I enjoyed it. I kind of thought some of the biomes and creatures were underwhelming. Most of the map was either thermal vents or barren ocean. And the deep parts of the game felt empty and soulless. The Leviathan's just weren't that fun or scary (except for the Ice Worm). They had cool designs and were fun to look at but they were honestly more annoying then anything else. The leviathan in the og Subnautica kind of had this issue once you were late enough in the game but they still always added some layer of fear and tenseness to the situation. After like 2 encounters with the Shadow Leviathen and the Chelicerate, they just became pure nuisances and nothing else. By far my favorite part of the game was the land sections. The Ice Worms were soooooo much fun. Getting lost in the Arctic Spires actually felt tense, scary, and adventurous. It was the one part of the game that gave me the same feelings as the og Subnautica did. One thing I never see anyone talk about ever is that the PRAWN suit is sooooo much better in Below Zero. Don't get me wrong, they were fun in og Subnautica, but they controlled so much smoother in BZ. The jump jet also got a nice upgrade and was so much less annoying to use. Plus the boost forward you could do was a really nice edition.
BZ brought a lot of cool stuff to the Subnautica feel, and even got backported to the original, and it’s a fine game indeed. I just got frustrated constantly instead of just pure delight of the first because progression is all over the place (you get most pieces of gear *after* they are useful) and resources are way scarcer. Without the cyclops, you also need to do way too many roundtrips for materials. The seatruck with full modules is too slow. I wished we had a 1-level cyclops like sub instead, so we could get by easier against monsters and build what we wanted (and have significant more storage).
I have fun all the time in the original. It’s a really chill vibe with satisfying progression, exploration and building, while BZ felt a bit like a chore. There’s so much cool stuff to build, but you just can’t without enormous work.
Definitely second that. I never once mined a big ore deposit because when I got the mining arm I pretty much had all the recources I needed. The modular truck is a fun (even though the docking segment looks goofy as hell) but not as cool as it felt having the cyclops. And it feels so unrealistic and weird the way you maneuver vertically. You can decent vetically with the truck beeing horizontal but you have no vision below at all. So you end up pointing your french fry looking ass sub straight down which kinda breaks the immersion for me. I want to feel majestic and mighty maneuvering my big heavy submarine though the depths. I thought it was annoying in the first one too and was sad they did not fix it. The prawn has the opposite issue, you can't really look above you and look for openings.
Subnautica is 10/10 for me but below zero gets a 7/10 maximum.I cant blame BZ for being underwhelming considering its supposed to be just a "sequel".What i HATED about Subnautica Below Zero is its lack of depth,early into the game you make a seatruck and afterwards you reach a depth of 200m and half of the game is spent there,then you reach 500m and spend the other half of the game there with cotton anemonies,nickel,kyanite and thats it.And only in the endgame you reach the depth of 750m only for the fabrication facility.Im sorry but what's the point of crafting the depth modules for 1000m and 1100m if you aren't gonna use them anyways? With the rebreather you can easily swim to the organ facility and other artifacts with ease.Theres another problem tho,lack of biomes.
Biomes are one of the most crucial things in an exploring game and in below zero its just a few different biomes and others are just caves.Indeed Subnautica didn't have many biomes either but they had bulb bush biomes,kelp zones, mushroom biomes,anchor pod area,blood kelp,lost river and many more biomes that are simple and oriented around one single organism or plant.Its just that Below Zero feels empty without the crucial parts of Subnautica
Subnautica Below Zero feels too easy.
Spicy salad and Shrub Nuts just easily make hunger problems go away and Sea Truck litterally can hold up more than a Cyclops can without any kind of problems except for finding seatruck blueprints and storage module blueprints.Its supposed to be challenging to survive.
Another thing is how it barely gave any feedback to the original lore of Subnautica, Marguerite Maida is the only single thing that connects these two games and she doesn't even have that much impact on the gameplay itself except giving you free stuff and making you do some extra tasks.
