Unsurprisingly, Northern Journey runs quite well. I have not experienced any crashes, glitches, or stutters of any kind. I have experienced a lot of bugs—just not the technical kind. NJ does also not offer a lot of customizeability, however, neither in graphical options, and there is a lot to talk about when it comes to how movement physics work or how the A.I. feels barely held together by duct tape and Norwegian shamanism. 

To reiterate, NJ features movement that is fast, a bit floaty, and with its higher than usual FOV, it can occasionally feel like a late 90’s shooter. This makes it feel oddly intuitive, but this sort of movement also feels at odds with the world- and enemy-design. For the former, it is due to an abundance of, not necessarily precise platforming, but platforming nonetheless. Far and beyond the biggest threat in NJ is gravity and water, which should be sensible given the hiking theme, but in actuality, it feels just as if any and every kind of surface is just a bit slippery. This can become especially frustrating during underwater sections, when you add omnidirectional movement, or during sections of the game that feature narrow arenas with hazardous water surfaces and poor visibility.

The second element to these movement critiques are the weapons. NJ is an FPS just as much as it is an atmospheric game about exploration, and almost every weapon is some sort of projectile that needs to adhere to an arc. Spears, bows, throwing axes, a sling—one key mechanic of the game is an indicator for the arc your weapon’s projectile is going to travel in, which is good, but it doesn’t work well when movement is as floaty and your enemies are in the vast majority thin and agile bugs, making each combat encounter just as much about wrestling to try and aim accurately as about fighting the actual enemy.

NJ looks both atrocious and fantastic at times. Environments, for all the limitations of the game, are mostly gorgeous and get ever better the greater the scale becomes, as the somewhat low textures start mattering less. Add to that very competent lighting, and NJ manages to expertly capture an atmosphere totally coherent with what is happening in the level you are playing through.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3265331515

Furthermore, enemies were integrated just as cleanly into the levels. From spiders that blend into the brown Fern in the marshes as part of their ambush tactics to the Nixie living in the swamp and whose glowing eyes haunt the player as you barely manage to stumble your way forward, atmosphere and environmental art direction are by far NJ’s strongest points.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3266611193

Where it’s less convincing are the humanoid models and the various animations. Anything resembling a human, including enemies, is hideous. And I refuse to excuse this by art style alone, as those previous examples very clearly show a competency beyond needing to make things more ugly to fit into the vibe of the game.

Sound is similar, excelling in ambient music and occasionally including tracks simply to throw the player a bit off-guard. Especially early on, sound is also a key component in being able to discern enemies. The skittering of spiders, for example, might be the best clue a player has to really guess their location, which also works to make the atmosphere more tense when needed.

Playing an unnamed traveler, your boat is shot down, and you consequently shipwreck at the edge of a village nestled against the wilderness. Upon approaching said village, the player encounters a flute player who conscripts the player to track down items that have been stolen from him in order to leave. Very quickly, though, the game departs from any sort of groundedness as supernatural occurrences start happening.

While NJ clearly is steeped in some folklore as its inspiration, most notably the Nixie being the cover of the game, I struggle to call its story much more than inspired gibberish. The flavor text of most characters is barely coherent, and I have a feeling that this is on purpose solely due to some events being designed to be clearly exaggerated. It’s a story and setting that is weird for weirdness sake, which in and of itself is absolutely fine, but it's something to be aware of when considering whether this title fits the experience you want from it.

A lot of the critique I have regarding the gameplay has been included in the movement further above, so I won’t be repeating that, and instead I want to talk a bit more about the level, enemy, and quest design. 

Firstly, NJ is dissected into different areas, which vary pretty wildly in length and openness. Areas such as Greenslit are very open, with multiple ways to explore it from the get-go, whereas the further you progress in the game, levels start to continuously narrow down into becoming essentially corridors. This is also noticeable due to the game’s quest system losing importance alongside this trend of narrowing levels. Early ones may ask you to gather a number of items to clear the way into the next level or to assemble plot-critical items as a way to encourage having explored an area. Often, these felt like frustrating busywork as you scour an empty map three times over due to an overlooked lever, just like the barriers that occasionally block your progress until you have killed a number of enemies. 

Enemy placement undergoes a similar trend, as in early levels, enemies are scattered around the more open area and present more of a constant potential threat, whereas later levels tend to put a whole clowncar of spiders into a single combat arena. This is awful in a lot of ways, and mostly it just feels wasteful. Take the worst enemy in the game by far, giant ticks. This is an enemy that is introduced as a bug that sits in the trees above you and drops down once you get close enough. If it manages to sneak a hit, it will attempt to run off and spawn more ticks. 

