Subnautica: Below Zero is a decent game, but a disappointing sequel. What few genuine improvements and innovations over the original it does deliver are overshadowed by frustrating new mechanics, bad storytelling, baffling design decisions and the usual Subnautica jank.
6/10
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WARNING: This review contains spoilers!
[BTW: I’ll be referring to the original Subnautica as “OG” and Below Zero as “BZ” for simplicity’s sake.]
The original Subnautica was certainly not a perfect game. Its story and the endgame in particular left a lot to be desired. There were a lot of issues in various quality of life departments that needed fixing, especially the cumbersome inventory management and inefficient UI design. The game was positively riddled with glitches and bugs. (although the recent 2.0 patch did finally alleviate some of those problems a bit)
While all of that is true, nothing has made me appreciate OG more than playing its ambitious, but rather misguided sequel. It truly was something quite special, and offered a unique experience that no other game at the time could. Thus, it is very unfortunate that something seemingly made the folks over at Unknown Worlds reconsider a lot of the core design aspects of this game series. It’s impossible to know what exactly motivated this decision; perhaps it was that one review that was just a bit too negative. Perhaps they felt they couldn’t simply do more of the same, and had to mix up the experience to prevent it getting stale. Perhaps they had something different planned, and the state that BZ is in now is simply a compromise born of a lack of time and money. That last one seems to me the most likely, as BZ was originally planned as a DLC to OG, and then simply grew into a full sequel.
Whatever it was, it resulted in Unknown Worlds somehow “improving” in almost all the wrong areas. The most obvious example would be the frankly dumbfounding decision to greatly amplify some of OG’s worst elements and make them front and centre to the experience. The explorable area generally feels a lot smaller than the original’s, and that’s already considering that almost a third of the entire map is actually on land. The game’s story is probably the worst thing about it. I have no idea what the fuck the writers of BZ were thinking half of the time, but this is one of the most unbearably dumb stories I’ve played in a while.
But before I go on and list my problems with BZ and talk about it as a failed sequel, I first want to highlight some of the things I did appreciate about it and why I still consider it a decent game overall:
THE GOOD:
First and foremost; I didn’t experience nearly as many bugs and glitches with this game than I did with OG. That itself is already a massive plus, as it was one of the biggest problems with the first game. The general performance was also a lot better, although I identified some problem zones that regularly slowed my game down a bit, and the problem of excessive pop-in still persists. I should mention that I played the entire game after the latest patch (as of January 2023) so perhaps this was the reason for that.
The fact that the map is considerably smaller this time around isn’t necessarily a bad thing - at least in theory. Getting around is certainly quicker, and the focus in level design has shifted from wide, open areas with massive expanses of dead space to more tightly designed places with more focus on exploring cave systems, floating islands, icebergs, etc. Almost every area also features a sub-area somewhere beneath it, which you access through some sort of crevice or hole in the floor. These can go down to surprising depths as early as the starting area. This makes for more organic exploration and definitely feels a little less predictable and video-gamey.
This is helped by the fact that finding the essential, basic blueprints has been made a lot easier. Things like the Seaglide, Constructor Tool, High Capacity Oxygen Tank, and some others can be built as early as the first 10 minutes. Like in OG, these blueprints are found in the form of various fragments. These fragments are so abundant, especially in the earlier regions of the game, that they double as your most effective titanium source, at least until you build a PRAWN suit and gain the ability of mining ores.
The Seatruck is a great replacement for / compromise between the Seamoth and the Cyclops, the latter of which I barely ever used due to how clunky its controls feel. Although it’s a bit sad you can’t build a full base in it, you can build a fabricator and sleeping unit, and can unlock the ability to carry your PRAWN suit around. It can dive down to the deepest depths, and as such you don’t ever need to use the PRAWN to get around if you don’t want to. So it essentially does everything the Cyclops can do, but for a fraction of the material cost and size, at the cost of sacrificing customisability.
Perhaps the strongest improvements can be found in the art direction. While the original was already quite beautiful, and had fantastic atmosphere, BZ often pushes it even further, with fantastic lighting all across the board - this time, even including the land sections. The added weather effects look great, and I am a particularly big fan of the mood during sunset and sunrise. The way the sky and air turn completely red for a few seconds is somewhere between breathtakingly beautiful and terrifying. The way that the on-land map is mostly shrouded in a thick, frozen mist alleviates some of the problems that arose when viewing the ocean from far away in OG. It is also just a whole lot more colourful in general, whether in the open sea or some cave system, there is never nothing there. There is light and colour everywhere, like a distant city scape. Where OG had areas like the Landing Zone or Dunes where there wasn’t really all that much to see, BZ’s map positively teems with life.
While the biodiversity overall feels a bit lacking, with lots of fish from OG making a return here, the designs of the newly added fauna and flora are often much more interesting than the original, especially the leviathan class monsters. From the stunning and awe inspiring Vent Gardens to the terrifying Shadow Leviathans, all the big animals feel a lot more distinct. I especially appreciate the fact that BZ’s leviathans look and behave a lot more intimidating than OG’s. The Shadow Leviathan and Void Chelicerate are way scarier and mean-looking than anything OG had to offer. The only one I find a bit goofy is the Ice Worm, which looks like a Pokemon.
Finally, I want to specifically compliment the music in BZ. While I enjoyed OG’s OST quite a bit, I actually prefer this one. The more ambient, spacey synth tunes may demand a little less attention but integrate themselves more fittingly into the background. I think it fits the oceanic theme much better and I especially appreciate that every area doesn’t only have one track that plays on repeat. I think the tracks are exactly as catchy as the first one (if not more so), and allow themselves to delve into more melancholic and mysterious moods than OG’s OST.
There are some minor things too, but right now this is as much as I can come up with; at least when it comes to things that BZ actually adds. I’d say the biggest reason I’d still rate this game positively overall is down to the fact that - for the most part - it plays very similarly to OG. And that is precisely the problem.
