I’ve long wanted to play Subnautica. The vibe of the depths was really appealing. Let’s say that, for the year the game was released, it lived up to expectations, but nowadays it feels a bit outdated. There are plenty of ways to progress; you could even call it a sandbox. You can build a cool underwater base at any depth, park your vehicles, and so on. The Cyclops submarine gives a particularly strong vibe—it’s just amazing. The ability to carry smaller vehicles with you, the storage lockers for items, and the huge viewing window—all make it an absolutely fantastic vehicle, like a second home. You move around in it, worry about it getting attacked, and it holds all your belongings. Really awesome.

The underwater atmosphere is simply amazing. It’s the first game in a long time that genuinely scared me. The cries of the large Leviathans, which you can’t see due to the darkness in the water, are truly frightening and keep you cautious. The storyline is average; it could have been better, and what’s especially frustrating is that to test most of the content, you’re forced to swim across the entire map in the dark, searching for new crafting blueprints. The final medicine craft, in particular, requires literally finding specific plants you might have ignored entirely. In short, there are parts where you have to Google where and what is located, otherwise it could take days of searching. It would be fine if the exploration were engaging, but it’s basically just swimming across the entire map. There are few hints about what to do, so you’re forced to improvise, and the engine itself has minor bugs.

The game is truly unique in its own way; nothing like it exists on the market, and the style is very interesting. The Leviathans are genuinely terrifying, and the cool thing is that as a new player, you don’t know what’s down in the depths—you can only guess how big some creatures are. The problem is that by the end of the game, you stop caring about them; they no longer evoke fear or discomfort, so the game becomes one-off. A second playthrough will feel different atmospherically, not like the first time.

I would like to see more vehicles, more functional inventory items, more Leviathans, and deeper locations—at least down to 8,000 meters—and to turn the deepest areas into true horror. Playing the game was never boring; sometimes it was even fun. It’s great to think about what to take in your inventory, how to manage your energy and batteries, and how to position your vehicles so they don’t suffocate when oxygen runs low.

Even though I’ve completed it, I still feel like playing again, perhaps differently or with mods. It’s just so atmospheric. If there were more hints for the player on what to do, and the annoying moments of blindly searching for items were removed, the game could easily be rated three out of four—or even four out of four. Until that’s fixed—and it probably won’t be—the loud 50% is the only objective score the game really deserves.