This enemy is present in a single forest clearing and never again. It’s maybe ten minutes or so, and this is the case for every enemy. There is an argument to be made that this keeps the player on their toes as the constantly new threats force you to relearn tactics; however, ultimately, most enemies aren’t much more competent than aggroing at a certain radius and then leashing when following you too far. With certain exceptions, like those aforementioned marsh spiders. 

Aside from a tendency to clump an entire swarm of spiders into attack waves, the game also features some ludicrously damage-spongy bosses who aren’t much more complicated than usual enemies. To reiterate, earlier levels, due to their openness and providing a more persistently haunting experience, can hide those design faults better before the game narrows it towards the finale into what feels like combat arenas that neither your weapons nor the game at large seem to be designed for.

I can’t say I really enjoyed playing Northern Journey. It was a unique experience, and it clearly shows the steps the developer took in experimenting and forming a vision for their game, and I think that's commendable. There is clearly also an audience that relishes in the design of NJ’s setting a lot more than I do, and that, too, is respectable. For me, however, NJ dies solely on the heels of not being very fun to play. Too much of its design feels arbitrary or barely functional that I can't get myself to bite down into the levels, characters, or premise that is being presented to me.

I really wish there would be a mixed review chance, because my opinion is so divided. On one hand, the game is absolutely beautiful, with great aesthetic, and has some really great plot elements with strange and weird characters and world building. You absolutely want to experience more of it. And it has some excellent music.

Then on the other the combat is absolutely awful. It feels janky and some enemies' hitboxes are just awful. There are action sequences that are incredibly frustrating and require constant trial and error.

I actually stopped playing the game during one later game sequence because the game kept adding more and more needless action set pieces the further I got and it just drained a lot of the fun away from it for me. In my opinion, this would've been better without the combat altogether, as an adventure/exploring mystery game where you could interact more with the various characters, since the world itself is by far the best part. I'm really sad that for me at least the action ruined the fun so much.

This game is not for me and likely is not for many people. The videos really do give a fair shake of what this is going to be like, so if you like what you see you'll like the game.

I do appreciate that this exists for the people who like it though.

Was very fun an interesting at first, but after getting to the mid game it just became frustrating. The game really wants you to get good with aiming the weapons (everything is projectile based) but it doesn't ever feel consistent and really doesn't matter because the enemy speed is insane. I also did not like the floating imprecise jumping, it just doesn't feel great and often led to deaths that didn't feel fair.

I also dislike that the game won't let you save if you are standing on even the slightest incline or if it thinks an enemy is too nearby. I understand the thought behind this is to prevent players from making a bad save, but more often than not it just causes frustration. This is one of those situations where the solution is worse than the problem.

Overall I don't hate the game, but I also don't really like it.. A shame, because I really dig the atmosphere and art direction, just not the game play.

Only play this game for lore and atmosphere, a lot of other things in this game are just not fun, not due to them being not fun, but because of poor execution of some underlying mechanics, let me explain:

Controls are ok, but seems that author cannot properly program movement as the character gets stuck on a lot of terrain that appears to be completely passable. You can feel it a lot in the fight with priest.

There are times where you have to fight a bunch of enemies, which would be ok if the player had faster weapons, but it is a chore of jumping around trying to not get stuck or your momentum killed on every single pebble.

This game seems to have, when it comes to gameplay itself, a lack of direction. It seemingly cannot decide whether it wants to be a tactical shooter, a running and gunning thing, while dodging the enemies with ammo management. It is ok to be everything at once, but it has to be done properly, which this game failed to do.

Edit: after underwater level game indeed takes a turn for the worse. Author takes full forse with his bad gameplay and movement system. For instance, the boss in mazepond is basically a aiming challenge while trying not to fall off tiny platforms while the boss is constantly spamming attacks.
Then the spider bosses when if you get stuck once it is basically game over because there is no invulnerability grace period after taking damage. While making the player repeat needless bit level and cutscenes that take about 2 minutes to do.

I'm sorry, but I tried real hard to give the game a fair shot. It looks pretty. The music is great. I love the vibe. But the combat is just trash that's so bad the game literally TELLS you to save scum it in the beginning. Which is compounded to be even worse when you get caught on ever little pebble, half of which are invisible. And while your kiteing enemies around while backpedaling you need to watch out for one-hit-kill water hazards. How are these different from safe water? You have to stare at it for 2 seconds and wait for a UI element to appear on the surface of the water. Real easy to do while strafing like crazy away from the worlds deadliest flee that somehow kills you in 3 hits with no cool-down on its attacks.

