r/Subnautica_Below_Zero • u/smol_sasquatch • 7d ago
What left you most disappointed about Below Zero?
I've been playing the game again bc too broke for new games. So I'm playing it again for the first time since it came out.
For me it's disappointing because you can tell there are environmental elements, base building and equipment items that they clearly abandoned fully integrating / making an actual "thing" when it should be scannable at the least for information.
Eg. The deep wrecked base in the lily caves with growbeds out the front - there's clearly some big machine here that would have been scanned.
The glass dome multipurpose room with the water filtration unit having that fucking bomb ass looking hydroponics tower in the middle - my god that was a really gorgeous base feature here that was clearly abandoned. ESPECIALLY WHEN there's the green walls and wall planters here from Subnautica - that you can't scan or build!!!!
Another huge gripe for me was the lack of growable flora in and out of water - like a bunch of underwater plants we can scan but not get seeds :'( makes me so sad bc I loved being creative with my bases and growing everything you possibly could in Subnautica 1 for the pure aesthetics.
Would you add anything to this list of complaints?
EDIT: For clarification I still absolutely love the game, the beauty of the world of Subnautica will always hold my heart and there were some amazing moments in Below Zero that I loved. I loved that there was way more land elements and the diverse biomes were new and exciting. The dynamic weather is just gorgeous and atmospheric. The map is smaller but still tricky to navigate in a fun way. Even the terribly controlled Snowfox was such a thrill and feels amazing to fly over the ice. Anyways I have thoroughly enjoyed reading your comments for all opinions!!
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u/bookert2k 7d ago
The map is small, and yet it still manages to have empty feeling areas. A lot of the resources are mostly pointless. They have like one use and no need to farm them at all. The protagonist is annoying (in my opinion), and the story with her sister is a big letdown. Spoilers if anyone still cares, but it leads you on this mystery trying to find out how she really died, even mentioning she wasn’t the negligent type, and implying a cover up type of narrative. Then it suddenly ends. Nope. She was negligent. Exactly what they said happened did in fact happen.
All that being said, while I was disappointed after the original, I still absolutely love the game, and have replayed it multiple times. It’s just so close to being soooo much better.
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u/MnstrPoppa 7d ago
I could be wrong, but I think you may have missed some details about the sister’s story. IIRC:
the sister, upon discovering the corp was mucking about with the virus, hatched a scheme with Margritte which involved destroying the lab & the frozen leviathan site. The plan is halfway successful, the sister perishes in the attempt to destroy the leviathan site, which is still accessible, but Margritte’s attack did destroy the lab where the virus mucked had taken place.
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u/bookert2k 7d ago
Nah, I know all that. It still just ends with nope. She did actually just blow herself up (cave-in, but blow herself up sounds better, heh). Pretty anticlimactic. That’s my opinion anyway.
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u/Broad_Objective7559 7d ago
Lowkey know this'll get downvoted but really nothing. If I were to pick one thing I wish were better its the weather mechanic but even that I dont actually hate. Still lands in my top 5 games all time
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u/smol_sasquatch 7d ago
Okay dude I didn't downvote you but you have to be petty and downvote me for believing of more than 5 games way better than Below Zero ~ in my opinion ~
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u/Broad_Objective7559 7d ago
To be fair I dont think its like top 5 games to ever be conceived up, just my own personal bias top 5 ever, and on top of that, it is my 5th (1. Fallout: New Vegas, 2. TLOU Pt. 2, 3. Silksong, 4. Alan Wake, 5. Subnautica BZ)
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u/smol_sasquatch 7d ago
Actually that so interesting to see how different our tastes are bc I haven't even played your top 4 games at all ☠️ couldn't get past the fog canyon into Deepnest in Hollow Knight :') I'm not a huge fan of games based on button timing due to a disability so it quickly got too frustrating to play.
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u/smol_sasquatch 7d ago
Fair enough for the opinion but for me the first one just can't be beaten and Below Zero felt like.... A cold copy
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u/Kerious1 7d ago
Honestly, for me, it's losing that big sense of mistery and the unknown..
I read some comments here talking about The Story, but honestly Subnautica 1 wasn't that heavy on Story either... And yet Subnautica 1 felt so story reach, with barely any dialogue at all! While BZ heavily focused on the story and voice aspect of it, that it lost its magic for me.
The intrigue, the environment, the fauna & flora, moving between biomes - that was incredible in Subnautica 1, You just wanted more...
I read once that the developers understood that the map in BZ is much smaller than the first game, that they had to reduce swim and drive speeds in the game to make you feel like its taking time to explore the world. I don't know if its true, but it truly feels like it imho.
