A sequel to a much-loved cult classic released in 2019, Spirit of the North 2 sees you play as a fox on a mysterious journey to restore the ancient guardians in order to return home.
Once you've customised your fox (no, really!) you awaken and start your exploration of the ancient-looking clifftop fortress. Platforming with a fox is fairly easy but some ledges are narrow or slippery and so an "aimed jump" mechanic makes a blue triangle appear on any area/ledge you can jump to, so you just press "A" and the fox makes the jump. You are not alone and are accompanied by an unlikely ally, a wise raven that will helpfully point you in the right direction if you get lost, and even airlift you across previously un-jumpable gaps once you've found the Companion Rune.
Your main challenge is simply traversing the terrain, and figuring out what to do and where to go next. A menacing red beacon that stretches from the heavens down to the ground always points you to a place where something can be opened, explored or cleansed. Runes can be obtained from chests which grant up to 6 different abilities at a time–some of which will really help. As you unlock a new rune ability a quick, easy to understand tutorial can be accessed. Sadly equipping a new rune is a fiddly affair that had precisely zero thought applied to it. Given that you can obtain runes for Foxy's head, back, legs and tail, selecting the rune that gives you faster running, the ability to enter the spirit realm or even sink underwater is unnecessarily time-consuming. This is compounded by the fact that only one rune can be used per body area.
By spending the wisps of light (which are lost souls) you collect along the way at Obelisks, you expand your map-a bit like climbing a tower in Assassin's Creed. Other landmarks include statues of Éona, and should your fox die, you'll be reborn at the last statue that you lit. Progress is often made by unlocking stone doors by returning lost weapons to ancient guardian statues and empowering them. Crystal shards are mostly collected by breaking pots and can be used as currency at various Raccoon vendors to purchase various items (some buffs, extra wisps and items to customise your fox.)
Apart from a few "boss" battles against impossibly massive, powerful and invariably pissed-off creatures, the four most serious threats to Fox's wellbeing are falls from height, the red death fog that infests the island, infected thorns and fire. Exploration is the dominant gameplay element in SotN2, but the world is sparsely populated and only really has pots to break in terms of collectibles. I found that too much curiosity invariably killed the fox, and you can waste hours trying to get to places for no reason other than "but... it looked interesting from over there..."
As with most open world games, there's a lot of clipping, some unhelpful camera work and more sticky scenery that I'd expect in an Unreal Engine 5-powered game. A common example is that the fox frequently gets stuck on badly-constructed stairs (due to a designer's careless placement) and this is in stark contrast to the beautiful animation of our foxy hero–who really looks alive. The world itself is both beautiful and desolate, and begs to be explored, with trees and water as realistic as anything I've seen‐RDR2 and all. So I was especially surprised and disappointed by a horrible graphical glitch in The Wind Cavern and there were even a couple of holes in the world that I fell through. One, at Misthaven Orchard, even saved my game UNDERGROUND! I was a couple of hours into the game at this point but fortunately the "warp to Fox's den" respawn came to my rescue (hold down on the D-pad)–maybe this was included for just such a circumstance...?
I love the way foxy curls up and has a snooze if you leave the controller for a while, and the relationship between fox and raven is cool too, but a bit more expansion on the back story and maybe an audible narrator would have improved the player's understanding of the plot and mythology without a doubt.
One of the most testing areas in the game,The Forbidden Crypt, was a serious challenge but not as challenging as simply selecting a different rune, which could have been done via a sort of "weapon wheel" but instead involves hitting a menu button, selecting the runes section and picking a required rune from the large selection eventually available.
While SotN2 has fixed several of the original game's issues, things like waiting around for foxy's spirit energy to recharge is a ridiculous, irritating waste of time, even with the "speed up spirit energy regen" rune equipped. As addictive as I found SotN2, completing the game was a real labour of love. Some other less constant but still annoying features are; a glitchy camera (when walls or ceilings are close), a few previously visited locations that become dead-end traps (from which the only recourse is warping back to your last visited home) and Foxy's habit of bouncing off things you try and jump onto (like it has a rubber nose, and then sliding down steep slopes). There are many tricky platforming sections and they demand a great deal of skill and patience, despite the previously mentioned excellent aimed jump feature.
What we have here is a slightly flawed but great-looking, atmospheric and epic adventure of the canine kind. I'm 50+ hours into the game and haven't quite finished it yet, and at £24.99 that's value for money in anyone's book.
Many thanks to Infuse Studio , Silver Lining and PressEngine for the review code.