Subnautica: Below Zero

The first game is one of my personal all time favourites, maybe not top 5 easily top 10,but to be blunt this game falls short on all fronts.

TL:dr bullet points.

-Multiple poorly told stories that go nowhere.

• ^All of them squander assets that had potential.

-Story also simultaneously pompous and serious yet full of holes, hypocrisies and less enthralling than a direct to tv sci movie for the SyFy channel.

-Forgettable creature design.

-The vehicles are horrendous.

-Land exploration is buggy as hell.

-Lots of inane chit-chat from characters we never even see and have no connection with at all.

-No reason to explore.

-Less diverse biomes.

-Creature sound design dissapoints after amazing job in first game.

-Devs removed useful features, too lazy to fix them and didnt care enough to implement alternatives.

Overall, very dissapointing and worse than the original in every single discernible manner...

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*Full long winded ramble* -Story: instead of telling 1 story and telling it well, they have 3 story lines, none of which are interesting in the slightest, none of them have any effect on us because what events have already happened when the game begins and they involve characters we have no history and no connection with, we have never even seen them and therefore thre is zero investment in our part and no reason at all to care. All 3 stories are also very dissapointing, 2 of them are utterly pointless, they are no more than fetch quests fluffed out by the audio logs from people we dont know or care about which I mention below and the 3rd is like some kind of sequel or dlc bait but given how this sequel is worse than the first in every single possible measure it's tough to get excited thinking about how the next project will turn out.

-Story is also hypocritical , maybe ill change this later to include spoilers to give examples of what I mean but for now I will just leave it at that.

-The story takes itself way too seriously. The first was a desperate man in a dire situation but it put you into that position and let you play it out and through some poignant logs reinforced that lonely, hopeless setting without being ham fisted about it. This one is so pompous its unreal, endless pseudo-intellectual chit chat between 2 certain characters and endlessly droning on and on about humans being "inefficient", it doesnt feel like listening to a big budget sci-fi script written and tweaked over years, it feels like reading a draft from a first year philosophy student who thinks they have humanity all figured out, its mind numbingly smug, which could at least be tolerable if my 2 points above werent also true.

-Every location to progress is shoved in your face, removing encouragement to explore.

-Blueprints are almost entirely handed to you, again removing reason to simply explore the world.

-Creatures are less interesting and memorable than original.

-Creatures are also very weak, the first game to try to take down any of the threatening creatures required the prawn suit and a fair amount of time, in this game some of the most intimidating sounding creatures die from a 1mph tap from the flimsy little sea truck.

-Sound design is not up to par with original. Which I admit they did set a very high bar for themselves with the first game, but still sad that the sequel falls flat. Nothing in this sequel even comes close to touching the sound of the reapers or crab squids in particular form the first.

-Music is not as memorable as original.

-New voices are blase and forgettable and take away from immersion not add to it. The silent protagonist in the first was more immersive and interesting than the version of Robin in the full release, another case of could've and should've because earlier iterations of robin were flawed story wise but the actress bringing her to life brought personality to the role, she brought the character to life, now it sounds like what it is, someone in a studio reading a script for a pay cheque. Which is not intended to be offensive to the woman doing it, we all need a wage, but for example there is a moment in the game that should be moving, it should have weight, but since its about a character we dont know and the voice lines from robin do not sound affected or emtional in the slightest, it all just takes away from the experience instead of adding to it.

• This applies to the PDA also, the voice in the original was highly praised because it combined a robotic device providing you information with a human sounding voice to give it some personality. The voice in this game does not have that same affect, now instead of providing information and making the odd jokey comment the new voice is like listening to your alarm in the morning, it is telling you useful stuff, but it's not something you want to be listening to.

• The sea emperor in the original game was a far more interesting presence than anything in the sequel by a country mile.

-Sea truck is worse than cyclops and sea moth in every single manner.

-PDA logs even ones related to story elements almost always devolve into drivel about personal relationships between characters we dont know or are invested in. It doesnt add to the story, the world building, immersion, it *feels* like a pandering moment from Unknown worlds " look guys the universe our sci fi survival game is set in has multi-ethnic and same sex relations, we are inclusive here" Hearing about the protagonists sister is the one and only exception to this, every other time the pda's go down this path we have no connection to the characters and no reason whatsoever to care about that stuff. A character should be just that a good character, you should not force characters into media that are there solely for and are completely defined by their sexual preferences. There is so much more to a character than their bedroom desires and in a game like this that has nothing even resembling relationships present and there is only 1 other human being you ever see, that makes it even more obvious that this this was done purely to pander with no effort or thought put into creating interesting, well rounded characters that add to the immersion and the world building.

-Alien locations are less interesting, both for lore and aesthetic design than the original.

• Locations in general: They said they were aiming to include more land exploration in this game, and it is undeniably terrible, in terms of gameplay it is the least enjoyable and most frustrating part of the game. All the areas look the same, the wild life is not diverse at all, the character model gets stuck every 5 seconds, the snowfox is a flimsy piece of crap, its just outright not fun. The islands in the first game were small, but they had more flaura and fauna, they were programmed better since we didnt have colission issues non stop, they werent vital to finishing the game but they provided useful stuff to reward you for exploring. Optional areas in the first game are better than mandatory areas in the sequel, both in terms of programming/design from the companies end and better in terms of gameplay and fun and immersion for us players, that speaks volumes really

-Developers seem to care less about this game, original had terraforming tool removed because the ability to shape the entire playable world caused issues, but this sequel they just gave up even trying to address problems, when something caused them problems they just removed them and didnt even replace them with something else. The most obvious of these being the reverse mirror, giving us 1 vehicle , the sea truck which has limited field of vision, taking away the tool implemented to account for that and not even bothering to give us cameras or sonar or anything else to compensate , we are left with a vehicle which realistically will be fairly large most of the time you use it and now we have no way of being aware of our surroundings while trying to pilot this thing going deeper and deeper for necessary plot progression plus the boost upgrade is poorly designed too because you cant stop it, once you activate it you are propelled foward until the boost runs out, but if I am using the boost to escape danger I want to do just that, escape danger, I dont want to be forcibly thrust out of the area or be stuck with forward momentum trying to navigate this needlessly awkard vehicle and hoping the thrust doesnt drive me into the path of more danger or a dead end.

I dont know what happened to unknown worlds, but a company who made their name by tirelessly working on the first game as a passion project is almost unrecognizable to the company's new approach of cutting corners,removing features, spelling everything out, removing any semblance of challenge and in essence drastically watering down a ficitonal world of their own creation, you dont need to just take my word for it you can do a quick google search yourself and you will find many threads in multiple forums talking about game breaking bugs, save issues, rendering issues, character model getting stuck on textures, things that should not be present in a full release of a paid product.

The first game was and still is amazing, this sequel is like a poor imitation of the original, instead of taking the experience of making the first and listening to the feedback for it to create an even better sequel unknown worlds have now fully released a game that feels like a mocking knock off of the first , it shares the same core gameplay mechanics but lacks the charm, atmosphere, immersion, exploration and the care that went into crafting the first, it really is a shame. But this ramble is already far too long for anyone to ever read fully, but those are just the thoughts of someone who has spent countless hours in the original and had hoped the company would put the same effort into the sequel only to be thoroughly dissapointed with the end result they are charging money for. Honestly just play/re-play the original.