It's not as good as the first game, but still worth your time if you enjoyed that game.

There is more of a focus of on-land survival in this game, which I thought was OK, but nothing spectacular. It does break up the gameplay a bit and sets it apart from the original, but the icy/snowy landscape is very boring and repetitive compared to the underwater environments. I would have preferred more focus on the underwater gameplay, as it feels like there isn't as much variety with the underwater environments in this game as there was in the original.

The most noticeable difference from the first game is the change in storytelling styles. The protaganist in this game is given voicelines, and that is what primarily drives the story. I much prefer the storytelling style of the original game, I found that a lot more enticing and immersive, but the story in this game isn't bad.

Overall, this game provides more Subnautica gameplay with a cool new customisable vehicle and some welcome quality of life improvements, albeit with a less exciting premise and environment IMO. In many aspects it isn't as good as the first game, but it's still quite enjoyable.

The magic of the first game arose mostly from the process of discovery. It had only the barest threads of a story for the first several hours, and the player's time was spent primarily building, surviving, and learning about the planet itself while occasionally being directed to crash sites and the ruins of former outposts. It's clear that the planet had a history, but nothing appeared to be truly fishy (heuheu) for quite some time, and even once that threshold was crossed, the manner in which it took place made it obvious that the forces you had to deal with were far more immense than you were able to fully comprehend. So instead, you really just continued to focus on exploration of the planet, and your environment came to reflect the spoils of that exploration, which in turn helped you progress through what story there was. Gameplay dealing with traversing immensity, themes reflected in story. Good. Tight.

Well, BZ focuses on delving further into the aforementioned forces, which quickly lose their sense of scale by way of exposition. Tangential narratives are also given more attention, such as the relationships between Alterra scientists. Maybe people like that stuff? I dunno, I was bored. Exploration is still there and narrative progression is still technically gated by discovery, but the gates feel more arbitrary. Endgame rewards are weak compared to the first game.

If I was going to make a larger cultural critique, I'd probably say that this type of narrative accretion in a series/franchise - where more stories are told in the interest of enlarging a "universe" rather than supporting a primary set of rhetorical themes - is symptomatic of the utterly dominant Ubisoft/Marvel/Disney model of Producing Content™, but I won't die on that hill.

The gameplay loop is basically identical to the first game which is that kept me going through to the credits. I appreciated the addition of glass roofs. The fish designs are still mostly good, although the austerity of an arctic environment was occasionally underwhelming compared to the lush shallows of game 1. Snow-based exploration I tried to avoid for the most part.

Worth getting on sale.