Recent reviews by Monkeyfish

TL/DR: this game is not as good as the original, but it was never going to be, and thats ok, its still a very decent follow up (despite some rather nasty bugs).

its basically just more good subnautica, there are some more structure to the story, more characters and voice work, which i personally like.
a bit of land based exploration, but its not so much that it stops feeling like subnautica, and having to monitor cold instead of O2 is a pretty fun little mechanic, but it honestly never really became a problem, there are too many caves and holes to hop into, or warmth-giving food to eat, for it to ever really become a serious threat.
the prawn feels absolutely useless, but its not like i got much use out of the prawn in the original game, so no big difference there.
i do very much miss my cyclops tho, the seatruck and its modules are a really cool idea, but i miss the pure awesomeness i got from seeing the cyclops get fabricated that first time, and hearing its awesome robot voice go "welcome aboard captain, all systems online" whenever i got inside.
but actually, the seatrucks modules are a lot more useful than the cyclops was, the only downside of them is that i would like to be able to put a rear mounted cam on the seatruck, when it starts getting really long.
i did encounter some pretty serious bugs, getting stuck in the driving seat of the seatruck, unable to exit or do anything, the only way to solve it, without loosing 5 hours of gameplay, was to use console commands, which mean i got locked out of half of the games achievments.
its not as good as the first one, but it was never going to be, and anybody believing otherwise were fooling themselves, the novelty of the first one is what made it so popular, and due to this being a sequel, that novelty is not there, and it would therefore never be able to live up to the original, but despite some nasty bugs, its still a really decent follow up, and i had a lot of fun playing it, discovering what happened to the people who lived here, by following the breadcrumbs of pdas scattered all throughout the world.
ps. getting to the end of the map, and just staring into the void of the black endless sea, fills me with just as much dread this time around as it did last time.

this game is so much fun for LAN parties, get a couple of mates together and blow, shoot, stab, vaporize and otherwise maim the ♥♥♥♥ out of each other.