BZ is at its best when it’s just more Subnautica. And, to be fair, the majority of this game is exactly that. If you had fun with the first game, there’s fun to be had here as well. It’s mainly everything else, everything new that’s the issue. Chief among those being two absolutely mind-boggling design decisions:
THE BAD:
1.) The World
Let’s start with my biggest gripe: The choice of not only drastically cutting down on explorable space both in terms of horizontal AND vertical space, but to amplify literally the worst aspect of OG’s gameplay - being on land - to a considerable chunk of the main gameplay loop. Where OG had you go on very short trips to at least one of two existing islands on that map, which were very brief story moments without anything else to do there, BZ dedicates approximately one third of its gameplay with exploring the various arctic landscapes. Apart from the fact that having your game - which is based around the feeling of being underwater and exploring the ocean - feature a massive chunk of gameplay outside of the ocean is a really odd idea to begin with, doing that without even managing to make normal walking not feel like driving a bumper car with tank controls is baffling on levels I didn’t even know were possible.
To add insult to injury, these above sea level areas, with the exception of the Delta Island and some icebergs in the Eastern Arctic, are all segmented off, literally separated from the rest off the game, off to the northern and western corners respectively. There is no incentive to come back and explore any more as soon as you’ve found what you’re looking for. You could technically build a base here, although I wouldn’t recommend it since you’re so far away from anything else.
I’m not even going into great detail on it, I’ll just say that the Snowfox might be the only video game vehicle in recent memory to frustrate me more than Death Stranding’s Reverse Trike. What’s worse is that it’s practically essential to explore the overworld as it not only functions as a mobile heat source, but it somehow shields you from the weather as well. Don’t ask me how that works.
It’s not only the mechanics of being on land that are frustrating to deal with, or the fact that the mere existence of these gameplay moments fly in the face of the rest of this game’s design, but the fact that it’s simply boring to explore, and - while not as ugly as OG’s overworld sections - are not that impressive visually either. The Ice Worm section is flat out horrible and janky to the point where I’m not even sure what’s happening half the time. If me getting thrown off my bike even though I was nowhere near that thing is the actual intended experience, I honestly have no clue WHAT the designers were going for at this point. A big personal annoyance for me was understanding how much of the essential base building components are locked in these areas, but that might be a nitpick.
I’ve also already touched on my issues with making the actual underwater spaces much smaller as well, but it’s not just about map size for map size’s sake for me. People often refer to Subnautica as a horror game, and I never found that quite true for me, even though I obviously understand that thalassophobia is a real thing, but to me one of the few moments of genuine unease with this game didn’t come from the scary monsters or ghostly noises but simply diving down into the black abyss without knowing where you’re headed - especially at night. That feeling of disorientation is extremely powerful and was one of the best things about swimming further away from the starting point, discovering new places. The significantly reduced map size sadly somewhat alleviates these feelings, especially in terms of disorientation, due to the more condensed level design, and you rarely, if ever, get that feeling from simply not knowing what waits below you. It’s a bit hard to put into words, but with how the non-cave biomes go barely below 400 meters at the deepest points - really, the average is closer to 150-250 meters - something got lost for me in that respect. Or maybe it has something do with the fact that the sea seems a lot less ‘foggy’ this time around. The vastness of the ocean is something terrifying in and out of itself, and while people criticised the “dead space between zones” in OG, I can’t help but feel they were essential to the feeling of dread it managed to conjure, at least for me. It’s also something that could be explained as something that’s just very natural to oceans. The unbelievably dense and rich ocean life of BZ almost stretches the borders of believability a little too much for my liking.
As for the level design, while I’ve already pointed out the things I appreciate about it, the tight passages and corridors can make it very tedious to navigate your Seatruck around the place without bumping into shit every 5 seconds, especially when you have some compartments attached. What’s worse is that due to the lack of wide open areas there are barely any good spots to construct bases in. This may be something personal, but I actually enjoyed the base-building aspects of both games a lot, despite how underdeveloped and unpolished they are. It is therefore very unfortunate that there are only very few interesting spots for actual, large bases in the overworld, and practically none in the cave systems, due to how cramped they are or constant predator/leviathan attacks. It’s not just the individual level design that makes it harder, the world layout itself is much less open and - unless you’re choosing to build your base in the starting area - you’re likely going to build it at some corner of the map.
Something else that’s undoubtedly negatively impacted the horror level for me is how relentlessly the game desensitises you with loud, leviathan-like roars from medium-sized hunters as early as the starting area. While that can make the early game a bit scarier initially, it stops being effective the second you realise these things are pretty harmless for the most part. Some of these smaller predators are so loud and over the top that, whenever you do hear an actual leviathan, it doesn’t even fully register some of the time. While OG’s leviathans were less spooky as soon as you saw them up close, you definitely couldn’t say that about their sound design. I don’t know if the intention was to lean more into the horror aspect with this, I can only say it had the opposite effect for me.
I could list even more problems with the game’s world design / layout, but I think by now you get the idea. It’s time to move on to what is arguably the game’s biggest problem for most people: a shockingly poorly written and unengaging story.
2.) The Story
Now, the story of the first Subnautica wasn’t great by any means. It was serviceable at best, and downright amateurish at worst. The plot relies on coincidence after coincidence after deus ex machina after plot hole to even arrive at its starting point, and continues down a path of awfully convenient plot developments. It strongly felt like the setting, mechanics and gameplay loop had all been decided on way ahead of time, with the story only being written close to the end of development. But where the actual story of the game fell flat for me, the process of uncovering that story gradually, with only vague hints where to go next and with the majority of it ultimately being hidden in the 100% optional audio-logs felt pretty engaging. It almost as though the game was aware of how flimsily it constructed its narrative, and as such made everything but the absolute bare essentials (get off this planet, find a cure, disable the quarantine system) optional. Really, it was possible to go through the whole game without really understanding what was going on. The audio logs are surprisingly well written for the most part (considering just how badly written the main plot is) and they don’t get in the way of gameplay. By far the game’s strongest decision in that regard was to make the player character silent, even though there IS a backstory for Ryley. OG’s strength in that respect was its ability to fully immerse you into that world, and one of the biggest selling points for that was the feeling of being truly alone on an alien planet, with only the voice of your PDA to keep you company. There is no plot objective driving you forward, most of the time new discoveries will be facilitated by your desire to explore, and maybe follow the occasional radio message. All of this allows the player to make up their own story.