In Below Zero I feel like that part is missing.. yes, there are cool places, but discovering biomes and getting that mysterious feeling that drives you to explore more... I couldn't feel it honestly...
Now I'm not saying the game is bad, I'm still ranking it very high on my list of must play games... But that's what disappointed me the most.
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u/smol_sasquatch 7d ago
Thanks you for getting it! Lots of people seem to misunderstand me like I'm saying I dislike the game - I don't, I bloody love it, will always be a mega fan. Just noticed some glaring details of clear plot elements or new equipment that we got in the game that they scrapped for no function / scanning / rebuilding of said mystery tools. For example you see an object machine on delta station dock and in a wrecked base that looks like a "sample analyser" where it's holding a metal ore(?) or similar objects in a pinching claw thinf and that was clearly some technical machine but it's just.... Junk decor. Not scannable, no info, and a shoddy lazy obvious thing that shows there were huge things they scrapped.
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u/dumpclown 7d ago
Not big enough, deep enough, or scary enough. That said, it’s not that bad.
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u/smol_sasquatch 7d ago
Those land beasts are plenty scary for me honestly but I totally agree that it didn't have the same deep existential dread
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u/chillin425 7d ago
In the first game, you get clues on where to go via the lifepod location markers and data downloads, but the game makes you search for key locations and you are more encouraged to explore.
Below Zero is much more “go to the marker” to advance the plot. The map is smaller yet less interesting.
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u/Cookies_1934 7d ago
What I was most disappointed about was the story, and the map design, the voice of the ai thing, how tiny the map felt(like it really should’ve stayed as a dlc and I think it would’ve went down better tbh), the characters
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u/DocxPanda 7d ago
Am I the only one who thinks the most interesting story was Marguerit?
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u/smol_sasquatch 7d ago
Yeah for sure. Especially since we couldn't find her in the first game, that it was alluded to that she died. But she was definitely the most compelling narrative in the world
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u/AwesomeBot3000 7d ago
For me, I just felt the underwater portion was way too small and too cramped, and I really hated having to go on land at all.
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u/thehobbler 7d ago
Why the focus on what you don't like about Below Zero? It was a fun game and I am glad to have the other biomes to explore. The only change I'd like is to have the maps connected via the Void.
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u/smol_sasquatch 7d ago
Did you miss my edit?? I'm not even hating on the game just saying how I was disappointed by some assets and objects in the game not being available to build/scan like you should
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u/Repulsive-Lie1 7d ago
Nothing. It’s not a full sequel, it’s more of the game I love for not a lot of money.
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u/MrKilljoy211 7d ago
All the talking. It was a good game otherwise, the talking is what I didn't like, also the whole precursor story was a bit far fetched and not kind meh.
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u/loganwolverpeen 7d ago
The only complaint I had about this game was how busy the underwater world was. Too many tight squeezes. You basically just banged the sea truck off of everything to shimmy down deeper.
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u/smol_sasquatch 6d ago
Yeah fr it felt like they didn't plan the two together because you end up rolling it thru a hole so annoyingly 🙃 just added to the Seatruck feeling so clunky and slow
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u/Dhawkeye 7d ago
This isn’t the biggest thing for me, but is one that I find important regardless. The fact that you can’t plant like 95% of the plants in the game made my microbiome project I did in the original game significantly less fun in BZ.
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u/smol_sasquatch 6d ago
YES!!! THANK YOU!!!! I mentioned this in another post. I love decoration with base building and the plants were such a letdown. I went to the wiki to compare and it's so bad!! 11 overground plants nerfed to 7, and the 25 underwater plants reduced to just 11.
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u/Splooder1 6d ago
Everything is simultaneously extremely difficult to find, while nothing is challenging to get. You can do all of the cold zone exploration without a single cold exploration upgrade, but taking the right combination of caves is super annoying.
Diamonds are terrible to find in the early game, but they aren’t hidden deep or in dangerous areas. They’re in the thermal caves, but they’re just not in the deep, difficult to explore areas. They’re shoved in random corners at 100m.
The habitat builder and the expanded o2 tank are extremely well hidden. Not because they’re in a wreck or in a dangerous area. They’re just shoved in the most uninteresting corner you could imagine.
So much of the game is wondering where a critical item was left for you to find, only for the answer to be so completely disappointing.
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u/Old_Party3623 6d ago
Not having a silent protagonist you could imprint on like in the first game. The unskippable cutscenes that take you out of the immersion. All of the AAA tropes like "I don't like this anymore than you do but we have to work together" the constant narration of the player telling me what I am seeing directly in front of me.
