Spirit of the North 2

This is one of those games that makes me wish steam had a mixed review option. There are so many things I like about this game. The problem is none of them are playing the game itself. The story is great, the world is absolutely beautiful, and the character design is excellent. All this would be much more enjoyable if it weren't an absolute slog to play. First and foremost this game has the worst optimization of any game I've seen in over a decade, and I have a PC that can run 99% of games at full graphics with zero trouble. The lag at higher settings is genuinely unplayable, and even medium lags regularly. Autosaves frequently caused the game to lag so bad it froze and crashed (literally had to reboot my PC multiple times task manager wouldn't even work). And the worst offender, every time you start it up, it takes a full minute to two minutes just to prepare shaders. This game came out in 2025 and runs poorly compared to games from 2010. Beyond that though, this game unfortunately doesn't know what it wants to be at all. It wants to be an exploration game but bosses are lengthy, souls like battles with no checkpoints. It wants to be an open world, but you are forced to explore the map in a linier fashion. It wants to be fast paced, but the stamina limits are so strict and slow to recharge any momentum feels punishing. It wants to be immersive, but every interaction with the environment involves lengthy, unskippable cutscenes. It wants to be a puzzle game, but it regularly breaks its own internal logic. This game honestly would have been fine at a three to five hour length with a lower price tag. But for a 20+ hour game selling for thirty dollars, the amount of fundamental flaws is completely unacceptable. I wish the creators had chosen a different media to tell their story, because they clearly had vision, and this shines in the writing and visual design. But the game itself just isn't worth putting time into, especially for the price.

this is one of the best adventure games ive played, like i love norse mythology and and its just like it! and also i love foxes, so id recommend this game for those who love norse mythology and foxes!

I personally dont understand how people like this I game I 100% the first one, but this game is just terrible, glitchy and hard to understand

[h1]Fox, Dungeons and two Glowing Runes[/h1] [b]Key features[/b] [list] [*]a much bigger sequel, [*]Interesting runes aka builds, [*]You can drown the fox and run underwater! [/list] [b]General thoughts[/b] Amazing game, lots of areas to explore and mini riddles to solve. Travelling becomes an issue. Very simple, yet cool and unique boss fights. Added loot mechanics rewards with new furs and eye colour. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3787343148 [b]Whoa, it's so big[/b] [strike]what she said[/strike] The map in SotN 2 is unreasonably huge. It needs to be smaller. I acknowledge that this might be a (stupid) personal complain. Look at my play time - it's mostly from running between points of interests. You just spend so much time on running from one ruins to another (often empty), where then you smash pots and collect in-game currency or solve a tiny puzzle (placing weights on ground), and then run off. [u]Turtle DLC helps with that - it adds more fast travel points, so consider getting it.[/u] However. The way all those regions flawlessly change from one into another is awesome. It's not like a sudden change green forest/snow border. It's very smooth and partially excuses the map scale. There are also a few weather events going on - crystal meteorite shower, mushroom turtle, racoons and wisps chase. And if you dare to swim in the sea... well, watch out! [b]Dungeons![/b] I loved the underground dungeons. Run with torch, dodge thorns, climb them cliffs (pain if you lose a torch!), all of these efforts to reach a chest with a skill point or a new fur. There's also runes (local gear) to discover. One allows to run underwater (my favourite), another turns you into a light, so you can explore w/o jeopardizing yourself, 3rd will give a flight boost and so on. Combinations can be very interesting and helpful for both exploration and boss fights. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3785758624 [b]Wild life[/b] Bosses encounters were engaging. Each had individual pattern, each granted a specific power and each happened in a new region, kinda forcing you to explore that area and stock up on experience before entering the fight dome. Dodge, dodge, attack. Run, run... run again, attack. Simple, satisfying, well done! https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3789425040 It's a much better Fox game, significant growth and improvement since the first Spirit. I just wish the map was smaller 😅 Recommend it :)