But once again, nothing made me actually appreciate these choices more than playing BZ, and realising that, not only did they decide to go for a fully voiced, named character this time around, the actual plot makes even less sense than the original, despite shoving itself into your face constantly. I remember starting up the game, hearing Robin talk to herself within the first minute of gameplay, and quickly realised that this was going to be a problem. I should mention that this - characters gratuitously talking to themselves like they were children’s playbook characters - is my Nr.1 biggest pet peeve in video game story telling. It is the laziest, most immersion breaking and most phoned in way of characterisation in the history of the interactive medium and I wish devs would stop doing this shit, especially when the game I’m playing takes itself this seriously. Now, I have to clarify that Robin talking to herself doesn’t happen that much, at least, when compared to other games that do this, but it is still almost impressive how heavily this little addition, this one tiny design decision drastically affected my sense of immersion and threw a wrench in the whole mood of this game. Even if you WERE still the only person on this planet - which you aren’t, but we’ll get there shortly - this would still ruin the feeling of having to cope with the crushing loneliness of being stranded in space enough for me to not take it seriously anymore.
Had this been the only change I could’ve accepted it. Sure, let the main character have a voice and things to say for brand recognisability or having some “””iconic””” main character, but still let the player make up their own story, let them decide what they want to focus on. It’s not easy, but other games managed too. But by now you’ve probably realised this is not where they went with this.
No, they decided that this time around, instead of an intrinsically motivated drive to experience this game - getting dropped in an alien ocean and being forced to explore it to survive - it would be best to go with external motivation this time around. Robin, other than Ryley, is on this planet on purpose to look for her sister “Sam”, or rather, find out what happened to her. You probably immediately noticed, but this is a TERRIBLE idea. The juxtaposition of the world structure as this huge, very openly designed thing with loads of interesting things to do for the player, and this very immediate external drive of needing to find out what happened to Sam for Robin creates some pretty irreconcilable ludonarrative dissonance, especially when you do what most people do, and hold off on completing the story in favour of exploring the ocean.
But the problems have only begun. If all of this wasn’t bad enough, they decided they should go with 3 entirely different, barely connected storylines, instead of a simple, overarching goal that’s clear from the get go. These 3 story arcs revolve around 3 different characters. The first - and again: the literal reason you came to this planet - revolves around finding out what happened to your sister. You’d be forgiven in thinking that this was the main plot but it’s actually, technically a side quest. You read that right, the literal reason why you came to this planet is not actually a prerequisite for beating this game. Which is hilarious, because you actually need to finish the second storyline - revolving around badass renegade marine biologist Marguerit Maida - to finish either of the other 2 storylines, even though HER storyline ends pretty much immediately after your turned off a single spy antenna. If you’ve played the first game, you might have noticed that this name showed up in that one as well, as she was one of the three scientists from the Degassi mission, which you would remember from the related audio logs. Those were honestly some of the best in the game, with the most twists and turns - however, they very strongly imply Marguerit died. Her simply being here without any explanation what so ever feels extremely cheap and not only feels like a gratuitous callback to OG, but kinda diminishes the Degassi story in retrospect. Let’s get back to her plot tho: You meet her on an island, then you find her base, then you shut off an antenna then you visit her again and she gives you an audiolog that gives you a hint on where Sam was last seen. That’s it. She never comes up after this again, and she has no influence on the rest of the game’s story, not even in relation to Sam.
But all of that is fairly harmless compared to the AL-AN plot line. This one is the actual main story of the game, as it’s the one the game’s actual ending revolves around. I have no idea why they decided to structure the story like this, and what they intended with that fake out.
So, AL-AN is actually one of the mysterious predecessor aliens, or “Architects” from OG. The ones who built all those green alien structures and imprisoned the Sea Empress, inadvertently causing the Khaara outbreak. He is introduced to the story by happening upon a specific alien base fairly close to the start. He, or rather, his consciousness is trapped in a storage unit that is about to fail - very conveniently the very second you happen to show up there no less - and Robin offers him her PDA as temporary storage. However, in one of many hilarious misunderstandings (/s) in this story, AL-AN instead inserts himself into Robin’s head where he’ll spend the rest of the game making unbelievably trite observations about how “inEfFicieNt” humans are and incessantly reminding us of his need for a new robot body. I do happen to like his voice, and I think that his inclusion as a gameplay element isn’t necessarily bad. He effectively works like the radio from OG, occasionally adding a marker to your HUD for every piece of alien technology he is able to locate. Where he REALLY throws me off is how utterly embarrassing the dialogue between him and Robin is. Seriously, I struggle to put into words how unbearable these “”””philosophical””” exchanges between AL-AN and Robin are. It’s honestly almost hilarious just how poorly written most scenes ended up being in general. Seriously, wtf were the writers thinking here? This feels like what a 13 year old, who only just learned what science fiction and aliens are, thinks a discussion between an alien and a person would go. They really want to hit you over the head with the fact that AL-AN does not understand humans, even though he speaks perfect English, understands most idioms, has a highly diversified vocabulary, etc. Literally every time they opened their mouths to have another debate I immediately rolled my eyes and cringed into oblivion. “Oh wow ALAN it seems you really do not understand humans, that's so crazy haha”. It reminds me of that one Rick and Morty episode with the energy cloud called “Fart”, but this time without any irony what so ever. Yeah, the writing is not great.
