Subnautica Review

Go deep down to the deep where you stranded in the middle of an ocean planet. Subnautica is a survival action-adventure game developed and published by Unknown World Entertainment. This is the game that always got recommended by all my friends who’ve tried it. A couple of months ago I receive a free copy of the game from Epic Game Store and I regret not buying it earlier. This is going to be my longest review, so bear with me.

Your name is Ryley Robinson, an Aurora spaceship survivor who got stranded in the middle of an alien ocean planet. You look for the remaining survivor that you’ll pray if there’s any. You go deeper and it is too late when you realize it wasn’t a good idea. You're going to search for materials and supplies. You craft a knife, suit, and other basic survival gear and suddenly you receive a distress signal to go out into the ocean.

You’ll find out more about the mystery of the crashed spaceship, follow by the mystery of the predecessor, and the planet itself until you’ll end up in the endgame with more than a day of playtime. The story that I never imagine would go that way which is blowing my mind. With the ending of a mixed expression of sadness and happiness, depending on how long you play this game. I play for 31 hours and it still makes my eyes teary.

You collect materials after you got out from the lifepod 5. The materials include titanium, silver, diamond, and many more as you go down deeper into the unknown. After collecting materials, you’ll create a base wherever you like to make yourself home to help you continue the story. As you're playing more, it becomes clear that you’ll need a Cyclops as your mobile base since the game rewards you for exploring the planet.

Beware of a giant alien fish swimming around in a circle, waiting for its meal. The giant alien fish is called the Leviathan, a classification for a large fish on the planet. But not all Leviathans are meat eaters, for example, the Reefback which is the second biggest Leviathan and the first Leviathan you’ll meet. Unlike the Reaper, it roars in the dark ocean when your vision is minimum, but it is too late because it is right in front of you.

As you progress through the story, the difficulty gets harder as you are searching for upgrades that you’ll need to go deeper. As you go deeper, many hostile creatures and spooky environments will terrify you. At the end game, where you know it’s about to finish, you find yourself full of materials that you probably need or ignore for the last mission. I nearly got angry at the end since I need to go back to the deep ocean to collect a specific material.

The creature creations are on point. Some of the easily recognize especially the Reaper Leviathan where it is the first aspect of the game that makes me want to play more. The seabed, the coral, even the alien structure itself gives you an idea that you’re not in a regular ocean. A bright color means it is a safe place, where dark color gives you an ominous feeling that something bad is about to happen anytime.

Notice that every time you travel from biomes to biomes, the background music changes, and it helps with the flow of the mood. I have an experience where the background music gives me an awesome chill beat until it was completely silent when I was approaching the Aurora. The sound design of the Leviathan can be heard before you even see it. I could never forget that sound for every creature in Subnautica.

I just want to say thank you to Unknown World Entertainment for the amazing game, I even give a standing applaud at the end credit. It because I have a weird mixed feeling at the end of the game where you have a deep connection with something on an alien planet. I definitely see myself playing this game to explore more and achieve the 100% completion. It was an awesome game, and I recommend everyone to play it.