Spirit of the North 2 was provided by Silver Lining Interactive for review. Thank you!
Spirit of the North sets the stage almost perfectly for its sequel. The first game relies hugely on exploration and somewhat decent puzzles, with quite a short length of about 4-5 hours. Spirit of the North 2, on the other hand, features huge open-world exploration, with one of the biggest maps I have experienced. And while some complained about the world of the first game feeling bland and having weak puzzles, Spirit of the North 2 impressed me with its resemblance to some of my favorite games, with exploration reminding me of Elden Ring.
When starting the game, you have numerous options to customize your fox. Many choices are available, from Fur and Eyes to how bulky or cute you want to let your fox be. The game doesn’t block you from further customization either, and you can change your fox’s fur and eyes at any time from the menu.
The story of Spirit of the North 2 relies on its beautiful music and imagery to paint pictures. It starts at the Fox Village, your fox’s home, with beautiful landscapes, and where other foxes live peacefully. You solve a puzzle about the Obelisk, a unique tomb that helps you learn about your surroundings. However, things take a dark turn when ancient soldiers are awakened, causing Fox Village to be lost. Now you're on a journey to fix your village while learning about the Guardians and their memories.
Open-world exploration for Spirit of the North 2 can surely feel overwhelming at the start. You will be confused about your objective, or where to go, and how to access a certain area, as puzzles are the main gameplay mechanic. But the longer you play, the more exploration will make sense, and it ends up fitting perfectly.
Spirit of the North 2 offers six different regions, and each region is gigantic in size, with Portals to fast travel between the regions. This is one of the best features in this game and can be very useful, as travelling on your tiny feet will cost a ton of time. The game also features your cozy Raven Companion, which ended up being way more helpful than I initially thought.
Spirit of the North 2's reliance on exploration is greater than the first game, which was more linear. Wisps are one of the main items you find during your exploration, and these help you unlock different areas. It can be confusing to find these Wisps, but they are usually close to where you will require them or need to explore.
Exploration and Puzzles in the Spirit of the North 2 world are the main highlights as you come across some caves, vaults, glaciers, and small puzzles like opening locked doors. These areas allow you to gather Runes and Skill Points, which you can then use to customize your fox as well as make it more powerful. On top of that, the Skill Tree is perfectly balanced with companion skills and Fox skills like Extra Health, Less Fall Damage, and Extra Wisps. These come in handy when you’re required to dive into a hidden cave or solve a puzzle that requires Wisps and some traversal skill.
The other main part of progression is Runes, which grant different effects to augment how you play, and you can find them while exploring. Some Runes can grant you special effects, like the Glide Rune, which can help you glide, and some special Runes can help you unlock exclusive fox skins for customization.
Spirit of the North 2 heavily relies on music and small cutscenes to highlight the story, but there are also other ways you can learn about the world. Scrolls are scattered throughout its different regions, covering stories about what has happened in the different areas, padding out the lore. This is another reason I compared exploration to Elden Ring, and it’s a good way to learn about the past.
Guardians and memories are new encounters in Spirit of the North 2, which requires you to solve a decent number of puzzles and explore to figure out. Once you’re done with them, you'll face that Guardian. The game doesn’t feature traditional combat, but instead, you help the bosses, or sometimes, escape from them, and learn their memories. I enjoyed these encounters, and I would say they are the highlight of my playthrough.
The game can sometimes feel repetitive, but as the regions offer different terrain types and various puzzles, it switches it up enough to keep things interesting. One comparison I can make of this is with the recent release South of Midnight, where you constantly go through different memories and learn them by going through a similar task. But in Spirit of the North 2, it’s quite open-world, and you can choose to do what puzzle you would like to solve first and then move to the next one to get to the Guardian encounters.
With Spirit of the North 2 being a massive open world with forest and foliage, it struggles on the Steam Deck. It does support the 1280x800 resolution as well as having controller support, but struggles heavily to keep up to 30 FPS, and mainly is in the low 20s with FSR 3.1 enabled and set to Quality.
However, the upscaler performance is similar in Balanced and Performance, with FPS reaching 25 FPS. It can reach 30 FPS on Ultra Performance, but still dip below. The visuals are blurry because there are so many trees and foliage, making it look more pixelated. The TDP was also between 23 W to 30 W, which consumed the battery quickly. It should leave you about 2 hours of battery if you play on the Steam Deck. But I wouldn’t recommend it as it wasn’t a great experience and strained my eyes.
Spirit of the North 2 is a perfect sequel with a massive open world to explore and solve puzzles to find your way. However, the game has poor optimization, which could be due to the big open world. Some tasks, like solving puzzles for the Guardians and their memories, can feel repetitive. Otherwise, the game is great and a huge upgrade from the first one.
Steam Deck performance is terrible. The game runs mainly below the 20s while on 1280x800 resolution on Low settings without enabling an upscaler. Moreover, it still doesn’t reach 30 FPS or above while using FSR 3.1.
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Spirit of the North 2 is a fantastic follow up to the original, even with some minor grievances here and there, though it isn't one to play on the Steam Deck.
