Subnautica: Below Zero is the sequel to Subnautica, and like its predecessor, is an open-world, survival, base-building game. It was released in 2019 on Steam, and then in 2021 for consoles. Since I just finished up Subnautica on the PS5, I played Below Zero the same way.
Gameplay
It is somewhat odd to write up a review of Subnautica: Below Zero so soon after playing Subnautica. The majority of the mechanics as far as gameplay are concerned are exactly the same. You’ll start off with limited resources, then work to find blueprints, materials, and explore while uncovering the story.
As with the first game, you have different play modes available, and as I am largely a very casual player, I chose to play this on the ‘Freedom’ mode again. This removed hunger and thirst – which are mechanics I generally find to be really annoying to manage.
Most of Subnautica: Below Zero will take place underwater, but one of the major changes over Subnautica was how much of the game takes place on land. Below Zero benefits from being a little newer, and has slightly better graphics, and the ocean is once again, beautiful and teeming with life. Below Zero introduces different creatures, including some land based ones.
As in the first one, the major method for navigating the world is your scanner and PDA. You find new things, you scan them, and you learn about them. There are a lot of blueprints to be found in the world, but it can take a significant amount of time to find some of them! There are general areas where certain items are to be found, but where they actually appear is a little bit RNG. It took me quite a while to find some of them, and for others – I never did find all of the pieces.
One of the biggest issues I had with playing this was the lack of a map, but I did learn from the first game that placing Scanner Rooms around the map can be extremely helpful in finding materials, understanding more of the topography of the environment.
I’m going to drop the first official Flurpy Hooves Pro-Tip – place scanner rooms as soon as you can, and upgrade the range. You can boost it up to 500m, and then get yourself the upgrade to send the data to your HUD. This will help you find materials quickly, and when you have to go into really scary areas, you can scan for the creatures. It’s much easier to go where they are not when you know where they are! Thermal power plants are helpful for powering these, and if all you place is the scanner room it won’t take much to keep them powered – and they serve as emergency landing spots to recover in if you need to.
As with the first game, you’ll be able to unlock vehicles to help you explore further. Since you’re always running on limited air, it’s very helpful for going deeper when your vehicle provides oxygen for you. This game provided four options for getting around quickly – the Seaglide, Seatruck, Prawn Suit, and Snowfox. The Seaglide and Prawn Suite carry over from the first game, and the Seatruck and Snowfox are new in Below Zero.
- Seaglide – My ride or die. This little guy provides light and speed to help you get around. It’s not super fast, and doesn’t provide any air, but it is much faster than swimming, and fits anywhere you do.
- Seatruck – Instead of a Cyclops, you get a Seatruck. It has a silly name, and looks a little silly – but I actually kind of loved it. I found the Cyclops in Subnautica to be just too big to pilot easily (although you could build in it, and that was really nice); and while I loved the Seamoth’s speed – it did not have enough storage. The Seatruck is small and speedy like the Seamoth, but you can build additional modules into it – infinitely.
With the additional upgrades for defense and speed, the Seatruck was my favorite vehicle to pilot around. I will point out that as you attach modules, it can get a little awkward to drive – it gets very long very fast! Each car has its own health, and you’re only able to see the health of 5 of them – so I did have to occasionally get out and check. I kept mine to six modules – a fabricator, two storage, teleport, aquarium, and prawn suit dock and found that to be about the limit for what was comfortable to drive. I still occasionally would detach the cab in order to go faster or through smaller spaces.
Once you have a Seatruck, and you build a docking station for it – you can rename and color it as well. I enjoy making my items super bright pink, and I renamed it Tipper.
- Prawn Suit – It functions exactly the same as it did in Subnautica. I used it extensively on land, but unless I needed to drill for materials, I really did not use it underwater. I found the Seatruck to be easier to use.
I know a lot of folks will swear by the Grappling Arm on the Prawn Suit, but I never quite got the hang of using it. I preferred using the Propulsion Cannon and Drill. Here is your second official Flurpy Hooves Pro Tip – while the Snow Stalkers do not like flares, they are really easy to get rid of if you grab them with the Propulsion Cannon and just… drill them, until they die, and then throw the body to the side. Okay, you leave a few orphans behind, but they won’t bother you!
- Snowfox – I actually never got around to building one! It can only be used on land, and since I had the Prawn Suit, I just never bothered.
One of the primary differences between Below Zero and the original, is the addition of the land-based content. There is a fair bit of the game that will take place out of the water – which requires you to manage temperature (I still do not understand what magic the wetsuit uses to keep you from freezing to death under water, but not on land), and some additional land based creatures.
One of the leviathans lives on land, and I really did not like them. [Spoilers]
You won’t have to spend a tremendous amount of time dealing with them, but the Ice Worm was not my favorite creature. It is huge, moves around under the ice, and will jump out to surprise-eat you. You can’t fight them, and you can’t scan them – you can only scan a dead one for the entry in the PDA. I used the Prawn Suit as primary navigation in the area they roam, and I found that the PS5 controller gave me a nice, startling, vibration as a warning when one was near – and I just moved out of the way.
It felt a bit like playing live-action Tremors. Not today, Satan.
The sea-based leviathans were not quite as bad as they were in Subnautica – and might be the primary reason I liked this game better. Reapers were difficult, and constantly set me on edge when I could hear them. In Below Zero, nearly everything will leave you alone for a quick get-away once you smash the Perimeter Defense on the Seatruck.