That being said, back to the actual plot: AL-AN needs to get back home, and has to construct a new, mechanical body for that. You help him by scouting the ocean and scanning various, different pieces of alien tech you need to build it. You find all the blueprints and construct the new body down in the deepest depths of this ocean - which is literally only half as deep as OG’s - with materials from all across the map. This is fairly reminiscent of OG’s endgame fetch quest, which also wasn’t great but it did send you on what could be seen as a victory lap in which you got the opportunity of checking out biomes you have have missed before. The difference here was that the Sea Empress made you look for certain plant seeds, items you were very unlikely to have picked up and stored great quantities of as they had no real use for the player, other than as cosmetic plants. This time, the game asks you to bring items you will, without doubt, have more have more than enough of. In fact, I didn’t need to go out and find these at all. I had all of them literally in base with plenty to spare. I don’t know whether this was done to cut back on backtracking, but all it did for me was make that endgame section even shorter and underwhelming than OG’s.
Speaking of which, in OG, this whole process was only step one of three steps. This step revolved around simply getting the cure, you’d still have to shut off the defence system and build a rocket to actually escape. With BZ; this really is it. As soon as you’ve build AL-AN’s body, you’re effectively done with the game. The only thing left to do is to meet him at the Outpost Zero Stargate and… leave with him and go to his home planet?? Why is THAT the ending? Where did this get foreshadowed at all? How is that the resolution to this game’s plot? Wasn’t the whole idea of coming here to find out what happened to Sam? As mentioned before, you can finish this game without ever learning what happened to her, and now you’re telling me that Robin simply forgets about all that? What is her incentive to come with AL-AN? I've said it before, I'll say it again: This is some of the dumbest writing I’ve seen in a while.
If I had to guess, I’d say that they had to massively cut down the endgame, as the game simply suddenly ends the moment it gets actually interesting. There was no way that THIS was how they always intended for this story to go. This all just screams “last minute” and “compromise”. Say about OG’s endgame what you will, but at least it had one. This time around the game just suddenly stops. The game is only about half as long as OG anyway, so the fact that they decided to condense this game so much, presumably “for the story”, only for this story to simply end at what feels like the halfway point is especially appalling. And believe it or not but there are still SO MANY THINGS wrong with this game’s writing, but I’ll stop right here as to not go insane.
3.) What they didn’t change
Finally, I want to briefly talk about some things that also were in the original Subnautica, which should’ve either been scrapped or reworked. Like I said, BZ is at its best when it’s simply more Subnautica. But that is also a two-edged sword, with how many issues the original had that could’ve been very easily fixed in a sequel. This review is already WAY too fucking long, which is why I’m only flying through these now, but don’t let that fool you, these are legitimate grievances I have with BZ.
Base building is still underwhelming, even with lots of new additions like large rooms and glass ceilings. Large rooms are janky and the wall feature is extremely underdeveloped. The various pieces are inflexible, and typically demand more space to build than they actually use. Furniture is still very limited, it’s very hard to make these bases feel like an actual home. I don’t know what we need 10 different beds for when we can’t even make a dining table, or cupboard or most other things you’d have in a living situation. Toilets and showers are nice, but I would’ve much preferred some more things that actually either a.) made the space seem more liveable or b.) had some in game uses.
The PRAWN Suit is still tedious to use outside of using the grappling hook to get around. Mining ores is still mind-numbingly boring, and all the other augmentations are totally useless. Really, all they did with it was nerfing it. Getting around takes a lot more energy, literally just floating around takes up jump fuel now and recharging energy at hot vents takes WAY longer. It’s also a lot weaker and seemingly much worse than killing things with the drill bit. It feels worse to use in almost every way, and I already didn’t like it that much to begin with.
One of the worst cases of “why is this still here”: Why is inventory management still such a mess? BZ still won’t let you stack items at all, no matter how small they are. Storage units are still extremely bulky and uninteresting to use, there is no way of actually organising your storage other than simply putting a bunch of lockers next to each other. You still spend literal HOURS of your time with this game going through menu screens when ti really isn’t necessary. There is still no way of remotely checking your base storage. BZ is still way to stingy with inventory space. This was one of the most annoying aspects of OG and I cannot believe that it still exists completely unchanged in the sequel.
Resource management and gathering has been very slightly improved but is still largely cumbersome and inefficient. I still had a pretty constant shortage of titanium and glass, though not quite as bad as in OG. I really hope that they introduce some form of automated resource gathering for at least titanium and quartz in the inevitable sequel. Especially towards the end, I really feel like struggling to find enough of the same resources you’ve been using since the first 5 minutes of the game shouldn’t be a thing. It's weird because the game already had an interesting new mechanic in the Sea Monkeys. If there was some way of domesticating or training them, you could build a Sea Monkey habitat and let them gather resources there, or something like that. And once again, supposedly rare items like nickel and kyanite are entirely useless outside of 1 or 2 very specific blueprints, which you need in the first place if you're looking to obtain large quantities of them. Once again, so much wasted potential here. Maybe we could've gotten some grand, optional end-game projects which needed large amounts of those items. Maybe some massive new additions to your base, or some cool new vehicle. I just think that having massive amounts of the material you need to unlock the upgrades to get down there in the first place only makes sense when you can actually do something with them after you've unlocked said upgrades.
Last but not least, while I can’t say I found anywhere near as many bugs and glitches as in OG, I still experienced enough of them here to be noticable. The infamous “swimming through air” glitch still occasionally pops up. Glitching through walls and ending up out of bounds is still a regular issue, so is getting your vehicle stuck in the walls or floor. I will admit that the “Unstuck” button is a very welcome addition in that respect, but seems more like a bandaid solution rather than a real fix.
CONCLUSION:
Subnautica: Below Zero is ambitious, but misguided. If you are a real big fan of the original, you will find some stuff to like here. If you’re the type of person who can live with a horrendously stupid plot and a lot of wasted potential, I could see myself even recommending it to you. If all you’re looking for is more Subnautica, there’s certainly a lot of that here. If you’re looking for something that actually improves upon Subnautica and fixes its issues instead of doubling down on them, keep looking. Maybe Subnautica 3 will be the one.
6/10
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There are still many things I could talk about, both positive and negative, but by now I’ve explained my feelings on this game rather extensively.
