Atomic Heart – Enchantment Under the Sea Review: Thrilling Underwater Odyssey

Since its somewhat rocky launch in 2022, Atomic Heart has received multiple updates and DLCs to make it a more fleshed-out game. The base game is set in an alternate, retro-futuristic Soviet Union in the 1950s. The story follows Major Sergey Nechaev, also known as P-3, who is sent to investigate a secret research facility, Facility 3826, that has been overrun by malfunctioning robots and mutated creatures. It combines elements of horror, science fiction, and political intrigue as players navigate a dystopian world filled with danger and mystery.

Despite its great premise, cheesy monologues, beautiful retro-stylized art style, good puzzles, and challenging combat, the game felt lacking because of its underdeveloped characters, limited open-world, and story that does its job but feels lacking. Also in terms of atmosphere, it never manages to reach the same level of immersion as the Metro and Stalker series titles and yet somehow manages to resonate with the likes of Wolfenstein.

To make up for these shortfalls, developer Mundfish has been hard at work experimenting with the game mechanics and churning out content after content in these two years. Their effort has been nothing short of noteworthy. With Enchantment Under the Sea DLC, it seems a complete edition of Atomic Heart is close at the gates.

Released on Jan 28, 2025, Enchantment Under the Sea is the third DLC of Atomic Heart. It continues the main storyline by taking players back to Facility 3826, where they explore the underwater Neptune Research Center.

From the Surface to the Depths

Enchantment Under the Sea picks up right after the events of the 2nd DLC “Trapped in Limbo,” where the protagonist and his wife find themselves in the ruins of Chelomey City. So if you have not finished the base game and the subsequent DLCs, their main objective is to recover the Beta Connectors, which P-3 discarded in the main campaign.

If you have not finished the base game or the DLCs, there’s a small recap intro that tries to get you back up to speed, but you would still feel out of your depth. So, it’s best if you finish those instead of directly jumping onto this third one.

With this DLC, Atomic Heart goes back to its roots and introduces enhanced versions of the robots and new fearsome enemies that include underwater mutants alongside the terrifying MOR-4Y. Compared to the Cheesecake Factory of Trapped in Limbo, this one is a big improvement. The overall narrative is better than the base game, thanks to its linear design and a more nuanced set of characters. The DLC averages around 3-4 hours of playtime similar to the previous DLCs “Annihilation Instinct” and “Trapped in Limbo” which also fall within that timeframe. 

Whip-it, Blaze-it

Alongside the story, the combat is also much better, thanks to Major’s two newfound tools as gloves that make the combat more strategic than before. My favorite was this grapple hook tool that you get very early in DLC and proves to be quite handy against the first boss Robogirl. It allows you to close in on your enemies, perform quick dodges, and access unreachable areas. It’s not as cool as Whip of Indiana Jones but it’s still pretty good. If only the base game had this tool, it would certainly be a bit more redeemable than it is now.

The second ability is Blaze, and while not as cool as the Whip, it is quite handy. This ability allows players to sling red-hot fireballs that deal area-of-effect damage, making it perfect for taking down groups of enemies.

Given the nature of challenging combat, enhanced robots, vicious mutants, and boss battles, it becomes essential for the players to use the tools at their disposal to their fullest potential. The Thunderclap hammer and the KM-4 Kuzmich shotgun also add a significant punch to Major’s inventory when he takes on the likes of MOR-4Y, a terrifying abomination that lurks in the darkest depths of the sea.

Still Good Looking as Ever

Atomic Heart was one of the best-looking titles that came out in 2022, and to this day its visuals still remain as good as ever with great improvements in performance optimization. Despite using UE4, its character models, environment, and in-game effects are better than most UE5 titles that demand twice as much in terms of hardware.

I was running this on a 3050Ti GPU, which hardly has 4 gigs of VRAM, and yet Atomic Heart manages to run well above 60 frames per second most of the time at 1080p to 1440p resolution with med-high preset. A big credit for that goes to the shader pre-compilation that occurs when you boot up the game for the first time. That being said, the game has also grown quite a bit in size and now occupies around 119 GB of storage, which is quite a bit concerning if your SSD is low on storage.

Real Talk

Compared to the huge departure in the Trapped in the Limbo DLC, Atomic Heart’s Enchantment Under the Sea is quite an improvement. It goes to the game’s roots, and linear designs help it to pack a tighter narrative than ever before. With new abilities and enemies as enhanced as they are in this DLC, the combat in Atomic Heart has never been better.

FINAL RATING: 85/100