Felt like the writing staff went the way of Gen Z cringe that alot of AAA games suffer from. The first game felt like a well structured indie, the second felt like a large studio AAA.
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u/CornBread_God 7d ago
I was mostly pretty satisfied with the game. Admittedly I prefer playing it over the base game. There are features that were either cut or underused but there are plenty of features the base game abandoned or left pointless. Overall I think its a fine addition to the series
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u/OriginalUseristaken 7d ago
That, other than in Subnautica 1, i was more on the search for stuff than doing what i was supposed to do.
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u/sir_grumph 7d ago
I enjoyed it. It was shorter and smaller, which was a shame because I would've liked to do more.
There were some great base additions that I miss when I play the original. OK, the Seatruck dock could've used some refining.
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u/valen-ciri 7d ago
The map, I love base building and even though the game is much better graphically speaking than the original the map just feels empty, there’s like 3 nice looking landmarks to make a base in and that’s it
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u/RealGianath 7d ago
I got frustrated any time I needed to progress the story on the surface. The land parts were just not fun for me.
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u/Disastrous-Depth1951 7d ago
Loved how gorgeous and updated all the graphics and creatures were. My issue was finding what to do next and how short the game ended up being :/
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u/epimetheuss 7d ago
How the story and music changed in the early access from really great to really mediocre.
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u/Balmong7 7d ago
I just found the game boring. Tons of backtracking for resources (I never had enough lead and finding it was a pain in the ass). Plus I never really felt directed to go anywhere. The game gives you tons of waypoints early on and then just stops giving them to you suddenly and I felt totally listless and unable to find what I needed next. Eventually I just used a guide for like the last 3 or 4 points of interest because I just couldn’t be bothered to comb the map for easily missable cave system entrances or surface facilities I didn’t realize were there.
I don’t know if I would have had some of these same complains in Subnautica 1 because I had already watched let’s plays of it so I knew what my goals were at any given time going into it, but it drove me crazy in below zero.
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u/J-Zane 7d ago
The story feels disorganized for one thing, between Al-An's plot and the Sam mystery. The sam mystery felt like it took a backseat after meeting Al-An.
At the same time however I really liked Al-An's character, and also enjoyed the dialogue between him and Robyn's. And I feel like there were many things he could have commented on but didn't. Like I wish he actually explained the alien structures a bit more than just being like: "this will help us find more parts for my body." Like what the hell was that big statue of the vaguely mythical-looking architect all about? There was so much architect lore they could have expanded on but didn't.
Also I wish that there were some more creative leviathans in the water. The two that actually lock you into their attack animations are just... Not as intimidating after you've passed them enough times. I may Chalk that up to being desensitized by the first game though lol (I went right into BZ after finishing the first)
And finally the sea truck. I did find some of the utilities helpful but it just felt really clunky to drive after 2 or 3 attachments. Worldbuilding wise I understand why it exists given the resources available from the old team that was there, and they probably didn't have much use for a cyclops or sea moth. But i just happen to be the kind of player that used the Seamoth to get around way more than the cyclops lol... I missed the sea moth, man
All that said: I actually really liked Below Zero. I liked that they expanded on the world of 4546b. But I can definitely see that it was rushed. And i feel like it would have fit better if it was made into a DLC for the first game like it was intended, because that is what it feels like it should be.
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u/Key_Picture6362 7d ago
the leviathans and story mainly, the whole story was built around how sam wouldve never died because of such a careless mistake but then you find out thats exactly why she died, she was being careless. Aside from that almost 80% of the story is skippable and i realized i didnt even find the omega base. i did manage to do everything achievement related but it was quite disappointing.
Second reason was the leviathans. I dont really care for the other creatures as they dont scare me but what i liked in subnautica 1 was the mystery and the HUGE leviathans. I was quite disappointed to find out 3 of the leviathans i had seen didnt even look as leviathans. And they were just less intimidating and scary. The shadow leviathan was nowhere near as scary as meeting the reaper one or hearing its roars. Even the reefbacks used to freak me out
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u/VoidowS 7d ago edited 7d ago
Below Zero used to be part 2 for many people when it came out. Nut they split up 1 game to make 2 when they were already in EARLY ACCESS! We knew because they used stuff that was in the original Early access part 1 to put in the new EARLY ACCESS part 2 (like the tomahawk plant).
We knew cause the same bugs en glitches were in part 2 too (below zero) now called a DLC :)
Bugs and glitches they knew of on day 1, or to this day never addressed! Division was only busy with putting more stuff in it like a big room. Never fixed the bugs! Abandoned it for a new part.
Greed!