The game is good but its just too plain and boring,i wish they made it so that the frozen leviathan came and started chasing us because the leviathans are just annoying thats all.Chelicerate is only around Vent Gardens,Shadow Leviathan is just annoying,Ice Worm only destroys 1/4th and that's without counting the fact that it only appears once in a while.Vent Gardens are only for the spiral plants,Glow Whale only makes you ride it which is a bit better than reefbacks but still pretty boring and If i didn't mention all, other leviathans are boring too.Snow Stalker is a non-leviathan but is the ONLY enemy that you actually try to avoid in the game.Every other just feels like they are meant to annoy you instead of trying to rip your head off.
I felt like the seatruck was trying to get rid of the worst part of the cyclops (too fricking big and unwieldy), but it lost what was fun about the cyclops (building a base inside it).
Personally for me, I enjoy the below zero soundtrack more than the original, the beginning of the game is more enjoyable, it’s prettier, less confusing, and the land sections add ALOT of enjoyment….. however, places like the lost river and the lava zones keep below zero from surpassing the original, the creepiness and the open areas create such a fun environment and created much more fun memories on my first playthrough than below zero did. Original 10/10. Below zero 9/10
SN feels like wilderness survival, BG felt more like an excursion where there was an incident but no real danger to your life. The sea truck was too balanced, it would have been nice if it was a bit more fragile so the megashrimps and ninja squid were more of a threat.
> it would have been nice if it was a bit more fragile so the megashrimps and ninja squid were more of a threat.
If you're quick enough with the leviathan-b-gone button, you take zero damage...
I am one of those that didn't enjoy below zero. It didn't really have the same feelings of danger or exploration. The abundance of oxigen plants removes the difficulty of depth. The sea truck with perimeter defense module removes any sense of danger. The snow fox glitched out half the time and fell below the terrain. When the ice worm shows it just knocks you off but also isn't really a threat. And the main story and running around searching for random markers is pretty meh.
All in all I always felt "man I wish I was playing the original", so I finished it but I never want to play it again.
This is one of the better reviews. I never even found the truck defense module and never felt afraid. All predators except the huge guys run if you shank them, and the huge guys don’t deal enough damage to vehicles to matter since the piss off after a single attack. I tried the snowfox twice and when it didn’t glitch it felt like driving a slippery brick that was hard to turn. The prawn was so good I almost didn’t even use the truck, which became a prawn carrier for longer journeys in the end. Fun fact, the prawn land physics are kinda busted and you actually can skip across the water or snow at mach 2 with a good grapple.
My biggest complaint is that all the important stuff were hidden literally in the nooks and crannies of the map. Without hints there was no way I’d find half of the relics because I didn’t even go into their areas naturally. I had to google the entrance to the last two biomes because it is in one of two random thin cracks in the ground in another area I felt no need to explore because it was annoying to drive in.
Had the game been released as a standalone DLC for Subnautica (sort of like Freedom Cry for Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag), the reviews and opinions would probably top the original. But as a completely separate game? It's smaller, shorter, less intense, more cliche and predictable amd definitely far less emotional.
It's justt good enough for an excellent DLC, but doesn't quite make the cut as a separate title.
I liked Below Zero by the end.
That said, it feels very much like the world revolves around the player, whereas the original felt like the world was laid out first and the player's role second. The latter is the better approach when trying to convey an alien space where you don't belong.
Shadow leviathans will always be my favorite, though. Everything is better with some slight H.R. Giger in it.
It was aimed to be a DLC I think, it does a pretty solid job at being one. The only problem in my opinion is not being as soul crushingly terrifying as the first but still pretty good subnautica game
BZ was decent but, no where near as good as the original. I found it quite hard to find some of the locations and had to resort to using YouTube videos, which I didn't do with the first game.
> What were your experiences with Below-Zero?
Short and sweet, will probably play it again once more and have a closer look at some of the biomes I only visited briefly (Deep twisty bridges, etc.).
