vehicle upgrades from Subnautica have also been trimmed down in Below Zero, to the point where you never have more upgrade options than available slots in your vehicles. In fact the Prawn has 4 upgrade slots but I only ever found 3 upgrades to put in it. The only exception to this is the Prawn's interchangeable tool arms, all of which carried over but just like in the original, I managed the game fine with only a drill arm and the default manipulator hand for the entire playthrough.

Lastly, base building is again an essential part of the game where your survival and continued success rely on an ever-expanding list of habitation modules and devices to provide energy, water, grow food and fabricate tools. However, the small size of the map and the very tight spaces in most of the biomes really mean that you never have to branch out from wherever your first base gets built. Subnautica really encouraged the player to set up multiple bases around the map and down in the deeps, drawing on a number of various power sources that were available, but Below Zero let me get away with a single base in the shallows that was never more than 1km away from any point on the map I found myself. I never bothered building a thermal reactor or bioreactor, and indeed a bit of light exploration found me gifted with more premade nuclear fuel rods than I would ever need for the nuclear reactor I did end up making to supplement the solar panels. The scanner room which I also relied heavily on in Subnautica took a place of significantly less importance in Below Zero, in part because of the vastly reduced resource requirements for crafting and in part because of the lack of anything interesting to scan for.

I can recommend this game objectively as being fun and entertaining on its own merits - certainly it's better than 80% of the games on Steam - but with the caveat that if you're only going to buy one game in the Subnautica franchise you'll most likely have a better time with the original.

Note - I have played more than 12 hours of this game on different platforms.

After playing this the second time I have to say this game should've been a DLC for the first game. It feels like a DLC then a full-fledged game like Subnautica. The overall gameplay is the same as Subnatica but has a few things that are different for example the Seatruck and the Snow Vehicle along with a few tools that are not on Subnatica which is pretty cool. Now comes the downsides. The map feels condensed and small and the Seatruck has trouble getting into certain places. The map feels small which is why I think this game should have been a DLC now a standalone game. It's a good game regardless. The story is nice but short same as the first one. Even with the downsides I still recommend the game.

I'm just addicted to this game man
The story keeps you constantly curious and in search of the next chapter whilst there's different detours that are just as cool and interesting to explore along the way. Beautiful looking game as well which just further adds to the immersion
Would definitely recommend if you're into exploration/survival/adventuring :)

Another fantastic survival craft experience. The story is much more enjoyable compared to the first game, but they are very different in themes so mainly a personal preference . I enjoyed all the fluff interactions in the PDA messages, but I feel this time they were not as good at actually guiding you to locations so had to spend more time exploring to actually find my next objective sometimes. Building was improved with more control over aesthetics and extra decorations, and the jukebox is a fantastic addition. It doesn't matter if I was blindly exploring at times because I had my seatruck and I was blasting my tunes in to the ocean.

If the original Subnautica was a 10/10 then this is a 6/10. Every design choice seems to make the game worse rather than better compared to the 1st game. The music is uninspiring, there are no real improvements to the base building, having to have everything explained in voice-overs, plot lines that go nowhere, important plot information that can be easily missed. The Seamoth (from the original) was the best vehicle, who thought it would be a great idea to remove it?

What a terrible shame! If you haven't played the original then buy it at 75% off, you might enjoy it???

I lot of people give it bad reviews but I actually think Subnautica Below Zero is better than Subnautica. They kept everything that made the first game so special then took all the feedback/criticisms and made it even better. The biomes are beautiful and unique, and the new fauna/creatures look amazing. The story with Sam and AL-AN is wonderful and I hope they do another game continuing the story on The Architect's homeworld. The last thing I love is that you can interact so much more with creatures and people. In the first game it was just logs and you could only interact with the Cuddlefish. In below zero you finally get to meet people face to face (Marguerit & AL-AN), and you can interact with penglings, juvenile snow stalkers, sea monkeys, trivalves, and glow whales. Overall it's an 11/10 and I can't wait for their next game!!

Absolutely brilliant game except for the parts this became Topnautica with the flimsiest bike in gaming history. Apart from that the game was pure joy.

Worst version of the original game.
The map is smaller and the sea is shallower. The big leviathans from the original game were thrown out. Instead of the Cyclops and Seamoth, there is now a lame underwater truck and a glider for exploring the surface (in a game about the underwater world lol). But they added a bunch of dialogue and a dull story that no one asked for. Overall, it was a downgrade compared to the main game.

It feels like the game was made by other devs who have no idea what made the original game so good. My expectations for Subnautica 2 are very low.

This game is weird to review, cuz on one hand I really like it, but on the other this game is really just meh.
I think if you’ve played the first, you definitely should play this game, just don’t expect it to be the same as the first.

