

That was bad enough, but combined with the poor controls, lack of engaging gameplay, an inability to manually save and infrequent checkpoints, every session was a slog.
SPIRIT OF THE NORTH STORY SERIES
Sadly, my drive to persist was sapped by a series of glitches in one section that led me to replay the same should-have-been-easy bit over and over again. Unfortunately, the atmosphere and environments aren’t as impressive as they should be in the Switch version that this review is based on. It felt like the purpose of North was the experience itself, which unfortunately did not satisfy despite my appreciation of its non-violent gameplay and spiritual/regenerative themes.Īside from the unsatisfying gameplay and absent plot, what remains of North is a somewhat relaxing, sometimes frustrating breeze through inspiring visuals. Aside from these fairly obvious tasks, the huge environments offer little reason to explore and serve as filler terrain.įrom a narrative point of view, I couldn’t make out much about the plot aside from a side objective of bringing scepters to their skeletal owners, pleasing their spirits. The solutions to puzzles are extremely straightforward - some require platforming and others a logical use of the magical spirit abilities, but many are so simple that they’re almost ‘accidentally’ solved. The controls are stiff, sprinting is limited, walking is frustratingly slow and jumping is awkward and physically unrealistic, feeling both imprecise and slippery. While I appreciated these themes, North comes up short in gameplay. Throughout the next chapter, its movement is limited to a slow limp, which is ended only by the healing grace of the fox spirit soon after. The scene that most inspired me in this respect is one where the player’s fox breaks its leg after a fall. At times, the scenery truly comes alive - moments like helplessly gliding down a waterfall, jumping from a natural fountain or zipping through the air with spiritual energy are where North is at its strongest. I appreciated this design choice, as it moves away from violence in favor of environmentalism.Īside from accumulating and using spiritual energy, there’s a lot of platforming to be done. Once inhabited by human civilization – apparent from skeletal remains found in the area - the environments provide ample spiritual associations, including the red-stained skies which indicate the player’s path to objectives.īy using different kinds of spiritual energy borrowed from the fox spirit, corrupted obstacles in the environment must be removed.

At worst, this third person puzzle-adventure struggles to generate enough interest to keep a player going.Īs a wordless story without narration, North follows a red fox whose adventure begins with an encounter with the fox spirit of the Northern Lights in a location ostensibly inspired by Iceland’s natural scenery. At its best, it’s a tribute to natural wonder in an interactive, immersive form. There are few titles that garner my respect based on ambition alone, and of those, none fail as spectacularly as Spirit of the North. WTF Seeing the beauty of Iceland in heavily downgraded form. HIGH Environmentalist themes of natural beauty and peace.