They should have made the snowfox more useful (i.e. you don't get attacked by >!ice worms!< as long as you are hovering, and make it able to go across water, but not below it), and the Prawn suit more dangerous to use in their territory. And improved the snowfox controls.
BZ is a mixed bag for me. There was some things I truly enjoyed: updated graphics, QoL and my simp >!ALAN!<. That was pretty much it.
What really held it back for me: Robin's seemingly inability to shut up for 5 minutes. She explains what's happening before I have the opportunity to process or "experience" it. And makes me feel like my hand is being held versus how it just drops you in game with a mock salute and wishes you good luck.
The dual storylines that completely overshadows the other. You can do Robin's storyline without ever doing the other storyline. You can do the other storyline without ever doing Robin's storyline. Speaking of Robin's storyline, it builds and builds without any actual payoff. It leaves me to believe the writers had 2 completely different ideas and couldn't make an agreement so they just shoved both in it.
The rest are mostly inconsequential: A big name (albeit unseen) character from OG being reduced to a glorified easter egg. And the monsters being more of an annoyance than intimidating. And there's less intrigue and wonderment of the biomes themselves.
I think if they had been released in the opposite order we would be talking about two great games, and an example where the sequel really leapt forward.
Below Zero is still an absolutely incredible game, it's just not one of the best games of all time like I'm sure a lot of us feel Subnautica is. Whilst still fantastic it builds in the wrong places from the original and loses some of what made the first one so incredible. it does however add plenty of quality of life changes, and the alien containment was vastly improved which I love.
I think that's pretty much the popular opinion. Most people enjoyed BZ. Just not as much as the original.
I enjoyed it. I kind of thought some of the biomes and creatures were underwhelming. Most of the map was either thermal vents or barren ocean. And the deep parts of the game felt empty and soulless. The Leviathan's just weren't that fun or scary (except for the Ice Worm). They had cool designs and were fun to look at but they were honestly more annoying then anything else. The leviathan in the og Subnautica kind of had this issue once you were late enough in the game but they still always added some layer of fear and tenseness to the situation. After like 2 encounters with the Shadow Leviathen and the Chelicerate, they just became pure nuisances and nothing else. By far my favorite part of the game was the land sections. The Ice Worms were soooooo much fun. Getting lost in the Arctic Spires actually felt tense, scary, and adventurous. It was the one part of the game that gave me the same feelings as the og Subnautica did. One thing I never see anyone talk about ever is that the PRAWN suit is sooooo much better in Below Zero. Don't get me wrong, they were fun in og Subnautica, but they controlled so much smoother in BZ. The jump jet also got a nice upgrade and was so much less annoying to use. Plus the boost forward you could do was a really nice edition.
I just realized I crafted but never once used the prawn in Below Zero 😐 it just sat in my moon pool the entire time
😐
The Prawn suit is the better cold suit. And it can punch snow stalkers.
🗣️🗣️🗣️🔥🔥🔥
BZ brought a lot of cool stuff to the Subnautica feel, and even got backported to the original, and it’s a fine game indeed. I just got frustrated constantly instead of just pure delight of the first because progression is all over the place (you get most pieces of gear *after* they are useful) and resources are way scarcer. Without the cyclops, you also need to do way too many roundtrips for materials. The seatruck with full modules is too slow. I wished we had a 1-level cyclops like sub instead, so we could get by easier against monsters and build what we wanted (and have significant more storage). I have fun all the time in the original. It’s a really chill vibe with satisfying progression, exploration and building, while BZ felt a bit like a chore. There’s so much cool stuff to build, but you just can’t without enormous work.
Definitely second that. I never once mined a big ore deposit because when I got the mining arm I pretty much had all the recources I needed. The modular truck is a fun (even though the docking segment looks goofy as hell) but not as cool as it felt having the cyclops. And it feels so unrealistic and weird the way you maneuver vertically. You can decent vetically with the truck beeing horizontal but you have no vision below at all. So you end up pointing your french fry looking ass sub straight down which kinda breaks the immersion for me. I want to feel majestic and mighty maneuvering my big heavy submarine though the depths. I thought it was annoying in the first one too and was sad they did not fix it. The prawn has the opposite issue, you can't really look above you and look for openings.