The game improves upon many things from the first, the base building was updated, the new vehicles are great, and the game generally looks better. Although, some of these features just got added to subnautica anyways so it doesn’t matter?
The game is lacking the same feel from the first game though, it’s just not really terrifying. The first game uses terror, and while I admit I was scared playing this game, I reckon it was only due to the fact that I was playing on hardcore and scared to die, rather than being scared of the game itself. The atmosphere just isn't nearly as scary as the first, which is kind of a shame. The game is also much easier compared to the first. I mean, the first isn't a horribly hard game, but it took me many attempts to finish it on hardcore which was a nice challenge. This game, i finished it on hardcore first try.

It's definitely still fun though, i mean i didn't have a bad time playing it, and there are things that i defs love about this game (the seatruck is my beloved), it just has many flaws. I shouldn't compare this to the first so much, and if you do that, this game is good, but it's a spin-off sequel type thing so of course you're going to compare it. It grabs some things that are good in the first (ie, swimming, base building), but then ruins it by adding things that weren't in the first which made the first game great (ie, lots of land, actual characters).

I DUNNO WHAT TO SAY, IT'S A GOOD EXPERIENCE IF YOU LOVE THE FIRST, BUT IT'S ALSO NOTHING LIKE THE FIRST. I'M TOO MIXED ON THIS GAME!! GHRAAHAAHHH

If you're looking for more subnautica, and don't care about weird new changes, play this. If you're fully faithful to the original and don't like change, don't i guess.

Like someone took subnautica, removed everything that made it good while updating it to modern standards. Hope subnautica2 skips the extremely annoying talking main character.

Not a bad game as such, but a significant downgrade compared to the first one. I get the feeling this was originaly a DLC. The world feels much smaller, les alive and all on all less fun. The last part of the gamehad lost much of its attraction and I just wanted to finish it. Not so with the first game.

The original was great, payed through it twice. This did not have the same atmosphere and the story was lackluster for me atleast.

Got bored and didn't finish it.

Disappointing compared to the first game. Why does the main character yap so much? It's annoying and ruins the atmosphere. Also the game seems much smaller, and all the walking around on land feels terrible. The first game was a masterpiece this isn't that.

That's it? That was the ending? With how Subnautica 2 is being shaped, the full disclosure of the story will never happen. I hope the second "third" game will either follow the first game's way and make the story a secondary part of the gameplay, or have a story-heavy game that has a complete cycle for a story unlike this one.

Game is good, however massively overshadowed by the first one. I recommend buying it whenever its on sale.

the PRAWN suit controls much better the sea worm leviathan is freaking awesome base building and surface bases are much more fleshed out and titanium bars cost 5 instead of 10 other then that this game sucks

Its nice jumping back into the subnautica world, but this game doesnt hold a candle to the original. Its lacking so much that made the original great while adding a bunch of stuff that doesnt need to be there. Hopefuly Subnautica 2 is closer to the original than to this.

Writing this now in light of the sequel announcement. Huge fan of the original.
Pros:
- Better base building
- More customization options
- Cool new environments
Cons:
- Rather than being a mystery you get to uncover organically, this unimpressive plot is shoved down your throat, being driven by characters that I don't care about
- Main character is annoying. Much preferred the silent protag from the original
- Smaller map, reduced vehicle speed to compensate. This sucks, no need to elaborate.
- Never felt scared, threatened, or a sense of dread. The masterful ambiance from the first game is in no way replicated
- Seatruck is cool in concept, but ends up being a clunky mess that doesn't fulfill the niche of either vehicle it replaced
- Maybe my biggest complaint, there's no love put into the data bank. The entries from the first game are copy/pasted over, yet somehow this feels less lazy than the entries for the new flora/fauna. In the first game finding new things to scan felt rewarding, worth the risk of approaching leviathans for. I could barely bring myself to care in below zero because of how lackluster the entries proved themselves to be, yet ended up scanning the leviathans anyways because of how non-threatening they are.

It's not a bad game altogether, but I can't recommend it based on how much worse it is than the original. I could barely pull myself away from the first and played through multiple times, yet this one I had to force myself to finish.

The game is fine, but it's pretty disappointing when you compare it to the first game. I'd reccomend just waiting for Subnautica 2 to release and play the original with mods while you wait.

