Sima Tuna wrote:guigui wrote:Subnautica sequel, named Subnautica Below Zero is available on PC and consoles. Any of you SN lovers tried it ?
I actually just finished Below Zero today. I'll put together a larger post on it here after I've had a moment to gather my thoughts.
In a nutshell, however, I'd say it's a smaller, leaner, shorter experience, with a much stronger focus on storyline. It's much less scary and the ocean has quite a bit more light from luminescent objects. So it's more of a kiddie pool to try out Subnautica if you're new. The above-ground stuff is largely pointless or shitty or both. Base building has been expanded in some cool ways.
Performance is a mixed bag as always. The game is beautiful compared to the first Subnautica, but I also experienced quite a few more technical problems. Notably a framerate that absolutely shat the bed at numerous points.
That mystery element of the original Subnautica isn't really present. Your character isn't a castaway and you aren't trying to escape. I wasn't a big fan of the story but I could see people who disliked the OG Subnautica for being too opaque, too scary, too hard etc finding this much easier to tackle.
Survival is pretty piss-easy compared to the first game. There are plants in Below Zero that provide 15 food and 15 water and grow in these giant clumps where you can pluck off 5 or more at a time.
I can expand upon this now.
So, Subnautica: Below Zero is a
story-focused, narrative sequel to Subnautica. It largely focuses on the main character's search for truth. The major plot twist of the first Subnautica serves as a sort of B-story for Below Zero, but there is no disease in gameplay.
Below Zero retains the same crafting and survival gameplay, but virtually every aspect is tweaked in some way. The game seems very similar at first, but subtle changes in area design dramatically alter how the game is played. The Cyclops is a good example. In the first Subnautica, the Cyclops was a mobile base you could obtain. You could store smaller vehicles within it, grow food, manufacture/cook supplies and manage its power levels. It fed from 8(!) power cells, which could be recharged in various different ways. As a large vehicle, it was so big that any creature smaller than Leviathon class would tend to ignore it. Obtaining the Cyclops really opened your eyes up to the possibilities. Without being tied to any specific location, you could "base" anywhere.
So...
The Cyclops does not exist in Below Zero. At all. You might think this is an oversight, or a mistake. It's deliberate. See, the Cyclops is much too big to fit in the biomes Below Zero provides. Below Zero's biomes are twisty, narrow and full of jutting protrusions. There are very few areas where you see large swathes of open water. The biomes aren't dark anymore, either. Many objects on the seafloor, even in shallow areas, display bio-luminescence. The whole seabed glows at night, illuminating even the deepest depths.
Within these cramped, yet brightly-lit zones, you wouldn't be able to fit a Cyclops. There are times when the Prawn can just baaarely squeeze through a vent to go deeper.
The replacement for the Cyclops is the Seatruck. The Seatruck is a beefed-up Seamoth, capable of towing additional "modules" (think cabs on an actual truck) which provide various services. These include the Fabrication Module, Storage Module, Aquarium Module and Sleeper Module. Some of these modules are pretty neat. However, even the Seatruck becomes VERY unwieldy, when trying to navigate some of the twisty, narrow biomes in Below Zero. Slamming into the sides of walls with your Seatruck is more of a fact of life than a mistake.
Additionally, the Seatruck is not a Cyclops and smaller predators do not leave it alone. Expect to get harassed by squidsharks and bull sharks when driving around. Leviathans can also shred your Seatruck's fragile armor rating quite easily, necessitating constant repairs.
Speaking of Leviathans, there are very few of these in Below Zero. The title Leviathan is only found on land. I'll speak more about land gameplay in a minute. The new replacement Leviathan for the Reaper is not half as scary. He's an eelfish with a beak. Yawn. The Shadow Leviathan is nearly absent from the entire game, except for one section at the very end, where the devs spam about 4 of the fuckers in two tiny-ass, cramped zones where you can't really avoid them. When you get grabbed over and over, any potential to be afraid goes out the window fast. You're never really in danger, so long as you stay in your Prawn suit, and you can't kill the Leviathans either. So it's kinda just shit.
I think I just named every Leviathan in the game. There are two non-hostile "leviathans." One is a whale, which is pretty cool. You can ride on him. Kinda neat. The other is totally stationary and just houses some resources. It has no AI or behavior because it's more of an object than an animal.
Some of the new aquarium animals are fun. There are some new arctic animals, like penguins and sea lions. Well, Subnautica versions of them. The new fishes are fun, especially the Nootfish. Messing around with the aquarium and eggs was probably the most fun I had in Below Zero.
Food (and survival) is, as I mentioned previously, totally broken. It's pathetic how easily you can manage your survival with zero effort. In the shallows, mushrooms grow that provide both food and water. There are islands/icebergs dotted all over the map with fruiting trees. You can get a grow pot going really early in Below Zero and the Fevered Pepper is insanely OP. 15 food, 15 water and it restores your heat gauge in case you are wandering around above the surface. There are also edible Anemone which provide 10 food and 20 water and are abundant. Below Zero, because of its heavy story focus, has more large installations. These installations have a lot of food and water stockpiled in various lootable chests. The end result is you won't need to worry about survival when you play Below Zero. Biomes are small, food is abundant and light is ever-present. There are few Leviathans and the most common predator is a loudmouthed lizard that flees when you knife it.
Base-building and crafting has been expanded. You can pin recipes and build more shit for your base than in the first game. Building bases is fun as always, but I never found much reason to craft advanced items aside from personal enjoyment. Oh, and the default maximum depth for most vehicles has been decreased. So you do need to build more depth modules. IIRC the max depth for the Prawn Suit in Below Zero is 1300, whereas I think the very first depth upgrade for the Prawn Suit in the og Subnautica is 1300. The first of three. Most of the vehicles in Below Zero are this way, with a low max depth. The waters in Below Zero are not nearly as deep as those of the base game. The endgame area is around 1100 meters deep IIRC.
Below Zero adds above-ground biomes and enemies. These are mostly shit, however. The new above-ground vehicle is garbage. It controls like ass and you're best off forgetting it exists. I chose to wear my Prawn Suit above the ground nearly all the time and that was my preferred way to travel. Above-ground predators can't do shit about the Prawn. I made a heat suit for fun, but you really don't need the heat suit, so long as you just run from place to place. Caves, heat flowers, underground heat spouts and hot food can all warm you up. Heat just replaces oxygen when you're above the ground, except traversal is much shittier when you can't swim.
In summary, Below Zero feels like a game intended for Subnautica newbies, or those who wanted to play the first game but thought it seemed too scary. Below Zero is smaller, brighter, easier and has a more standard video game story, with more conversations and characters than base Subnautica. If you go from playing Subnautica to playing Below Zero, I think you'll be disappointed. But if you're new to the series, Below Zero is probably a fine place to start. It's worth mentioning that Below Zero has something like half the biomes of the original Subnautica, which contributes greatly to the game feeling so much lesser than the original.