I’ve been recently addicted to Subnautica games and finished Below Zero just a week ago or so.
I also expected much worse experience as I’ve heard a lot of people hating on it.
In the end, I had a lot of fun playing it through but I definitely can see why someone would be a bit disappointed of it. There’s a lot of differences to it compared to the original.
Sometimes it felt like it was made much easier than the first one. Like very often you could go quite deep without any vehicles because those oxygen giving plants were everywhere. I liked how brutal the first games was with this. If you went too deep without a vehicle or airpipes, you most likely died.
Also the map felt much smaller and the sea was much less deep. And the leviathan creatures seemed much less dangerous and scary.
Overall it was still fun to play there and while the story wasn’t perfect, I think it was still entertaining.
I really liked the jukebox feature. I wish there was a mod to add that to the original.
And the sea truck modules were a fun idea. But nothing can replace how awesome the cyclops is to travel with. At least in my opinion.
But nevertheless, it was still a subnautica game and I had a blast with playing through it. I am excited for the next Subnautica game :) in the meanwhile, I’ll try to beat the original with some mods and hardcore mode.