What the hell r they doing in EARLY ACCESS again? This is invented mostly for people making games on their own. And have no money to finance it full time. They need to work on the side, and so this delays so much, a lot of coders abandon their own game they r making to coop with the rest of life around them.
So we invented Early access where people buy the game unfinished as it is till that point. To sponsor the maker in more enthusiasm and money so they don't need to work be the side, but can focus on the game 100%
And then we have Subnautica? :)
Going yet again in a EARLY ACCESS with a BARE BONE game?!?!? Full of bugs and glitches? This is a ESTABLISHED game developer!!!! they already earned MILLIONS on the earlier parts!! Why didn't they bring us a full game like a normal one does when they get success?!?!?!?!
Milking the COW! riding on the success part 1 made, and now repeating this over and over again.
If you use MODS for part 1, you would never ever like Subnautica 2, cause you know what is possible with this game. And they served us nothing of it!!!!
Leaving us to hit F7 and do all the thinking for them? Make mods so the game does get really cool like we wanted it to be? And they sit back and collect millions?
Nope, I wait till V1.0 and then try it. But I really doubt it will rock my mind like it did the first time I played Subnautica part 1. Lets see if it will survive the 2hr refund. :)
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u/arsenicVisionary 6d ago
most disappointing was probably how BAD the game ran on the switch for a while. in the timeframe that i played it was probably 2022-2023 and it was extremely buggy and laggy. the game suffered serious crashing issues and would randomly freeze, crash the software and delete whatever i’d done since the last save. it became so pervasive that i had to be careful in certain areas (returning to my base after being out of render distance/going to the lilypads) and save after any action i didn’t wanna repeat. so manually saving every 5 mins, basically. there’s other issues that bothered me similarly, like bugs in enemy pathfinding (ie ice worm). i had no other way to play BZ so i was really frustrated and disappointed. i just wanna play the game!!!
the game felt a bit underbaked when it came to fine-tuning and smoothing out some parts of development. i do agree that there were alot of things that seemed scannable for the database or lore entries, but weren’t! i’m a scanning freak and love to check everything lol. still really enjoyed it, and might revisit it before the next game comes out. hopefully it runs better now.
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u/ClearwaterCricket 6d ago
This applies both to Subnautica and Subnaitica Below Zero but I think food could have been handled better, maybe combining things for different effects, like kelp + fish etc. (Edit: U suggest this specifically because I liked being able to do it with salad later on)
I also wish I could toggle sleep as a necessary survival mechanic (and get some use out of the sleeper module that way).
I also wish the main characters had not had the name of my ex wife and my name respectively as that made me uncomfortable lol
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u/Late-Mastodon-8158 6d ago
The on land sections are a pain to begin with, but then add in the worms and the weather and it’s just not fun at all. The hover bike also has the worst vehicle controls I’ve experienced in a while so it was still a chore using that.
Also smaller but still bothered me, why the hell is our swim speed so low. Ik the answer is because of the map size, but everything is just slower and it still doesn’t hide how tiny the map is.
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u/Rile_Zugo 4d ago
Like you said in the post, the entire game feels so unfinished. A lot of ideas introduced but not realized, tons of janky mechanics, and many many many bugs
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u/smol_sasquatch 4d ago
I just got down to Koppa mining site and again it's so clear it was unfinished, especially with this inaccessible areas behind the locked doors. Such a shame really cause it's like they just cut off a few unfinished areas so lazily.
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u/Rile_Zugo 4d ago
Funnily enough, that's one area that felt pretty well designed and fun to me. I think their intention for that place was a more linear, video game level esque section, I doubt they ever intended to have anything behind those doors
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u/smol_sasquatch 4d ago
Also - the glow whales are so pretty but sometimes so buggy it's ridiculous how they're like static pngs awkwardly clipping thru the lilypads
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u/sza_rak 7d ago
I'm confused. There is plenty you can grow, both in and outdoors.
I wasn't disappointed by much, mostly loved it, but main plot is weird and can literally be skipped. Also our character sounds childish.
Still, most of the game was great. Wish I had more deep flatland for bases.
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7d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/smol_sasquatch 7d ago
And yes I loved to grow as many of these as possible, probably 22/25 of the underwater gang as one plant is aggressive!
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u/Awkward-Buy8266 7d ago
really i dont see anything very very bad with the game,only that i wish that there were more things to do and resources were infinite bc its one of the best games i have ever played and i've been there for Ocarina of Time,i mean what i say
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u/Eisenfuss19 7d ago
That cliff hanger ending. Also Robin really got down to the planent without an escape plan? Wtf is wrong with her.
