Well, I beat the game. My thoughts, below. Lots of spoilers – so if you’re still playing through this, my message to you is, enjoy! Take your time! And don’t spoil anything for yourself! This is one of the best games I’ve ever played.
[spoiler]Subnautica was one of the most fun games I’ve played. The only game that felt this polished and put together for me was The Witcher 3 (which I got halfway through and am excited to return to soon!). A truly immersive experience.
At the same time, I do think it ended at just the right time. A combination of a few factors has made it so that Subnautica was becoming less enjoyable for me, so that the last couple of play sessions, I launched the game because I wanted to finish, not because I wanted to get lost in its world.
Partially, it was the loss of fear. Early on, I was always low on oxygen, always discovering new and terrifying beasts. I was slow and cumbersome in the water. And while I was capable of escaping almost any threat, I didn’t know it yet. So I was always on edge, and just when I got comfortable with a new area, I had to move on ever deeper in my quest for resources. But now, I had 225 seconds of air, I took reduced damage from enemies, and could travel anywhere in vehicles, or with a super-fin boosted seaglide. In the early game, going to a new zone was an expedition. I’d take my seaglide, my batteries, and some food and water, and travel as far as I could before having to go home. Lategame, the Cyclops let you carry your base with you. Setting up the Cyclops was a major achievement and a proud moment, but after that, the game felt almost over.
Partially, it was the lack of progression. There are no more new blueprints to discover once you leave the surface biomes, although alien rooms are still driving you on. But that’s it – no cool new things you get to build for the first time. Maybe you can build an upgrade you’ve known about for ages but didn’t have the materials for, but nothing truly new.
And partially it was what I was discovering. Lost River is really cool, but almost all of the other deep sea biomes are so dark that – once you get over the initial wow factor of seeing them for the first time – there’s not much more to discover. Near the surface, I was wow’d when I first saw, say, the kelp forest or the red sea grass area, but then again and again by different locations within the kelp forest or sea grass area. But the bulb zone, the blood kelp, the floating islands, the lava caves, the deep reef… I was amazed when I first saw them, but despite running back and forth through these zones foraging for resources, I never really explored them, because the view distance is unnecessarily short - even with your lights on, when you’re in a cave the light seems to fade very quickly, almost like a filter (a darkness filter, similar to the green filter in the kelp zone).
(Partially, I think that’s my fault – I delved deeper by going into the blood kelp trench. I think the other blood kelp zone is much cooler, and has much more light, so you can actually explore it. But I only found out about that zone near the end of my run.)
Now, that’s all fine – I had some amazing and unique experiences in these dark zones – but they’re just less fun to explore much, past initially arriving there.
I’ll definitely come back to this game again, and I think what I might do is download a mod that adds more upgrades to the seamoth, and then play a run where I never build a cyclops or a prawn suit, I only build one base in the shallows, and I spend all game having to return from expeditions. Building bases every new place I went was the smart decision, but it made the world seem too small.
I know this review sounded negative. That’s not at all how I feel about the game. It had some of the most wonderful discover moments I’ve ever experienced in a game. But when it ended, I was ready for the end.[/spoiler]