If you somehow read all of this, thank you sincerely. I write huge reviews like this for people like you. More so if you haven’t actually played the game. Leave a like if you did!
6/10
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WARNING: This review contains spoilers!
[BTW: I’ll be referring to the original Subnautica as “OG” and Below Zero as “BZ” for simplicity’s sake.]
The original Subnautica was certainly not a perfect game. Its story and the endgame in particular left a lot to be desired. There were a lot of issues in various quality of life departments that needed fixing, especially the cumbersome inventory management and inefficient UI design. The game was positively riddled with glitches and bugs. (although the recent 2.0 patch did finally alleviate some of those problems a bit)
While all of that is true, nothing has made me appreciate OG more than playing its ambitious, but rather misguided sequel. It truly was something quite special, and offered a unique experience that no other game at the time could. Thus, it is very unfortunate that something seemingly made the folks over at Unknown Worlds reconsider a lot of the core design aspects of this game series. It’s impossible to know what exactly motivated this decision; perhaps it was that one review that was just a bit too negative. Perhaps they felt they couldn’t simply do more of the same, and had to mix up the experience to prevent it getting stale. Perhaps they had something different planned, and the state that BZ is in now is simply a compromise born of a lack of time and money. That last one seems to me the most likely, as BZ was originally planned as a DLC to OG, and then simply grew into a full sequel.
Whatever it was, it resulted in Unknown Worlds somehow “improving” in almost all the wrong areas. The most obvious example would be the frankly dumbfounding decision to greatly amplify some of OG’s worst elements and make them front and centre to the experience. The explorable area generally feels a lot smaller than the original’s, and that’s already considering that almost a third of the entire map is actually on land. The game’s story is probably the worst thing about it. I have no idea what the fuck the writers of BZ were thinking half of the time, but this is one of the most unbearably dumb stories I’ve played in a while.
But before I go on and list my problems with BZ and talk about it as a failed sequel, I first want to highlight some of the things I did appreciate about it and why I still consider it a decent game overall:
THE GOOD:
First and foremost; I didn’t experience nearly as many bugs and glitches with this game than I did with OG. That itself is already a massive plus, as it was one of the biggest problems with the first game. The general performance was also a lot better, although I identified some problem zones that regularly slowed my game down a bit, and the problem of excessive pop-in still persists. I should mention that I played the entire game after the latest patch (as of January 2023) so perhaps this was the reason for that.
The fact that the map is considerably smaller this time around isn’t necessarily a bad thing - at least in theory. Getting around is certainly quicker, and the focus in level design has shifted from wide, open areas with massive expanses of dead space to more tightly designed places with more focus on exploring cave systems, floating islands, icebergs, etc. Almost every area also features a sub-area somewhere beneath it, which you access through some sort of crevice or hole in the floor. These can go down to surprising depths as early as the starting area. This makes for more organic exploration and definitely feels a little less predictable and video-gamey.
This is helped by the fact that finding the essential, basic blueprints has been made a lot easier. Things like the Seaglide, Constructor Tool, High Capacity Oxygen Tank, and some others can be built as early as the first 10 minutes. Like in OG, these blueprints are found in the form of various fragments. These fragments are so abundant, especially in the earlier regions of the game, that they double as your most effective titanium source, at least until you build a PRAWN suit and gain the ability of mining ores.
The Seatruck is a great replacement for / compromise between the Seamoth and the Cyclops, the latter of which I barely ever used due to how clunky its controls feel. Although it’s a bit sad you can’t build a full base in it, you can build a fabricator and sleeping unit, and can unlock the ability to carry your PRAWN suit around. It can dive down to the deepest depths, and as such you don’t ever need to use the PRAWN to get around if you don’t want to. So it essentially does everything the Cyclops can do, but for a fraction of the material cost and size, at the cost of sacrificing customisability.
Perhaps the strongest improvements can be found in the art direction. While the original was already quite beautiful, and had fantastic atmosphere, BZ often pushes it even further, with fantastic lighting all across the board - this time, even including the land sections. The added weather effects look great, and I am a particularly big fan of the mood during sunset and sunrise. The way the sky and air turn completely red for a few seconds is somewhere between breathtakingly beautiful and terrifying. The way that the on-land map is mostly shrouded in a thick, frozen mist alleviates some of the problems that arose when viewing the ocean from far away in OG. It is also just a whole lot more colourful in general, whether in the open sea or some cave system, there is never nothing there. There is light and colour everywhere, like a distant city scape. Where OG had areas like the Landing Zone or Dunes where there wasn’t really all that much to see, BZ’s map positively teems with life.
While the biodiversity overall feels a bit lacking, with lots of fish from OG making a return here, the designs of the newly added fauna and flora are often much more interesting than the original, especially the leviathan class monsters. From the stunning and awe inspiring Vent Gardens to the terrifying Shadow Leviathans, all the big animals feel a lot more distinct. I especially appreciate the fact that BZ’s leviathans look and behave a lot more intimidating than OG’s. The Shadow Leviathan and Void Chelicerate are way scarier and mean-looking than anything OG had to offer. The only one I find a bit goofy is the Ice Worm, which looks like a Pokemon.
Finally, I want to specifically compliment the music in BZ. While I enjoyed OG’s OST quite a bit, I actually prefer this one. The more ambient, spacey synth tunes may demand a little less attention but integrate themselves more fittingly into the background. I think it fits the oceanic theme much better and I especially appreciate that every area doesn’t only have one track that plays on repeat. I think the tracks are exactly as catchy as the first one (if not more so), and allow themselves to delve into more melancholic and mysterious moods than OG’s OST.
There are some minor things too, but right now this is as much as I can come up with; at least when it comes to things that BZ actually adds. I’d say the biggest reason I’d still rate this game positively overall is down to the fact that - for the most part - it plays very similarly to OG. And that is precisely the problem.
