Four years ago, I reviewed Spirit of the North: Enhanced Edition… and I wasn’t exactly blown away by it. Well, the fox is back and it is sequel time, as developer Infuse Studio and publisher Silver Lining Interactive now have Spirit of the North 2 for me to review.

“Unveil the mysteries of a beautiful ancient world in this breathtaking 3rd-Person Adventure, a sequel to the acclaimed ‘Spirit of the North.’ Take on the role of an isolated fox with a raven companion on a quest to restore the lost guardians and return home.”

Just for clarity, I didn’t really dislike the first game, I just felt that it was lacking any real depth and it got a bit samey before long. It was okay at best and more meat could’ve made it a far more interesting title. So then, does this sequel deliver? Well, yeah… it does. Much like the first game, Spirit of the North 2 is a gorgeous looking title. The locales you get to explore are very pretty and I often found myself running around the various biomes, just admiring the scenery. Also like the first game, the storytelling here is bare minimal. There’s no dialogue and you learn everything via scrolls and wall paintings that you’ll find scattered around.

The biggest change over the original game is that this sequel has gone for an open world approach instead of the more linear style of the first game. For me, that is a massive improvement as it allows for much more exploration and freedom. Speaking of which, Spirit of the North 2 doesn’t do much handholding, you are encouraged to take that little fox for a run and to find your own way. There is a red ribbon that flies in the sky and roughly guides you where to go. But that only give you a general idea of what area you need to be in. When you get there, it’s up to you to work out what needs to be done, and how.

Kicking off by letting you create your own custom fox via a character creator. There’s a lot of options on offer too. However, the differences are still quite subtle and your custom fox is still going to look pretty much like any other fox. You can’t make any Frankenstein-like monstrosities as with other character creator tools in other games. Throw in an skill tree system and everything is in place for a Canidae adventure that’ll see you seeking out runes, saving guardians and cleaning up the land.

The mechanics here are really quit simple. You’ve got ‘yer jump, you have several jumps, in fact. You can just do a standard jump, there’s a running  jump and a precession jump. This precession jump sees a little blue arrow appear to tell you exactly where you will land. It’s very handy for exploring and tricky platforming sections. There’s no combat, but there are still several boss battles… if that makes any sense. The boss fights are usually more puzzle based than combat based. There are several puzzles in Spirit of the North 2 (boss fight and other) which strike a decent balance between being tricky and solvable. Nothing too taxing and you’ll never really get stuck.

As I said before, this is more open world and exploration is a must. There are landmarks and more to find, and if you discover special obelisks, you can open your map up a fair bit and more of your surroundings will be revealed. Very handy indeed. If you have played the first game, then Spirit of the North 2 offers you more of the same, but much improved. Honestly, I enjoyed this sequel far more then its predecessor. There are new skills to learn that give the game a bit of a Metroidvania feel. The skill tree keeps you wanting to progress, and the exploration is really very enjoyable.

Spirit of the North 2 offers up a more relaxed and calming slant to the action-adventure genre. You can crack on with the main story and plough your way to the end credits if you really want to. Or, you can kickback, take in the beautiful looking environments and have a more chilled out journey to the end. Spirit of the North 2 is everything that I wanted the first game to be. However, the openness and lack of handholding direction could be a bugbear to some.