![]() The story here is something you mostly have to piece together for yourself. The game splits itself into different chapters that subtly announce themselves by your progression. There’s no clear narrative or dialogue within the game, as there’s no verbal communication between the fox or any observers. Eventually, you’ll gain minimal guidance from the Guardian of the Northern Lights the ethereal spirit of another fox who leads him to various landscapes across the snowy tundra. At the start of the game, you’re whisked out into the snowy wilderness, seemingly on your own. ![]() This beautifully rendered fox has no name or clear motivation. In Spirit of the North, you take on the role of an ordinary fox. Debuting on PlayStation 4 last year, and later on PC and Switch, the game now arrives on PlayStation 5. The vast enjoyment I experienced in Spirit of the North: Enhanced Edition is something that I attribute to the capabilities of next-gen hardware and a welcome lack of coherent storytelling. Just exploration and taking in the sweet video game atmosphere. No enemies to fight, no crazy powerful boss to either hide from or destroy. Overall, I had a decent time with the game and enjoyed the atmosphere and some of the puzzles, but it never really did anything that wowed me or made me truly glad I played it.I’ve always had a thing for games with no discernible goal. Searching for them can certainly add a good amount of playtime if you’re so inclined. There are also collectibles in the form of finding staves and delivering them to corpses, and I found these to be difficult to locate. Spirit of the North offers decent length and will likely take most people about seven hours to get through. Towards the end, I also completely forgot that the fox could take spirit energy from statues after having deposited it to begin with. I think I’d done that just a single time before, and I’d simply forgotten about it. I got stuck for a while by a raging river, only to realize that the fox’s spirit walk allowed me to walk on water. However, some abilities are used so infrequently that you may forget you have them. Spirit of the North is not a difficult game by any means. And needlessly so, as they appear to just exist for you to slowly walk through and add nothing to the game. Early on, areas are mostly compact, but later on, some areas are huge. Add to that the fact that the areas can get very large, and it becomes a chore to play. But you get that quite late in the game, so you’re going to be moving suspiciously slow during the vast majority of the experience. I understand the gameplay reasons behind this, as mobility in Spirit of the North greatly increases with proper use of spirit dashes. Foxes can often run about 30-45 miles per hour and have excellent stamina, so it’s weird as hell to play as one that has the endurance of a middle-aged human survival-horror character. I’m far from an expert on foxes, but this is ridiculous. While holding the run button, it’ll run for about six seconds before it runs out of stamina and then requires another five or six seconds before it can run again. It can run, but it’s only for a bizarrely short amount of time. There’s also the fact that the fox is strangely slow. ![]() Therefore, most of the game is just looking for flowers and powering up statues, which isn’t particularly interesting. These can shift something in the environment, including opening pathways and raising or lowering water levels. The way general progression works is that you’re dropped into an area and need to move on, which is usually accomplished by getting spirit energy from a flower and then transferring it to a statue, which acts as a switch. In the beginning, the fox can only run and jump, though.Īs Spirit of the North progresses, you get access to additional spirit abilities, such as being able to temporarily control the spirit fox, charge a powerful bark to dispel corruption, and dash forward with a burst of speed. The fox only needs to walk above a glowing blue flower and bark, and the flower’s energy will course through it and cover its body with runes. ![]() Shortly after, a series of events unfolds where the fox gets enlisted in the fight against corruption and gains the ability to absorb spirit power from flowers and statues. Spirit of the North starts fairly weakly and mostly just has the fox walking forward through linear environments before meeting the spirit fox. ![]()
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