Is Subnautica: Below Zero Better Or Worse Than The Original?

when below zero came out of early access a few weeks ago i decided to pick it up completely blind no spoilers maps videos walkthroughs or any of the like aside from the trailers and a few screenshots i had very few expectations going in i enjoyed the original subnautica so much that i beat it countless times in many ways i even made a handful of videos on some of the challenge runs i attempted now with a fully fleshed out sequel at my fingertips what more could i possibly ask for but on the other hand living up to the first game while also creating a completely new experience is no easy task there are some truly great new things in below zero there are also some aspects of the game that i had lingering issues with it's not as simple to compare both games as you'd expect with a direct sequel so i'll try to explain if subnautica below zero really does live up to the original i'll try to keep things mostly spoiler free and give you a warning before i discuss the story later in the video let's kick things off with the visuals of below zero this is probably one of the highest points of the game when compared to the first you can tell that the art department really kicked it up a notch for this game the various biomes looked great full of twisting and turning elements around every corner while the first game was full of vast dark expanses especially at night below zero is filled to the brim with zones bursting with light and color at any time of day each area feels very unique and surprisingly full of life despite the cold desolate climate on the surface even some of the above ground areas look great compare the first island and below zero to the first island in the original game the level of detail is just so much higher both on a micro and macro scale landscapes aside the higher visual quality is immediately apparent on textures models and just about everything this is extra noticeable on some of the items base pieces and vehicles from the first game there are lots of little details that really speak to the quality work the artist did here so the visuals are great but what about the music the original subnautica soundtrack was composed by simon chelinski check out most of nautica reviews and you'll see a ton of praise for the music excellent for exploring a foreboding alien planet with a good mixture of upbeat and bone-chilling music interestingly they decided to go with a new musician for below zero this time around ben prunty from ftl and into the breach fame composed the soundtrack some light spacey tunes jamming away in the background of many biomes the soundtrack as a whole is very well made but it never sells the feeling of horror that existed in the original even in the most dangerous zones the music doesn't add too much to the tension compare that to something like the blood kelp music from the first game which took a dangerous zone and turned it up to 11. if i close my eyes while playing i would instantly picture ftl or risk of rain as opposed to subnautica and yes i know he didn't work on risk of rain but the soundscapes of all these games are very similar although if i had to pick a soundtrack to listen to outside of the game below zero would win hands down but a game is much more than what you just see in here so let's get to the meat of it how does it actually play well just as you'd expect below zero is a heavily exploration focused underwater survival experience it's taken all the major design points from the first game and tweaked many of them in small ways some for the better and some for the worse to start off with the good i'm glad they added a lot more resource notes to just about every zone gone are the days of spending 20 minutes hunting for copper because you don't have a scanner room nearby to add to this they also give you a portable scanner room in the form of a tool that can find nearby ore and for all the base builders out there below zero is a huge upgrade in just about every way they've taken almost every element of base building from the first game and added tons of new things on top if you spent hours building massive bases or small outposts all throughout the first subnautica you'll find a lot of new things to enjoy here there's also some minor things that are nice improvements compared to the original wrecks are more interesting to explore each uniquely designed and containing a wider variety of useful items or the brand new air bladder which sends you rocketing upwards many times faster than the old one plus you can use it to restore a little oxygen in emergencies great little touches like those are scattered throughout but then there's a whole slew of newer modified things that are much more subjective like the hotly debated removal of the cyclops personally i enjoyed using the cyclops as a mobile base but quickly grew tired of its clunky handling and huge size but i know many people are quite upset about them taking the cyclops out and i definitely understand that the new sea truck lands in the middle of the seamoth and the cyclops offering more maneuverability and the ability to bring a fabricator on the go but it's not quite as maneuverable as the cmos and you can't build a base inside it like the cyclops after playing through i didn't miss the old vehicles too much but it makes sense why others do luckily the prawn is still in there offering ideal leviathan dueling capabilities and safety at the furthest depths but on the other hand the new snow fox is a pain to use since a decent chunk of the game takes place on dry land they added a little hover bike that you can build to get around i do like that it keeps you warm while you're on it and the jump and boost features work pretty nicely but the feeling of driving it is not so satisfying i would say it controls most similarly to a ghost from halo if you've experienced that before but unlike a ghost the snow fox is very annoying to turn it doesn't actually follow your camera unless you've turned a minimum distance this feels very clunky unlike first person vehicles and countless other games plus it's extremely fragile jumping or clipping the corner of a rock can easily take off a third of its health you'll have to stop and repair it pretty often whenever you're driving in a cluttered area speaking of the land-based zones they feel completely disconnected from the rest of the game mostly because they actually are you'd think a game that takes place in an arctic climate would be able to stack a land-based zone directly above an underwater zone but this isn't the case the major land-based zones are often corners of the map boxed in by high walls with one or two entrances that are completely cut off from the rest of the ocean once you finish the objectives in these zones there's no reason to go back to them it's not even a good place to build a base as you're far away from just about everything else in the game there are some icebergs that you can build on out in the ocean but there's basically nothing on them so it's hardly worth it on the other hand they added a whole new weather system that mostly only takes place out of the water pushing through blinding snowstorms and watching hail rain down just below the surface adds a lot of character to the world little dynamic elements