[h1]A raposa guardiã da aurora está de volta!![/h1] Quando um estúdio resolve fazer uma sequência de um jogo que já foi um sucesso inesperado, e investe carinho, dedicação, comprometimento e ambição, o resultado só poderia ser esse: um excelente jogo que vai muito além de seu modesto antecessor em todos os aspectos. Aqui nos deparamos com um universo expandido: mundo aberto expandido (diferente do anterior, que era menor e mais linear), novos personagens apresentados, os guardiões animais, gráficos lindos e surreais, level design bem detalhista e uma trilha sonora espetacular. Outra inovação foi a ampla customização da raposa e a adição de uma skill tree + runas úteis para dar novas vantagens e engajar a exploração. E o q falar da trama ? instigante, nos mostra q jogo bom não precisa, necessariamente, de diálogos explicativos quando é tudo tão profundo e cativante. as lores scrolls (coletáveis espalhados pelo mapa q contam todo contexto da lore) são importantes e indispensáveis para vc ler e se aprofundar, pois, contam a história do mundo e de seus guardiões, já q afinal, repito, o jogo n possui diálogos. [spoiler]Fiquei de cara quando desvendei a origem paterna de Grimnir (antagonista do jogo)[/spoiler]. Quem está conhecendo o jogo agora, sem nunca ter jogado o primeiro, pode estranhar a falta de ação e rotular ele, injustamente, como um "walking simulator", mas não é isso. Imagine um simulador de raposa com pequenos puzzles, exploração satisfatória e um enredo esplêndido. Ele foi feito para se jogar relaxado, com os pés no chão, seguindo o seu ritmo leve e aconchegante. Meus parabéns a todo o estúdio e à equipe de desenvolvedores, o salto evolutivo que este jogo teve é impressionante. Me cativou bastante do começo ao fim! Ressalva: um pequeno desapontamento em relação ao mundo aberto. É um mapa grande e muito bonito, porém quase sem vida. senti a falta de um pouco mais de diversidade na fauna e flora para deixar o mundo mais "vivo", um pouquinho mais não deixaria o jogo sobrecarregado. tirando as arquiteturas e ruinas é td um grande ''vazio''. (quem jogou Sonic Frontiers sabe do que estou falando). E não há lá muito o que fazer além dos objetivos da história e lugares para visitar, sem side-quests, evidentemente. Dito isso, encerro minha review com uma questão: realmente precisava ser um mapa tão grande ?? Nota geral: 9/10.

Big fan of Spirit of the north - the first game! I loved it.. The second game I have now completed to a 100 procent and I will say; 1. The freezing parts are sooo frustrating (and my pc runs fine) 2. The world seems too big for what's there .. There is soo much emptiness 3. The ending is still soo unclear (even though I have completed it completly) 4. U have to learn by yourself.. Many times I figured out as I would go how to example teleport back to my last sleeping place and going trough dreamcathers? The positives though are that I love all the customization and the story is also good except not knowing fully what happens later. The world is also very beautiful and the boss fights are awesome. The companion of the Raven is great too - at least there is some other life than only you as a fox. But I would rather go back and play the first game again .. I would still recommend the game, only if u had played the first game first. I hope the freezing parts will be fixed so it gives a better and smooth experience.

