what has changed since 2015?

[^4JB^7L^1ZR]

My friend wrote a review in 2015 and said it felt like a shallow pre alpha and that he didnt think much has changed since then, but the positive reception of the release has me compelled to ask how expansive is this game in content?

I would rather hear from the people who play 20-100 hours rather then the few minorities that have 500-1000 hours and say every little tiny pixel of the map and game is amazing.

[Amanoob105]

I'm one of the people in the latter group, just shy of 500. I'll try and stick to the spoiler free at first.

The game is not bug free (every little tiny pixel of the map and game is amazing, just not always at all times).
Some bits are easier to get the hang of than others. And if you haven't played any survival games before you won't likely have a clue what you're meant to do. And there's no auto-save, so if you forget to save before you log off.... Don't do that.

Also if you have a fear of deep waters....

The world does look beautiful, most of it glows in the dark and it's full of colour at most times (some areas more than others and some a lot less).
So long as you do try and keep looking for new options and new places you should be fine, don't let the first time you stick your head into a cave and an exploding fish takes your nose off discourage you from taking a closer look afterwards.

There is a story to follow (with an ending) but you aren't forced to do so and it's only in the first third/half of the game that you will be given direction of where you could be going, after that it stops holding your hand and drops you in the water on your own.

Some trips to the wiki may be needed, but not required. You can get by without, it'll just take a bit longer. Or a lot longer.

Running out of spoiler free info here. So, anything else I feel a could say I feel is said better (and funnier) in this review. It covers most of the key points, the good, the bad and the toothy.
Though if you care about story and plot, it's not quite a 100% spoiler free.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoETiwKEBT0

[Stormbringer]

Trump is president.

[Ryvaken Tadrya]

The game's content is about half as expansive as the story they tell with it, to the detriment of both content and story.

I'm a packrat and explorer. I love looking over every nook and cranny just to make sure I pulled everything I can out of a resource. Subnautica rewards this by drowning you in resources. When you start using titanium to build habitats to hold lockers made of more titanium that you then fill to the brim with titanium, you begin to question if maybe you have too much titanium. As well as everything else.

Scanning everything, searching everything, finding every blueprint, leaves you with two serious problems. First, the tech tree is pretty flat. At first you go up a logical progression of hand tools to get yourself established, and then there's only about three more tools to craft in the entire game and you're done. You can keep scanning things and searching wrecks, but there isn't much point to it. You can't make your old tools better, you can't make new tools. There are vehicles, but only three, and only the biggest poses any real challenge.

That leads to the next problem, interaction. You can't so much as pick up a packing crate with your bare hands. Everything you do is based on the tools you have, and every tool has one or two uses. So the flat tech tree becomes a ceiling on gameplay. There's nothing new for you to do, no better ways to do the things you've already done, and no hope of finding anything to change that.

[Wylie28]

Originally posted by TotallySerious:

[Contains some fanboy bias]

TL;DR: It has changed a lot in terms of story and content, but the gameplay is the exact same. The only reason you'd want to play this is for the plot and beautiful map.

The positive reception this game has is mostly due to the lore and non-linear way of telling it to you. All of the updates have added more recipes, biomes and creatures, but almost all for the sake of building the world and adding more value to the exploration. Every creature has it's own PDA entrance, wich describes it's biology and behaviour, and theories about it's evolutionary path. So do the plants, but those are about as shallow as the two final biomes of the game (so ironic), wich exist for the sole purpose of existing (and lore, I guess). The mysterious things you find throughout the game are what keep you attached to it, and when you figure out what it's all about (wich can be done very early in the game thanks to the optional hints and a little bit of theorizing), you still want to keep going because why not? It's a fun story. Not to mention that there's actually three storylines to learn about - all of wich are connected and explain even the tiniest details that you believe are plotholes. Keep in mind that 80% of the plot is explained through PDA entrances and your own reasoning so only the path your character takes is forced upon you. You can go through the game ignoring every other aspect of the plot if you want to, it's all backstory, after all.

Interestingly, the biggest flaw of the game is the design itself. By the time you reach the most important (story-wise) biome, you can have everything you can craft, and there is no point to gathering resources anymore, since you most likely will have all of the upgrades and vehicles necessary to finish the game. All that's left is exploration, right? No. After that the game hits you in the face with that cursed thing the dentist uses to grind your teeth (and sanity) off, and tells you it's the most important tool in the game. You have to move all around the map all over again looking for specific resources you didn't collect earlier because you didn't recieve any hints about their usefulness throughout the game. Even after you finish the story, got all the scans and built everything, the game pulls you in just for a little longer.
If you prepare yourself and get everything you need by the end of the game, it gets very uninteresting. The grind (wich is the whole game, by the way) doesn't reward you as much as it does in the beggining of the game, and everything feels pointless. Especially if you used your brain a little and got the plot figured out. The only reason you'd want to keep going is to get those achievements, wich are all related to reaching certain points in the story, by the way. There isn't a single one wich is an actual achievement.

The final part of the game has a cave with everything in it. Had you not stopped exploring and didnt rush you would have spent about 20 seconds.