BZ is at its best when it’s just more Subnautica. And, to be fair, the majority of this game is exactly that. If you had fun with the first game, there’s fun to be had here as well. It’s mainly everything else, everything new that’s the issue. Chief among those being two absolutely mind-boggling design decisions:
THE BAD:
1.) The World
Let’s start with my biggest gripe: The choice of not only drastically cutting down on explorable space both in terms of horizontal AND vertical space, but to amplify literally the worst aspect of OG’s gameplay - being on land - to a considerable chunk of the main gameplay loop. Where OG had you go on very short trips to at least one of two existing islands on that map, which were very brief story moments without anything else to do there, BZ dedicates approximately one third of its gameplay with exploring the various arctic landscapes. Apart from the fact that having your game - which is based around the feeling of being underwater and exploring the ocean - feature a massive chunk of gameplay outside of the ocean is a really odd idea to begin with, doing that without even managing to make normal walking not feel like driving a bumper car with tank controls is baffling on levels I didn’t even know were possible.
To add insult to injury, these above sea level areas, with the exception of the Delta Island and some icebergs in the Eastern Arctic, are all segmented off, literally separated from the rest off the game, off to the northern and western corners respectively. There is no incentive to come back and explore any more as soon as you’ve found what you’re looking for. You could technically build a base here, although I wouldn’t recommend it since you’re so far away from anything else.
I’m not even going into great detail on it, I’ll just say that the Snowfox might be the only video game vehicle in recent memory to frustrate me more than Death Stranding’s Reverse Trike. What’s worse is that it’s practically essential to explore the overworld as it not only functions as a mobile heat source, but it somehow shields you from the weather as well. Don’t ask me how that works.
It’s not only the mechanics of being on land that are frustrating to deal with, or the fact that the mere existence of these gameplay moments fly in the face of the rest of this game’s design, but the fact that it’s simply boring to explore, and - while not as ugly as OG’s overworld sections - are not that impressive visually either. The Ice Worm section is flat out horrible and janky to the point where I’m not even sure what’s happening half the time. If me getting thrown off my bike even though I was nowhere near that thing is the actual intended experience, I honestly have no clue WHAT the designers were going for at this point. A big personal annoyance for me was understanding how much of the essential base building components are locked in these areas, but that might be a nitpick.
I’ve also already touched on my issues with making the actual underwater spaces much smaller as well, but it’s not just about map size for map size’s sake for me. People often refer to Subnautica as a horror game, and I never found that quite true for me, even though I obviously understand that thalassophobia is a real thing, but to me one of the few moments of genuine unease with this game didn’t come from the scary monsters or ghostly noises but simply diving down into the black abyss without knowing where you’re headed - especially at night. That feeling of disorientation is extremely powerful and was one of the best things about swimming further away from the starting point, discovering new places. The significantly reduced map size sadly somewhat alleviates these feelings, especially in terms of disorientation, due to the more condensed level design, and you rarely, if ever, get that feeling from simply not knowing what waits below you. It’s a bit hard to put into words, but with how the non-cave biomes go barely below 400 meters at the deepest points - really, the average is closer to 150-250 meters - something got lost for me in that respect. Or maybe it has something do with the fact that the sea seems a lot less ‘foggy’ this time around. The vastness of the ocean is something terrifying in and out of itself, and while people criticised the “dead space between zones” in OG, I can’t help but feel they were essential to the feeling of dread it managed to conjure, at least for me. It’s also something that could be explained as something that’s just very natural to oceans. The unbelievably dense and rich ocean life of BZ almost stretches the borders of believability a little too much for my liking.
As for the level design, while I’ve already pointed out the things I appreciate about it, the tight passages and corridors can make it very tedious to navigate your Seatruck around the place without bumping into shit every 5 seconds, especially when you have some compartments attached. What’s worse is that due to the lack of wide open areas there are barely any good spots to construct bases in. This may be something personal, but I actually enjoyed the base-building aspects of both games a lot, despite how underdeveloped and unpolished they are. It is therefore very unfortunate that there are only very few interesting spots for actual, large bases in the overworld, and practically none in the cave systems, due to how cramped they are or constant predator/leviathan attacks. It’s not just the individual level design that makes it harder, the world layout itself is much less open and - unless you’re choosing to build your base in the starting area - you’re likely going to build it at some corner of the map.
Something else that’s undoubtedly negatively impacted the horror level for me is how relentlessly the game desensitises you with loud, leviathan-like roars from medium-sized hunters as early as the starting area. While that can make the early game a bit scarier initially, it stops being effective the second you realise these things are pretty harmless for the most part. Some of these smaller predators are so loud and over the top that, whenever you do hear an actual leviathan, it doesn’t even fully register some of the time. While OG’s leviathans were less spooky as soon as you saw them up close, you definitely couldn’t say that about their sound design. I don’t know if the intention was to lean more into the horror aspect with this, I can only say it had the opposite effect for me.
I could list even more problems with the game’s world design / layout, but I think by now you get the idea. It’s time to move on to what is arguably the game’s biggest problem for most people: a shockingly poorly written and unengaging story.
2.) The Story
Now, the story of the first Subnautica wasn’t great by any means. It was serviceable at best, and downright amateurish at worst. The plot relies on coincidence after coincidence after deus ex machina after plot hole to even arrive at its starting point, and continues down a path of awfully convenient plot developments. It strongly felt like the setting, mechanics and gameplay loop had all been decided on way ahead of time, with the story only being written close to the end of development. But where the actual story of the game fell flat for me, the process of uncovering that story gradually, with only vague hints where to go next and with the majority of it ultimately being hidden in the 100% optional audio-logs felt pretty engaging. It almost as though the game was aware of how flimsily it constructed its narrative, and as such made everything but the absolute bare essentials (get off this planet, find a cure, disable the quarantine system) optional. Really, it was possible to go through the whole game without really understanding what was going on. The audio logs are surprisingly well written for the most part (considering just how badly written the main plot is) and they don’t get in the way of gameplay. By far the game’s strongest decision in that regard was to make the player character silent, even though there IS a backstory for Ryley. OG’s strength in that respect was its ability to fully immerse you into that world, and one of the biggest selling points for that was the feeling of being truly alone on an alien planet, with only the voice of your PDA to keep you company. There is no plot objective driving you forward, most of the time new discoveries will be facilitated by your desire to explore, and maybe follow the occasional radio message. All of this allows the player to make up their own story.