I do love this game, but I have a few gripes with it: 1. The optimisation feels half-assed to non-existent. The game occasionally freezes or straight up crashes (requiring a force close through task manager), and before you're even able to play it has to take a few minutes loading shaders. The LODs on some models are horrendous (looking at you, trees!), but that could be because I am unable to play at the highest settings despite having a pretty bulky PC. There is also often, and without understanding why, a strange flickering of black across tree and bush models, anything with leaves. 2. The world is WAY too large and empty for its size It feels bad to say because there ARE quite a few things to do and explore, but for how small a fox is, the world is HUMONGOUS, and there are no easy ways to cross large distances. The closest is the portal system, but that's finnicky and requires a constant back and forth to get to a right portal to teleport elsewhere and then trek to the actual location you want to go to. The rune that allows for faster sprinting also helps, but both are REAL gimmicks and feel practically useless if you wanna go somewhere specific. You still have so much to run all. the. time. Because of this I probably won't ever replay this game, while the first game is still on my replay list. 3. Very obviously an Unreal Engine game There just doesn't seem to be a fun, unique artstyle to this game. It's another rehashed realistic game using assets that feel way too familiar for a game that is supposed to be unique. The textures feel abundant and lack variety and make it visually a most boring game to look at. The only time the game truly looks stunning (to me) is when it's sunny and I'm in the forest area. Even then the sun can randomly just POP in its lighting rather than being a gradual fade. Now, there are some improvements compared to the first game. The jump now showing a preview is very nice (if not it being quite glitchy...), and the open world aspect IS very fun. The lack of handholding is a double-edged sword for me (as an autistic person), since sometimes a puzzle was too unclear to me and I had to look up the solution. But I had fun throughout the game, even when needing to look stuff up. It took me a bit to get into, but in the end I do not regret paying for and playing it. Sometimes stuff was REALLY unclear of what was connected to what, though. Even now there are handles I have no idea what it did when I pulled them. The mechanic of showing the linear path the player could take (to get through the story) was definitely appreciated. The red streaks in the sky are very clear and easy to follow. The customisation of the fox was cute, if not a gimmick (to me personally). The runes are a fun idea of varying gameplay somewhat, but there are a few that are OBVIOUSLY the best rune for traversing the space and solving puzzles. I don't think I ever used the Thorn Walker rune, for example. TL;DR: A fun successor to part 1, but it has a few glaring issues that one needs to look past to truly enjoy the game for what it is.

This one deserves a long review I guess, the game has huge map, very good scenery, landscapes, music, atmosphere, but unfortunately, I can't recommend the game due to it has to be polished and polished by the developers, even though it was released back in 2025, more then a year passed, it still has ridiculous bugs, glitches, and sometimes just physics issues. 1. At the start it was not clear where to go and what to do, well, after some time I realized, that main navigations are the red stripes in the sky. 2. Lack of wisps.... OMG it was really difficult for me at the beginning of the game to have enough wisps, fixed it by finding website mapofthenorth, was buying enough wisps from the raccoons, also by being stressed by lack of wisps, I spent most of the skillpoints on number of wisps can be carried, which resulted into a problem later. 3. I became happy, when I fixed the the lack of wisps issue, until I experienced several bugs which resulted into ragequit and deletion of the game one time, one time I climbed the area which was not intent to be climbed so I fell under the textures and died, lost all the crystals. Other time I got stuck in the textures in some village inside the wall of the house. Then when fighting the Ram boss and loosing, for some reason checkpoint right before his arena wasn't active, I had to climb his hill again from the start, each time you get defeated by him... frustrating. 4***(BIG ONE)***. Soft lock at the final boss due to lack of spirit energy...... well, I mentioned above, that I spent most of skills points to carry more wisps with me, so at the final boss, who fighting with I died 20+ times due to minor glitches or bugs, I discovered, that stag phase can not be passed due to I have no enough spirit energy, and multiple youtube walkthroughs showed 6+ cells, and I had only 5. So the game design allowed me to reach final boss without having enough resouces to complete the game, absurd! I had to go back, find ancient tree, get skill point and then I was able to defeat the boss, when I had 6 spirit energy cells. When you make a game, you have to understand, that not all people will discover most of the map, some gamers are just doing main missions in the game/story, some of them are completionists, or doing main/side, so basically, it was not in the mind of developers, that someone can speedrun the game, and have not enough spirit energy at the end of the game, which results into soft lock.

I am so sad about this game... as so many others have pointed out the optimization is terrible, staggeringly so. The constant lag even on the lowest graphics settings and losing the ability to move camera approximately every 2 minutes makes this completely unplayable for me. I made it about 45 minutes and had to give up. I am very disappointed, this game has so much potential and looks beautiful, but until optimization gets sorted out it is a lost cause. Obviously I made it through very little gameplay, but even in the short time I played I was frustrated multiple times by how easy it is to loose the raven guide, and figure out where to go next. Trying to follow a little black bird in a huge world with often dark environments is not ideal. Giving the raven a glowing outline, or maybe a glowing trail to follow to the next objective would be a vast improvement.