Huge fan of the first game, but I couldn't finish this one for multiple reasons:
1.The main characters voice and personality are unbearable. I had to mute the voice audio, just to play the game. The voices lines feel like they were written by a 10 yo. It's too cringe.
2. The story is all over the place, it's not structures or linear. They tried to glue two stories together and failed. Badly.
3. The first games soudtrack was iconic, this one is mid at best. Speaking of audio: no greeting from the seatruck while the pda's voice is... i can't even call it robotic, its like AI but somehow worse?
4. The snowfox bugs are still not fixed. Built 9 of them and all of them are clipped through the snow, under the map. I started a new game - still the same issue.
5. The iceworm glitches out and can hit you from across the map.
6. The PDA scans are unfinished, which makes me think the developers didn't really cared about the game to begging with or didn't bother finishing it. You' d scan a plant and it would be two sentances. One of them is "BiG UnDerWatER PlAnT". Yeah... thats. Its like the people that made the descriptions HATED the 3d and concept artists.

I highly advice to just play the first game. I really tried to love this game (seeing how long I tried playing it), but I can't deny the sheer amount of problems it has. Its like they started it with passion, mid-way lost interest, started hating it and then chucked it into the world when its 60% done.
The developers didn't love this game like the first one, they just made a quick cash grab.

'Subnautica: Below Average' is what was supposed to be an expansion for Subnautica, until the developers finally stopped calling it an expansion after they had decided it should be sold as a separate game. The issue here is that the game, even as it's now "finished", clearly should have just been DLC for the main game.

This game is a lesser, smaller, and slower version of the main game Subnautica. While I loved to see the new environments, interact with the new fauna, and hear the new music, it just never quite reached the same level as Subnautica. The smaller map makes the biome diversity less convincing and much starker, one minute you're in this icy environment with glaciers and then theres just giant lillypads, complete with a total hue change from blue to green as you enter it. The story is not nearly as interesting as Subnautica's, the Samantha storyline being unremarkable and having a rather unsatisfying and dull ending, and the AL-AN storyline was made up of pretty much nothing but dialogue and chores.

A majority of the content in 'Subnautica: Below Standards' is just straight up imported/copy-pasted from Subnautica, and its unfortunate to see the contrast in quality of 'Subnautica: Ben Shapiro' vs Subnautica. The writing in the story, with dialogue between characters, is just really poor and awkward at times, as occasionally characters will just say things that no human will ever say, in order to get certain important information across to the player, such as the location of something you need to collect. This game is also far easier than Subnautica; pretty much every area of the map has countless opportunities for air, food, and water. The game even still throws batteries (and freaking Ion Cubes) at you every chance it gets despite the fact that vehicles and items can just be recharged at no cost with docking bays and Swim Charge Fins.

The Seatruck is a horrendous vehicle. The new sub was meant to be a customizable crossbreed between the Cyclops and the Seamoth, but the thing is a janky, slow, rectangular nightmare box that spends more time running against the environment than through the water. You can imagine my reaction when I tried to dock my Prawn Suit to the back of the thing, and the moment my suit landed on the docking module, it just exploded and its pieces sank into the abyss below. The Seatruck just made me miss the Cyclops and the Seamoth. I don't even hate the idea of a submarine that you build piece by piece with different modules, the issue is the devs of 'Only 950 Meters Below' made it the ugliest thing ever. I did not enjoy navigating this underwater schoolbus through caves.

The game, despite its final update coming out 2 years ago now, still has quite a lot of horrendous bugs; my two worst occasions were the game locking up into a loop when I tried to save, and at one point my Snowfox randomly glitched through the ground while deploying, where it promptly fell to the bottom of the map. Random creatures would sometimes fly through the water, or the air, when I killed them, and dropped objects would sometimes just fall through the ground or vanish. These bugs aren't frequent, mind you, but the game could definetely still use some polishing. Speaking of polishing, some of those item icons could def use a few more pixels...

If you are waiting for the game to go on sale, don't bother, I waited throughout the entirety of its early access run only for it to never go on sale, because I didn't feel a miniature spinoff of Subnautica warranted 20 dollars. I eventually caved and bought the game at full price after launch in 2021, where it was then increased to 25 dollars, and it is now 30. The reason I am sticking to this is because 'Subnautica: Never Below Regular Pricing' just does not constitute being worth 30 dollars.

i will be honest here i think this game is realy not that great, when i first bought it i thought the hate was for nothing but man i was wrong. trying to do 2 strories at once can be a bit confusing becuase i can't focus on both the alien side of the story AND visit all the bases AAND follow the story on that one girl

I enjoyed Below Zero, but with a few moans and niggles. 7.5/10


Prologue
For myself, the original Subnautica set the bar extremely high! Mostly because it was a fresh new twist on survival and crafting, but also because of its more focused story and exploration... and, especially, the underwater setting.

