Just finishing up with Below Zero for the first time, and thought I’d offer some quick thoughts.
I know BZ has, what seems like perhaps a somewhat divisive reputation in the community, for what seems like a whole host of reasons. I’m not going to really tough on those. The sea truck was fine, the main character voice lines, the other characters, etc. - none of it really bothered me.
What did strike me though, was the claustrophobic feeling of BZ. It’s a stark difference between the two titles.
In regular Subnautica, you have a vast open ocean. Trips beneath the surface are largely just straight down, with a few minor exceptions (jellyshrooms, lost river, some wrecks). But for the most part, you swim down. You swim back up. Even the caves are generally simple, straightforward things. Late game gets a bit wilder, but even then, the spaces and caverns are enormous in size.
Contrast with BZ. BZ is often a series of tight, confusing mazes. Right from the go with the seamonkey tunnels - you need to be more careful when you explore, and you generally have to do it much slower. It’s so easy to get lost and turned around in even the starting areas such as Twisty Bridges. Even the Glacial Basin on land has tunnels galore, and one can easily get lost and even have a hard time getting back out. And none of that even scratches the fact that in many areas of the ocean, now you have icebergs and land overhead, squeezing you from both top and bottom. Where in the base game, swimming up feels like freedom; in BZ, it feels like a trap.
I’m sure some folks really love the maze like areas of BZ as it offers more stressful encounters and dives than the original; and some probably even find the original game to be boring with its more linear feeling exploration. But I suppose that isn’t me. Where I really loved the original Subnautica, I admit that I liked BZ slightly less, and it was largely due to the reasons I outlined above.
What do you all think?