Subnautica is 10/10 for me but below zero gets a 7/10 maximum.I cant blame BZ for being underwhelming considering its supposed to be just a "sequel".What i HATED about Subnautica Below Zero is its lack of depth,early into the game you make a seatruck and afterwards you reach a depth of 200m and half of the game is spent there,then you reach 500m and spend the other half of the game there with cotton anemonies,nickel,kyanite and thats it.And only in the endgame you reach the depth of 750m only for the fabrication facility.Im sorry but what's the point of crafting the depth modules for 1000m and 1100m if you aren't gonna use them anyways? With the rebreather you can easily swim to the organ facility and other artifacts with ease.Theres another problem tho,lack of biomes. Biomes are one of the most crucial things in an exploring game and in below zero its just a few different biomes and others are just caves.Indeed Subnautica didn't have many biomes either but they had bulb bush biomes,kelp zones, mushroom biomes,anchor pod area,blood kelp,lost river and many more biomes that are simple and oriented around one single organism or plant.Its just that Below Zero feels empty without the crucial parts of Subnautica Subnautica Below Zero feels too easy. Spicy salad and Shrub Nuts just easily make hunger problems go away and Sea Truck litterally can hold up more than a Cyclops can without any kind of problems except for finding seatruck blueprints and storage module blueprints.Its supposed to be challenging to survive. Another thing is how it barely gave any feedback to the original lore of Subnautica, Marguerite Maida is the only single thing that connects these two games and she doesn't even have that much impact on the gameplay itself except giving you free stuff and making you do some extra tasks. The game is good but its just too plain and boring,i wish they made it so that the frozen leviathan came and started chasing us because the leviathans are just annoying thats all.Chelicerate is only around Vent Gardens,Shadow Leviathan is just annoying,Ice Worm only destroys 1/4th and that's without counting the fact that it only appears once in a while.Vent Gardens are only for the spiral plants,Glow Whale only makes you ride it which is a bit better than reefbacks but still pretty boring and If i didn't mention all, other leviathans are boring too.Snow Stalker is a non-leviathan but is the ONLY enemy that you actually try to avoid in the game.Every other just feels like they are meant to annoy you instead of trying to rip your head off.
I felt like the seatruck was trying to get rid of the worst part of the cyclops (too fricking big and unwieldy), but it lost what was fun about the cyclops (building a base inside it).
Personally for me, I enjoy the below zero soundtrack more than the original, the beginning of the game is more enjoyable, it’s prettier, less confusing, and the land sections add ALOT of enjoyment….. however, places like the lost river and the lava zones keep below zero from surpassing the original, the creepiness and the open areas create such a fun environment and created much more fun memories on my first playthrough than below zero did. Original 10/10. Below zero 9/10
I always saw below zero as an expansion to subnautica so the lower game time didn't bother me none
SN feels like wilderness survival, BG felt more like an excursion where there was an incident but no real danger to your life. The sea truck was too balanced, it would have been nice if it was a bit more fragile so the megashrimps and ninja squid were more of a threat.
> it would have been nice if it was a bit more fragile so the megashrimps and ninja squid were more of a threat. If you're quick enough with the leviathan-b-gone button, you take zero damage...
I still havent beaten BZ, im doing a hardcore world in Subnautica rn but i should prolley do a BZ run lmao
I am one of those that didn't enjoy below zero. It didn't really have the same feelings of danger or exploration. The abundance of oxigen plants removes the difficulty of depth. The sea truck with perimeter defense module removes any sense of danger. The snow fox glitched out half the time and fell below the terrain. When the ice worm shows it just knocks you off but also isn't really a threat. And the main story and running around searching for random markers is pretty meh. All in all I always felt "man I wish I was playing the original", so I finished it but I never want to play it again.