But once again, nothing made me actually appreciate these choices more than playing BZ, and realising that, not only did they decide to go for a fully voiced, named character this time around, the actual plot makes even less sense than the original, despite shoving itself into your face constantly. I remember starting up the game, hearing Robin talk to herself within the first minute of gameplay, and quickly realised that this was going to be a problem. I should mention that this - characters gratuitously talking to themselves like they were children’s playbook characters - is my Nr.1 biggest pet peeve in video game story telling. It is the laziest, most immersion breaking and most phoned in way of characterisation in the history of the interactive medium and I wish devs would stop doing this shit, especially when the game I’m playing takes itself this seriously. Now, I have to clarify that Robin talking to herself doesn’t happen that much, at least, when compared to other games that do this, but it is still almost impressive how heavily this little addition, this one tiny design decision drastically affected my sense of immersion and threw a wrench in the whole mood of this game. Even if you WERE still the only person on this planet - which you aren’t, but we’ll get there shortly - this would still ruin the feeling of having to cope with the crushing loneliness of being stranded in space enough for me to not take it seriously anymore.
Had this been the only change I could’ve accepted it. Sure, let the main character have a voice and things to say for brand recognisability or having some “””iconic””” main character, but still let the player make up their own story, let them decide what they want to focus on. It’s not easy, but other games managed too. But by now you’ve probably realised this is not where they went with this.
No, they decided that this time around, instead of an intrinsically motivated drive to experience this game - getting dropped in an alien ocean and being forced to explore it to survive - it would be best to go with external motivation this time around. Robin, other than Ryley, is on this planet on purpose to look for her sister “Sam”, or rather, find out what happened to her. You probably immediately noticed, but this is a TERRIBLE idea. The juxtaposition of the world structure as this huge, very openly designed thing with loads of interesting things to do for the player, and this very immediate external drive of needing to find out what happened to Sam for Robin creates some pretty irreconcilable ludonarrative dissonance, especially when you do what most people do, and hold off on completing the story in favour of exploring the ocean.
But the problems have only begun. If all of this wasn’t bad enough, they decided they should go with 3 entirely different, barely connected storylines, instead of a simple, overarching goal that’s clear from the get go. These 3 story arcs revolve around 3 different characters. The first - and again: the literal reason you came to this planet - revolves around finding out what happened to your sister. You’d be forgiven in thinking that this was the main plot but it’s actually, technically a side quest. You read that right, the literal reason why you came to this planet is not actually a prerequisite for beating this game. Which is hilarious, because you actually need to finish the second storyline - revolving around badass renegade marine biologist Marguerit Maida - to finish either of the other 2 storylines, even though HER storyline ends pretty much immediately after your turned off a single spy antenna. If you’ve played the first game, you might have noticed that this name showed up in that one as well, as she was one of the three scientists from the Degassi mission, which you would remember from the related audio logs. Those were honestly some of the best in the game, with the most twists and turns - however, they very strongly imply Marguerit died. Her simply being here without any explanation what so ever feels extremely cheap and not only feels like a gratuitous callback to OG, but kinda diminishes the Degassi story in retrospect. Let’s get back to her plot tho: You meet her on an island, then you find her base, then you shut off an antenna then you visit her again and she gives you an audiolog that gives you a hint on where Sam was last seen. That’s it. She never comes up after this again, and she has no influence on the rest of the game’s story, not even in relation to Sam.
But all of that is fairly harmless compared to the AL-AN plot line. This one is the actual main story of the game, as it’s the one the game’s actual ending revolves around. I have no idea why they decided to structure the story like this, and what they intended with that fake out.
So, AL-AN is actually one of the mysterious predecessor aliens, or “Architects” from OG. The ones who built all those green alien structures and imprisoned the Sea Empress, inadvertently causing the Khaara outbreak. He is introduced to the story by happening upon a specific alien base fairly close to the start. He, or rather, his consciousness is trapped in a storage unit that is about to fail - very conveniently the very second you happen to show up there no less - and Robin offers him her PDA as temporary storage. However, in one of many hilarious misunderstandings (/s) in this story, AL-AN instead inserts himself into Robin’s head where he’ll spend the rest of the game making unbelievably trite observations about how “inEfFicieNt” humans are and incessantly reminding us of his need for a new robot body. I do happen to like his voice, and I think that his inclusion as a gameplay element isn’t necessarily bad. He effectively works like the radio from OG, occasionally adding a marker to your HUD for every piece of alien technology he is able to locate. Where he REALLY throws me off is how utterly embarrassing the dialogue between him and Robin is. Seriously, I struggle to put into words how unbearable these “”””philosophical””” exchanges between AL-AN and Robin are. It’s honestly almost hilarious just how poorly written most scenes ended up being in general. Seriously, wtf were the writers thinking here? This feels like what a 13 year old, who only just learned what science fiction and aliens are, thinks a discussion between an alien and a person would go. They really want to hit you over the head with the fact that AL-AN does not understand humans, even though he speaks perfect English, understands most idioms, has a highly diversified vocabulary, etc. Literally every time they opened their mouths to have another debate I immediately rolled my eyes and cringed into oblivion. “Oh wow ALAN it seems you really do not understand humans, that's so crazy haha”. It reminds me of that one Rick and Morty episode with the energy cloud called “Fart”, but this time without any irony what so ever. Yeah, the writing is not great.