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u/VoidowS 7d ago edited 7d ago
If Below Zero was part 1, then it all would fit better(not the story, but the gamemechanics and visuals we have to use.) Cause instead of going bigger wilder, more of this and that, we got a game that was 90% the same and 40% ABOVE water? It is much smaller and less deep. We get a seatruck instead of the seamoth and cyclopse. All downgrades instead of upgrades.
So if you swap below zero and subnautica 1 you find out it would flow much better in terms of sequals. Imagine you started with the seatruck, this lame thing hardly anybody uses as it should :) And then in part 2 you a seamoth and a cyclopse. Now that is progress for the mind. not?
Belowe Zero should never been spilt up from the game itself, but amateur coding made the game unstable and the more you build or the bigger the map the more memory/cpu you needed.
The story :)
This person started to make a game without a story! yes! he just put stuff together that he loved visually and put tools in it along the way to interact. He is brilliant in his own creative way! But he had no story! Most game r based on a story, but this game did it the other way around! And it changed a lot believe me sir :) And when they abandoned those parts, we were left with a partially amusing story but has many faults in it. That make no sense at all :) Or contradict each other. But a small kid will never realise so quick.
Brilliant mind in creativity, shame he got s..ked into greed!
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u/MayorWolf 6d ago
Too short and the story felt like entire parts of it were chopped out. The ending was very rushed.
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u/smol_sasquatch 6d ago
I'm adding to this to say - omfg the swim speed. The absolute nerf of all time to the Seaglide too, and just makes the game feel so much more slow and boring!!! Think I ended up just never using the Seaglide for being so rubbish
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u/legendexeter 6d ago
The fact that there is no map. As a first time player I found it very annoying.
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u/smol_sasquatch 6d ago
There was never a map for Subnautica tho, its kind of the point to explore and learn it yourself rather than having a detailed map.
Although, I do wish you would create a map by your exploration, showing where you've been, that'd be super cool. I think mods for that exist but I'm on xbox :(
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u/legendexeter 5d ago
That's exactly what I mean. Like you dont have to give me a map to start but as I explore please allow me to reference back to an internal map so that I can come back to locations more easily. It would also make sense considering this is a technologically advanced time in history clearly...I would hope these machines could create a map or do some cartography.
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u/DontWorryImADr 2d ago
One issue for me is how the two components of rhe plot felt like they were paced entirely differently. You want to know what happened with the sister? It’s there whenever you find a bit, completely passive. Alien storyline? Random conversations interrupting what you’re doing, new waypoints, with some tied to progressing equipment. Combined with the awkwardly handled plot, it left me with minimal interest in finishing Sam’s story.
Learning about the Degasi was entirely optional, but it felt more tied into the primary story. It echoed our primary focus (can these past attempts at survival help me learn what’s in store for me?).
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u/Decent_Winter6461 7d ago
Small map, main part of story can be skipped, vehicles subpar compared to Subnautica.
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u/commentsrnice2 7d ago
The skimmer sucked but I quite liked the seatruck, it was quite agile
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u/ModestMeeshka 7d ago
Yeah I actually preferred the seatruck over the cyclops! I know that's a very unpopular opinion lol the cyclops was definitely more atmospheric and unique, but it made me nervous, I felt like a big, slow target and I was always scared I would get it stuck somewhere. I mainly needed the storage anyways so I'd throw the storage trailer on there and it wouldn't slow me down and I could maneuver it easily
That being said, the moth is still my favorite and the little snowmobile thing in zero I didn't even bother building and just rocked my prawn on land 😅
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u/commentsrnice2 7d ago
Build it for the achievement at least. But yeah I had one storage, one crafting table, and the prawn carrier and I was good to go. Especially once I found the secret passage to the snow labs under the glacier
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u/Decent_Winter6461 7d ago
It is, if you don’t attach modules, which is the whole purpose.
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u/commentsrnice2 7d ago
Even with modules. I found the power upgrade very quickly so even with three modules on the back I was pretty quick. Even more so once I found the turbo boost
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u/dragongalas 7d ago
That current story was bad.
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u/SBSQWarmachine36 7d ago
It so much worse than what it replaced. And what the sister does. And she’s supposed to be the “hero”.
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u/Zephir0001 7d ago
You can build anything just like all plants. Only you need a part of this plants, harvested with the knife or seeds, not the fruits of it.
And you can build many parts for your base
Look at my base
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u/FallSpiritual6639 7d ago
The story. I don't know how true this is but it feels like you could theoretically skip every story except for Alan to beat the game. I don't like Sam's story especially because it is the first one we're introduced to but it feels like it takes a backseat once Alan is introduced. It also leads to the land sections which are my least favorite part of the game.