Recent reviews by Draconis

MFW you miss an alien the size of a bus point-blank with a shotgun, but the other guy doesn't miss a shot on a tiny drone across the map.
Also, when in doubt, just shoot a rocket.

TL;DR, the game feels unfinished, its way smaller than the original, the story writer spent more time ticking boxes than writing a logical story, which has inteligent charecters, the game feels linear and youre being led by the game to the end of the story by hand instead of naturally like in the OG.

This game doesnt deserve to cost this much, considering the map is around 6x smaller than OG subnautica, the creature diversity consists of shark, bigger shark, shrimp shark. The land section feels unfinished with only 3 creatures populating the icy wastelands, which is lacking. UKE threw out amazing concepts for creatures, such as the ice dragon (gigantic leviathan) and kitewing (an aerial predator bird) as well as biomes which would add more to the world.
Like I said, what we have feels unfinsihed, the arctics feel bland and samey, the npcs spoil the locations of POIs, there are 2 maps which reveal how tiny the map is. The survival is very easy, you have so many plants that give oxygen or heat aswell as food and water, meaning you dont have to plan your journeys at all. Salads are redundant as there are so many pepper plants.
We only have 2 hostile aquatic leviathans which are not scary at all, they dont do much damage, and you can see them from a mile away, because the biomes are bright af. The land leviathan is more of a nuasance than a danger, which is sad, considering how many interaction options it should have, its just not aggressive enough to be scared, and the nail in the cofin is the prawn suit which makes you literally invincible and immune to the leviathan. The snow fox hoverbike is clunky and exposes you to enemies, which makes it useless. The PDA now has an annoying voice which is hard to understand a lot of times. Why did the change it? The PDA doesnt have a voice actor, its an AI, couldnt you find a more pleasant sounding AI for the PDA if you want to so much?(The old one was perfect).
SPOILERS
Story, its bad, we go to the planet to find out what happened to our sister, you think we have to do it to finish the game? NO, all we have to do is make a body for a suspiciously question evading alien, whom we fly off with. "How did my sister die? pffft, I have a new alien BF, who cares how my sis died." The entire plot revolves around the suspicions that the transgov is shady and hiding something, as they written off MCs sisters death as "employee negligance", which in the end turned out to be truth. BRAVO writers, you were more occupied making charecters "strong and independant" than actually making the story logical, the most comical is that the MCs sister, and I kid you not, "synthesizes an antibacterial agent, which cures a virus which killed 14 billion creatures around the galaxy aswell as potentialy wiping out a race of highly advanced aliens, which spent millenia trying to get a cure." The protagonist is no better, she is completely unphazed by anything, goes to a hostile planet with no tools, luckily lands on land instead of the void from which she would have 0 chances of survival. She also talks a lot, which breaks the immersion of the OG, where the charecter would only scream or moan in pain(dont get me started on eating sounds). The only charecter I actually liked was Marg, the old lady from the OG subnatuica logs(but still she does almost nothing and her story just.... ends, also how tf did she survive 10+ years?).
Now I come to the ugly, the sound design, its lacking, the creatures have varying sound levels, where a croc has a louder voice than a giant sea creature, and the sounds are boring. the original composer and sound designer did an amazing job, which gave subnatuica its atmosphere, but they fired him because he made "incencitive jokes on the internet", to which he got fired because UWE feared the twitter mob, even though other people on dev team also said very controversial stuff, but they werent fired on anything, because their opinions, although way more messed up than the sound designers, are favored by the mob. UWE story writer made more effort virtue signaling than writing a good story, because every woman is "strong and independant"(I dont mind strong women, in fact I liked Margs charecter and I liked the charecter of the sunken ship capt.), what I have issues with is that the male charecters are: "awkward and incompetent seatruck pilot", "shady boss who doesnt like his bf but doesnt admit it", "some fat security guard who doesnt take his job seriously". Their charecters seemed uninteresting on purpose, like the writer was ticking boxes for the sake of virtue signaling to crowds that dont even play games whatsoever.

Although my account says 1.6 hours played, I played for 2k hours from the launcher.

I loved this game and it still has a soft spot in my heart, which makes it even more painful. This game was amazing when I first started playing it. I loved the progression, leveling up ships was fun, even with a low rank, low level ship, you wouldnt face someone more than 2 ranks higher than you. The game wasn't as P2W as it is now, I felt like destroyers were an interesting addition, but they ruined balance completely, where the MM would throw 12 v 2 destroyers in a match, and considering they were pre-garbage, it was a predetermined match. Ever since That'ga appeared, devs became less and less subtle about p2w, instead they became bold and with their business model, basically saying: "we know our game is suffering, but we won't do anything about it, so buy our new OP ships and dominate the battlefield just for 99.99 EUR." New ships and modules need GRINDING, and I don't mean spend a couple of days or weeks depending on your activity, I mean MONTHS and even a YEAR(cough, Ze'ta, cough), in which you could spend 100 EUR to get the ship fully decked out and completely DOMINATING everyone because of how busted the ship is(again, cough, Ze'ta, cough).

I think this game needs new management, less grind, more gameplay variations, more communication with players, balancing around credit ships instead of around most op ship at the moment, actual open space, interaction with npcs, more emphasis on relationships between the factions and mercenaries, more factions to choose from(aka sub factions of existing ones) and the list could go on.

cheaters everywhere, anti-cheat sucks, new content -why do we need?