That being said, back to the actual plot: AL-AN needs to get back home, and has to construct a new, mechanical body for that. You help him by scouting the ocean and scanning various, different pieces of alien tech you need to build it. You find all the blueprints and construct the new body down in the deepest depths of this ocean - which is literally only half as deep as OG’s - with materials from all across the map. This is fairly reminiscent of OG’s endgame fetch quest, which also wasn’t great but it did send you on what could be seen as a victory lap in which you got the opportunity of checking out biomes you have have missed before. The difference here was that the Sea Empress made you look for certain plant seeds, items you were very unlikely to have picked up and stored great quantities of as they had no real use for the player, other than as cosmetic plants. This time, the game asks you to bring items you will, without doubt, have more have more than enough of. In fact, I didn’t need to go out and find these at all. I had all of them literally in base with plenty to spare. I don’t know whether this was done to cut back on backtracking, but all it did for me was make that endgame section even shorter and underwhelming than OG’s.
Speaking of which, in OG, this whole process was only step one of three steps. This step revolved around simply getting the cure, you’d still have to shut off the defence system and build a rocket to actually escape. With BZ; this really is it. As soon as you’ve build AL-AN’s body, you’re effectively done with the game. The only thing left to do is to meet him at the Outpost Zero Stargate and… leave with him and go to his home planet?? Why is THAT the ending? Where did this get foreshadowed at all? How is that the resolution to this game’s plot? Wasn’t the whole idea of coming here to find out what happened to Sam? As mentioned before, you can finish this game without ever learning what happened to her, and now you’re telling me that Robin simply forgets about all that? What is her incentive to come with AL-AN? I've said it before, I'll say it again: This is some of the dumbest writing I’ve seen in a while.
If I had to guess, I’d say that they had to massively cut down the endgame, as the game simply suddenly ends the moment it gets actually interesting. There was no way that THIS was how they always intended for this story to go. This all just screams “last minute” and “compromise”. Say about OG’s endgame what you will, but at least it had one. This time around the game just suddenly stops. The game is only about half as long as OG anyway, so the fact that they decided to condense this game so much, presumably “for the story”, only for this story to simply end at what feels like the halfway point is especially appalling. And believe it or not but there are still SO MANY THINGS wrong with this game’s writing, but I’ll stop right here as to not go insane.
3.) What they didn’t change
Finally, I want to briefly talk about some things that also were in the original Subnautica, which should’ve either been scrapped or reworked. Like I said, BZ is at its best when it’s simply more Subnautica. But that is also a two-edged sword, with how many issues the original had that could’ve been very easily fixed in a sequel. This review is already WAY too fucking long, which is why I’m only flying through these now, but don’t let that fool you, these are legitimate grievances I have with BZ.
Base building is still underwhelming, even with lots of new additions like large rooms and glass ceilings. Large rooms are janky and the wall feature is extremely underdeveloped. The various pieces are inflexible, and typically demand more space to build than they actually use. Furniture is still very limited, it’s very hard to make these bases feel like an actual home. I don’t know what we need 10 different beds for when we can’t even make a dining table, or cupboard or most other things you’d have in a living situation. Toilets and showers are nice, but I would’ve much preferred some more things that actually either a.) made the space seem more liveable or b.) had some in game uses.
The PRAWN Suit is still tedious to use outside of using the grappling hook to get around. Mining ores is still mind-numbingly boring, and all the other augmentations are totally useless. Really, all they did with it was nerfing it. Getting around takes a lot more energy, literally just floating around takes up jump fuel now and recharging energy at hot vents takes WAY longer. It’s also a lot weaker and seemingly much worse than killing things with the drill bit. It feels worse to use in almost every way, and I already didn’t like it that much to begin with.
One of the worst cases of “why is this still here”: Why is inventory management still such a mess? BZ still won’t let you stack items at all, no matter how small they are. Storage units are still extremely bulky and uninteresting to use, there is no way of actually organising your storage other than simply putting a bunch of lockers next to each other. You still spend literal HOURS of your time with this game going through menu screens when ti really isn’t necessary. There is still no way of remotely checking your base storage. BZ is still way to stingy with inventory space. This was one of the most annoying aspects of OG and I cannot believe that it still exists completely unchanged in the sequel.
Resource management and gathering has been very slightly improved but is still largely cumbersome and inefficient. I still had a pretty constant shortage of titanium and glass, though not quite as bad as in OG. I really hope that they introduce some form of automated resource gathering for at least titanium and quartz in the inevitable sequel. Especially towards the end, I really feel like struggling to find enough of the same resources you’ve been using since the first 5 minutes of the game shouldn’t be a thing. It's weird because the game already had an interesting new mechanic in the Sea Monkeys. If there was some way of domesticating or training them, you could build a Sea Monkey habitat and let them gather resources there, or something like that. And once again, supposedly rare items like nickel and kyanite are entirely useless outside of 1 or 2 very specific blueprints, which you need in the first place if you're looking to obtain large quantities of them. Once again, so much wasted potential here. Maybe we could've gotten some grand, optional end-game projects which needed large amounts of those items. Maybe some massive new additions to your base, or some cool new vehicle. I just think that having massive amounts of the material you need to unlock the upgrades to get down there in the first place only makes sense when you can actually do something with them after you've unlocked said upgrades.
Last but not least, while I can’t say I found anywhere near as many bugs and glitches as in OG, I still experienced enough of them here to be noticable. The infamous “swimming through air” glitch still occasionally pops up. Glitching through walls and ending up out of bounds is still a regular issue, so is getting your vehicle stuck in the walls or floor. I will admit that the “Unstuck” button is a very welcome addition in that respect, but seems more like a bandaid solution rather than a real fix.
CONCLUSION:
Subnautica: Below Zero is ambitious, but misguided. If you are a real big fan of the original, you will find some stuff to like here. If you’re the type of person who can live with a horrendously stupid plot and a lot of wasted potential, I could see myself even recommending it to you. If all you’re looking for is more Subnautica, there’s certainly a lot of that here. If you’re looking for something that actually improves upon Subnautica and fixes its issues instead of doubling down on them, keep looking. Maybe Subnautica 3 will be the one.
6/10
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There are still many things I could talk about, both positive and negative, but by now I’ve explained my feelings on this game rather extensively.
If you somehow read all of this, thank you sincerely. I write huge reviews like this for people like you. More so if you haven’t actually played the game. Leave a like if you did!