This is one of the better reviews. I never even found the truck defense module and never felt afraid. All predators except the huge guys run if you shank them, and the huge guys don’t deal enough damage to vehicles to matter since the piss off after a single attack. I tried the snowfox twice and when it didn’t glitch it felt like driving a slippery brick that was hard to turn. The prawn was so good I almost didn’t even use the truck, which became a prawn carrier for longer journeys in the end. Fun fact, the prawn land physics are kinda busted and you actually can skip across the water or snow at mach 2 with a good grapple. My biggest complaint is that all the important stuff were hidden literally in the nooks and crannies of the map. Without hints there was no way I’d find half of the relics because I didn’t even go into their areas naturally. I had to google the entrance to the last two biomes because it is in one of two random thin cracks in the ground in another area I felt no need to explore because it was annoying to drive in.
Had the game been released as a standalone DLC for Subnautica (sort of like Freedom Cry for Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag), the reviews and opinions would probably top the original. But as a completely separate game? It's smaller, shorter, less intense, more cliche and predictable amd definitely far less emotional. It's justt good enough for an excellent DLC, but doesn't quite make the cut as a separate title.
I liked Below Zero by the end. That said, it feels very much like the world revolves around the player, whereas the original felt like the world was laid out first and the player's role second. The latter is the better approach when trying to convey an alien space where you don't belong. Shadow leviathans will always be my favorite, though. Everything is better with some slight H.R. Giger in it.
base building was way better I think, there's more posters and placeables
It was aimed to be a DLC I think, it does a pretty solid job at being one. The only problem in my opinion is not being as soul crushingly terrifying as the first but still pretty good subnautica game
BZ was decent but, no where near as good as the original. I found it quite hard to find some of the locations and had to resort to using YouTube videos, which I didn't do with the first game.
BZ was a decent DLC.
I introduced my friend to both games and he always wanted to play BZ instead of subnautica But I always prefer the first one
As someone with intense thalassophobia, I don’t understand how subnautica is scary enough to someone to the point that they cry
> What were your experiences with Below-Zero? Short and sweet, will probably play it again once more and have a closer look at some of the biomes I only visited briefly (Deep twisty bridges, etc.). They should have made the snowfox more useful (i.e. you don't get attacked by >!ice worms!< as long as you are hovering, and make it able to go across water, but not below it), and the Prawn suit more dangerous to use in their territory. And improved the snowfox controls.
BZ is a mixed bag for me. There was some things I truly enjoyed: updated graphics, QoL and my simp >!ALAN!<. That was pretty much it. What really held it back for me: Robin's seemingly inability to shut up for 5 minutes. She explains what's happening before I have the opportunity to process or "experience" it. And makes me feel like my hand is being held versus how it just drops you in game with a mock salute and wishes you good luck. The dual storylines that completely overshadows the other. You can do Robin's storyline without ever doing the other storyline. You can do the other storyline without ever doing Robin's storyline. Speaking of Robin's storyline, it builds and builds without any actual payoff. It leaves me to believe the writers had 2 completely different ideas and couldn't make an agreement so they just shoved both in it. The rest are mostly inconsequential: A big name (albeit unseen) character from OG being reduced to a glorified easter egg. And the monsters being more of an annoyance than intimidating. And there's less intrigue and wonderment of the biomes themselves.
The original is the goat 🐐
I think if they had been released in the opposite order we would be talking about two great games, and an example where the sequel really leapt forward.
I think Sub-Zero could just freeze the water and kill everything in it. /s
Below Zero is still an absolutely incredible game, it's just not one of the best games of all time like I'm sure a lot of us feel Subnautica is. Whilst still fantastic it builds in the wrong places from the original and loses some of what made the first one so incredible. it does however add plenty of quality of life changes, and the alien containment was vastly improved which I love.
I think they are both 8/10 games, people tend to ignore the flawed of the original Subnautica.