like these are great additions to make it feel like a real place but enough about the world how do i feel about the actual level design well that's a tricky topic while i really appreciate how interconnected some areas are they also suffer for that same reason many places are just so small and condensed easy to get around but terrible to navigate a vehicle or build a base in there are very few great base locations in this game compared to the first if you want to build a single room with some stuff in it that's still doable everywhere but consider adding other rooms perhaps a moon pool scanner room and more now your options are much more limited in some biomes a large base isn't possible at all in others you'll be off in some awkward corner constantly bumping into things while you drive to and from your base plus the map feels much smaller in general i don't have exact numbers but i wouldn't be surprised to hear that below zero's map is only about two-thirds the size of the original of course it's more condensed with a lot less dead space than the first but that feeling of vast exploration is lessened in that same vein of exploring the unknown i rarely felt wary of entering any new zone like i did in the original the unintentional horror of subnautica is quite noticeably lacking in below zero remember swimming up to the aurora in subnautica entering the murky water scrambling around with no visibility and then hearing that roar off in the distance that feeling is almost entirely absent from below zero like i said before almost every zone is lit up like a christmas tree regardless of the time of day it looks great but you lose a lot of that fear of the unknown and they cut down on the fog in almost every zone compared to the first game any dangers can be seen a long ways off which obviously makes for a less spooky experience that and the fact that almost no area is dangerous until quite late in the game you can freely explore almost all of the map down to a certain depth and never run into a major threat there are some leviathans but they're pretty hard to accidentally run into only placed specifically at some key story points and even when it does get dangerous the game warns you ahead of time plus those late game zones aren't nearly as dangerous as the originals lava zone combine all this together and you have probably the largest negative of the second game it's just not nearly as scary oh and a little thing but the small hostile creatures are all extremely loud it seems like they wanted to sell that horror aspect a bit more and compensated by adding reaper level screeches to small creatures you become so desensitized to these loud roars that when you do hear a leviathan it doesn't even phase you now before i move on from talking about gameplay i should quickly mention bugs throughout my entire playthrough i rarely experienced any issues the only two memorable bugs i can recall were my stairs despawning on an above ground base and my remote controlled penguin losing the ability to grab items is mentioning the spy panglings a spoiler i'm pretty sure they talked about them before release so i don't think it is but before we get into huge spoiler territory here's your warning i'll be talking about the story so click on through to the conclusion if you haven't played yet all good okay so about that story the addition of tons of voiced audio logs was pretty great if they were pure text i would have skipped over them but being able to listen to them on the go helps the story a lot the actors and writers did a great job with these establishing some unique identities for everybody involved my personal favorite was fred the plucky sea truck driver always running into hostile fauna and getting the short end of the stick here's a pretty nice addition for some comic relief then there's the first subnautica character you actually meet face to face marguerite she's the true lone survivor on this planet with a suitably hardcore story to boot although she doesn't end up playing a major role in the game i liked uncovering bits of her story and visiting her bases along the way and then there's the good old ai companion alan he's the driving force behind the story pushing you to countless markers on the map while chatting you up along the way his addition does lead you along more than the first game which makes below zero a seemingly shorter more guided experience and it also ties back to that point i was making about horror having an ai companion talking in your ear while a leviathan looms off in the distance makes it all a lot less scary when you do finally scan all the pieces of his body and then find the fabricator facility there's no teleporter you have to truck materials from every corner of the map all the way back down to the lowest point to progress the story and when it's all said and done you perform a similar sequence in preparing your exit vehicle this time you basically just hop in an alien ship and leave doesn't feel quite as nice as blasting off in the rocket you built yourself oh and they took out the time capsules from the first game one of the neatest little features leaving a small note and some items for future players is now gone maybe they didn't want to deal with moderating player messages but who really knows on the plus side actually getting a glimpse of what's on the other side of the portal is pretty nice the fact that they built all these pieces of an alien civilization just for a short credit sequence is really cool obviously it's mostly sql bait but i'll give it a pass to wrap this all up i have a lot of mixed opinions on below zero there are a lot of big pros compared to the first game from the awesome biomes to tons of base building improvements but on the other hand it's not a flawless sequel most notably below zero is missing the overwhelming loneliness of exploring a vast often hostile alien planet but most of my other issues come down to relatively minor things if you played through both games i'd be interested to hear your opinions on them there's only so many points i could cram into this video without it being way too long so feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments if you enjoyed the first subnautica and haven't picked up below zero yet i'd absolutely recommend it there's a lot to love and it's clear how much effort the devs put into all of it maybe someday we might even see a third installment in the series but that's a long ways off in the meantime i've got a bunch of other games i'm itching to play so get ready for lots more content you can subscribe if you want to help out the channel but either way i appreciate you sticking around till the end i'll see you all in the next one you

Channel: EphiTV

Views: 704,121

Keywords: entropy phi, ephi, ephitv, subnautica, subnautica below zero, below zero, subnautica review, below zero review, subnautica vs below zero, is subnautica below zero good, should I get below zero, is below zero better than the original, is below zero bad, subnautica below zero pros and cons, subnautica below zero full review, subnautica comparisons, subnautica 1 vs 2, subnautica below zero spoilers, subnautica story spoilers, below zero opinions

Id: 1Mfpc7mjmkw

Length: 12min 41sec (761 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 07 2021