There were three aggressive leviathans in the ocean that I encountered [spoilers]
Chelicerate, Void Chelicerate, and Shadow Leviathan. The Chelicerate appeared earliest and the most frequently. I had to go to or through the Purple Vents area regularly, so I ran into that one quite a bit. A few times it latched onto my Seatruck, but I was able to get away pretty easily.
The Void Chelicerate was an accidental surprise. I happened to be driving around, and suddenly hit the warning on my PDA that I was entering an area that was void of life. Almost immediately, the much larger Void Chelicerate shows up to scare me half to death and remind me to go back into the playable area. I did not return to this area or spend anymore time with him.
The Shadow Leviathan was the most difficult to deal with. It exists near the end-game content, and in the area you need to go to in order to find Kyanite. It is big, it is fast, and it will try to eat you. My strategy of ‘build a scanner room and search for it’ helped quite a bit when I was looking for Kyanite in the area – I was able to keep an eye on its location so it didn’t come up behind me. This did not help me later on when I needed to down even past the range of my scanner room, where I was surprised to find TWO of them down there. They grabbed my Seatruck pretty regularly, but would let go if you hit the Perimeter Defense.
There is also one, really pretty leviathan [spoilers]
The Glow Whale! The Glow Whale was my favorite creature by far in this game. It is very pretty, it sings, and you can find their eggs! I brought home several eggs to hatch in my Alien Containment Units, and then released them near my base.
There are a lot more options for building a base out within Below Zero, and I had a lot of fun with that. One of the new additions, the Jukebox, was a really welcomed new item. I enjoyed being able to play music throughout the base and finding the new tracks. I will probably remember ‘Subnautic Stimulus‘ forever, cheesy lyrics and all.
I did experience the game crash on me one time – it was very obnoxious, and I had forgotten to save for several hours. I was very, very sad when this happened. I began saving pretty regularly after that, but did not have any other issues while playing. As with the first one, the occasional creature would clip through walls now and then, but nothing that affected gameplay.
One of the main reasons I liked Below Zero a bit more than the original (unpopular opinion, I’m aware..) is that I found that I got lost… a lot less than before. It gives more clues about where to go next, more beacons, and as a result I spent a lot less time feeling confused.
Story
Subnautica’s story involved you crash-landing and finding your way off of the planet, but Subnautica: Below Zero follows Robin Ayou who is trying to find out what happened to her sister, Sam, after Alterra claims her death was due to ’employee negligence.’ Rather than a crash-land, she actually steals a shuttle to get to the planet. She ends up running into a meteor shower on her way down and crashes, but at least she intended to go down there.
Below Zero takes place in the arctic, so while we’re still on 4564B, we’re not anywhere the events of the first game – so the environment is different, the animals are different, and everything is frozen. After crash landing, Robin tries to find what happened to Sam, and encounters a lot of other things on the way.
Such as a repeat character… [spoiler]
Marguerit. Remember Marguerit from the first game? She apparently did survive (I do not know how she survived the bacteria, but I guess she’s that much of a badass) by killing a Reaper and living off its carcass until she finds land. She has managed to not just stay alive, but has a whole base and a pet Snow Stalker.
While in the first game, we played a silent protagonist, Below Zero gives us voice acting. While it’s not the best in the world, I did find that I often would just let it play while I kept looking around rather than sit and read through it.
Additionally, while we progressed largely alone, [spoiler]
Below Zero gives us a strange, alien buddy to hang out with. By ‘hang out’ I mean, downloads himself into your brain, because he no longer has a body, and his name is Al-An. Alan. Al-An will then provide commentary about the events in the game as you progress, and one of the primary drivers of the game will become finding him a replacement body so you can get him out of your head.
He has three components to find, then you’ll have to find a specific location to put it all together and recreate his strange, centaur-esque body.
To get to the end game, [spoiler]
You will find out what happened to Sam – spoiler alert, she died trying to prevent the spread of the bacteria after Alterra finds a frozen Leviathan that was infected, and decided to research it for ‘useful applications.’ Marguerit encourages and helps Sam to destroy it, setting an explosion in the cave where the Leviathan was found, and was killed in the falling rubble.
Robin is able to follow some of the notes left behind from Sam to find that she had developed a cure, and we can inject that into the dead Leviathan to cure it. That’s it for Sam’s story, unfortunately, so with nothing else going on, Robin decides to run away with Al-An!
I’m not kidding – he reveals that it is actually his fault that the bacteria was released in the first game, and he isn’t sure what happened to the others of his race but he wants to go home to find out and atone. Robin offers to go with him to help, and they go off together into the unknown to find out the fate of the Precursors.
It’s not really anymore complex than the original, but I enjoyed it anyway.
Overall Review
Subnautica: Below Zero follows the path laid out in Subnautica, with a few changes along the way. There is more content that happens on land, different vehicles, and more building options. Rather than a silent protagonist, Robin has quite a lot to say and the dialogue is all voiced.
I found that I liked Below Zero more than the original, and I got lost less frequently. I also found that Below Zero was much less ‘horror’ than the original, which might be one of the only things I feel this game lacked from the first one, so I’m going to give it a 9/10!
Was it fun, though?
Yes! I had a lot of fun playing it and exploring it. I understand a lot of people were not as fond of it as they were the original, but I favored it more. Especially my pink Seatruck.
The Bardic Unicorn 