is Below Zero as bad as people make it out to be? I'm considering buying a new Subnautica game once I'm done with the first but I'm kinda hesitant(spoilers for Subanutica 1)
So I decided to give Subnautica a shot not too long ago and despite some personal complaints of mine, especially not being a fan of the whole survival genre, it's a pretty unique experience, it seems I'm nearing the end of the game tho and would like a similar experience after I'm done(hopefully an improved one), Subnautica games are kinda expensive tho, and since I'd rather wait for Subnautica 2 to be out of early access before considering opening my wallet, I'm considering a more complete game, enters below Zero.
That being said I've heard second game got some pretty harsh critisicm, and am hesitant about putting my money to test if it's really that bad or if I'd be pleasantly surprised. I'd like to know if based on my experience with Subnautica I'd enjoy it
Some of the points that I did like about Subnautica were:
the atmosphere, how breathtaking some of the sights were, loved the different biomes and how peaceful the game feels, the underwater ambience is really something(when I can see what's in front of me)
despite being scary sometimes some of the fauna is pretty cute and majestic, much like the sights, even the leviathans, love the designs, and the biological data was pretty interesting, a fun ecosystem (I felt bad about punching the energy leech slug thingy from the lava zone, I tried using the propulsion cannon to gently move it whenever possible, it was just hungry T_T I wanna pet it)
the writing got me invested too(most of the time), whenever I got a new voice log I'd pause everything and eagerly listen to where the story was going next for the survivors (loved the Dad, Son and merc lady stories the most), some of the dialogue was pretty funny too.
crafting was thankfully not that much of a hassle, having just one main crafting station and very little to worry about crafting outside of it, early game is not as brutal as some other games and I found myself getting on my feet fairly easily even if slowly
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Some of the points I hated about Subnautica are:
the inventory management, items not stacking, or taking up more than one slot as well as a lack of decent portable storage (Maybe Terraria spoiled me with that)
a general lack of mapping of any sort and having to craft beacons and place and move them manually, I found myself getting lost a lot, outside of the main objectives it was hard and kind of annoying to keep track of things even if the map is not that big.
resource gathering and how cumbersome it felt at times as well as a general lack of loot from fauna, like why does scanning things I can already build not give me ingredients for it instead of just titanium? And why can't I loot a Stalker's corpse especially for its teeth? seems like it's not using them for anything anymore and I have a knife, no?
The PRAWN suit, hated how I had to trade my precious Seamoth for that sluggish thing just to go deeper or mine
The cyclops just burns through fuel, holy crabsquid
Also it's a crime we can hatch and breed fish but not bring them along to explore as pets other than the cuddlefish, having a fish buddy fight alongside me as well as interact with it would be dope
It was kinda buggy, loot would just clip through the seafloor sometimes, I accidentally dropped a propulsion cannon in the Aurora and it just disappeared once it hit the ground, exiting to menu while using the scanner room would remove the item from the scanable list even after saving, some critter AI having strokes sometimes, etc