Subnautica is easily among my top 3 favourite games of all time, next to titles like SOMA and Jagged Alliance 2. Yes, I'm "old"! I've been playing PC games since the mid 90's. The fact Subnautica ends up so high in my favourite all-time games, next to incredible titles like Baldur's Gate, Fallout, X-Com, Half-Life, Myst, etc... says a whole lot about how Subnautica mesmerized me.

75% of it, is mainly due to the underwater & horror themes. It plays with my natural, but not too extreme, thalassophobia. This game is among the first games that played with one of my natural fears. It kept the crafting aspect relatively basic and simple. I liked this, because I can't say I care too much about crafting games.


Below Zero
Now, back to Below Zero. I enjoyed it, because it's a little more of Subnautica. Unfortunately, I found some of it little weaker. Discovery fell a little flat this time. That was mainly due to re-using many assets. I did not feel on a different planet or place. It felt like I was simply starting over in a much smaller and less intense Subnautica.

My favourite aspect of Subnautica, felt slightly diluted by the amount of land you explore. Don't get me wrong, everything is high quality, just like original Subnautica. But, the underwater world felt much smaller. They packed a good amount of content in it though. But, somehow, I felt less anticipation, or stress, as I was exploring. Sometimes size and scale plays an important role in the immersive aspect. Horror, especially with thalassophobia, can be impacted way more with size and scale.

This, plus the very regular audio logs and way stronger story, meant I didn't feel as "alone" or lost in an alien world. I miss that feeling, because part of the fear of always going deeper, and exploring that dark crevice, also comes from a certain amount of loneliness and feeling alone.

I thought the modular Seatruck was a move in the right direction, considering the map was smaller. But, the snowfox, I did not care for it very much. Maybe if all land was connected, I would have enjoyed it more?

Voice actors all played their roles perfectly. The main voice actress, Kimberly Brooks, and Matthew Marsh (for AL-AN), were spot on! Very enjoyable when they had lines.

I did enjoy the extra focus on the architects (especially the end of the game).


Conclusion
As much as I enjoyed my time in Below Zero, I felt a longing to play original Subnautica instead. Below Zero felt more like Subnautica 1.5. That's okay though, Subnautica 2 was recently teased. All is good!

Enjoy!

I was looking forward to play Below Zero but I quickly found out that they decided to go with a protagonist who doesn't stop spewing dialogue exposition instead of having a silent protagonist like the first game. I don't understand why anyone would think that listening to a character constantly talking to themselves is an enjoyable experience, if I wanted to get my hand held and torture myself by ruining my immersion every 5 seconds I'd just play a Sony game.

it's different.
feels a bit like a spinoff title, like far cry 3 blood dragon compared to far cry 3, although not as extreme

but i think it's a good game.
shorter experience with more land based exploration? yes, but definitely fun and worthwhile

it was really fun at first, just like the original subnautica but eventually it just kinda felt boring to play so i never finished it. some of the voicelines also sound pretty goofy

It's more Subnautica, though I'd have to say it's easier / more casual. The map is smaller, you progress faster, and the hostile mobs mostly just growl a lot but kind of ignore you. I'd still say it's worth picking up, especially if you get it on sale. If you have to get one or the other, get the original. But if you just want a way to extend your playtime of the original with a couple new biomes and some new creatures, this scratches that itch.

Compared to Subnautica 1, this game is in my opinion, equally as good. The story is much better, but it does lack in the horror side, but has a much more streamlined progression. Really enjoyed this game, and totally worth the money. If you are reading negative reviews saying this game sucks, just ignore them, this game is fantastic and my opinion will never change.

It is not the original, but it is sill a very good game. I dont reccomend going anywhere outside of your drop pod

I've heard that this game is good and it just suffers in comparison to the first game but I disagree, it's just a mediocre game. To me, it feels more like meh fan fiction of the original game. They made the map smaller but also tried to make it denser at the same time. Visually it's great, but moving super slowly feels really bad and just artificially increases the duration of the game and the way that everything is a maze drove me insane. The first time I explored and accidentally found a place was amazing but then trying to find it again (because oops I didn't have a beacon on me) was miserable. Also, still super glitchy like the first game. I was able to use Prawn Suit physics to make it to the final base and beat the game not realizing I was technically out of bounds and then lost a lot of time having to quit to my last save and meander back there the long way because I got stuck out of bounds and the unstuck feature wouldn't save me. The Sea Truck was like the worst parts of the Sea Moth and the Cyclops combined. And I was just bored by the leviathan and the world lacked the awe inspiring moments of the first game. "Go deeper" was more of a thing you casually do instead of the way it just guided the full first game. Also, too much voice animation and it really broke immersion.

At first I saw it game and played, I though that was a mistake. But is so good with the updates!
thank you devs <3 I love all of you