This reeks of a game that needed play-testing and a second person on the dev team to snap the auteur who made it back to reality. It's got great potential, but as it is, it's not fun ... in fact very frustrating.

This game started off wonderfully, but quickly devolved into a janky mess. I appreciate that ONE developer did all this, but that does not make this game good, but any stretch of the word. I can't figure out, for the life of me, why the dev focused so intently on combat, when it's so so so UNGODLY frustrating. Awful "slippery" physics guarantee you will die at least 100 times. Not an exaggeration. I truly think I've died more in this game than any FromSoft game that I've completed. You will fall into water, or off a cliff, over and over and over and over and over and over. Every regular enemy in the game is a f"cking insect that moves way too quickly for the style of combat the developer attempts to implement. I mean why not add some humanoid enemies (apart from the bosses)? Why is EVERY enemy in the game a small insect that is difficult to hit? I just don't understand what the dev was going for. While the environment and level design, music, and overall environment are great, there is just no way I can comfortably recommend this game to anyone. I truly wish I didn't put double digit hours into this thing.

For starters, this game is all about the atmosphere, and trippy story and world. And it does that fairly well, a few points I was reminded of Subnautica... not as good as it, but a similar feeling sometimes. Walking or swimming along long paths just looking at the environment happen often, mind you, a linear path in many cases with only one way forward... it's not very open ended, but still overall a decent enough experience.

The problems... two big problems that keep me from recommending this, and kind of ruined a lot of my own enjoyment. First the bugs. And not the horrible ones meant to be in game, the glitchy gameplay bugs. There are a few issues that just ruin the game, key among them by far is when left and right mouse button don't register. I might be in a fight, running for my life... and I turn to fire at the enemy... click... nothing, click click click... nothing, randomly a bit later it might work again. The number buttons on my mouse I use for weapon swapping always work fine, it's only the attack and ready attack buttons that constantly decide they aren't going to work, and no, it's not my mouse, only in this game. This bug alone kills me so many times, ruins my enjoyment of any fights, and makes fights take longer than they already do.

Next problem, the combat. It's ♥♥♥♥. Gameplay is pretty bad overall here. Normally it's just you versus a swarm of lots of enemies, running away in a big circle or something turninga round getting one slow shot off every so often, fights take ages as you try to fight all the enemies. It's not fun, it's a bit hectic sometimes, but more frusteratng and tiring after a bit. Throw in other gameplay issues like falling into water or off ledges instantly killing you, and just how prevelant they are everywhere (and that quite often running backwards is required to attack an enemy and not get quickly killed by them). And then the terrain, step up height and floor angle settings on this UE character are too damn low. The ground has rocks and pebbles and stuff everywhere... often right on the floors of battle arenas or combat sections, like a rock every three or so feet. And probably half of them can block your character, lock him in place, at least if he touches it from one direction. Oh so often I run, across a patch of the floor, and get stuck on a random rock that looks half the height of the two I just ran over before it.

Well, put these all together and you have... long drawn out combat against lots of enemies or enemies with lots of health, super slow rate of fire wepons that also have slow projectile speeds so they miss easily, terrain that randomly blocks you and stops you from moving that you can't really predict... terrain that kills you if you don't move in the right area, or tried to jump and hit one of those rocks that decided no you aren't, or if you slip or bounce since your character bounces when he hits some obstacles losing all traction, like he's got a wheel instead of legs, and then the enemy chases you so you must fight while firing backwards... not seeing where you're going, and then your basic command inputs to attack or ready the weapon get randomly ignored for varying periods of time... And any one of these things can lead to your death via instant death or quick health depletion from enemies... meaning you restart it all and work towards that fight again, and again... hoping you get lucky, since damn it most of this you can't counter with skill.
So ya, if they just fixed the damn bugs and collision on the small ground element in these battle areas, it'd at least be managable and acceptable drawn out combat to then get to the interesting atmosphere later after it. But as it is... I feel it's way too far into the frustrating and time wasting category, and thus can't recommend to most poeple.

This game was really cool for the first four or five hours, but the "second half" of the game takes an absolute nose-dive in quality, design and gameplay. Then it feels like the game is padding you with more and more garbage, every small section seemed to take forever.

I wish the developer a lot of success in his next game, but this really let me down.

Whether intended as one or not, Northern Journey feels like an entry in the "retro" game genre that trips over the most common issue retro games tend to have: not recognizing that something about the games we played as kids was that way because the developers had no alternative, rather than because everyone thought it was good.

Which is a shame, because Northern Journey otherwise has a lot to recommend it. It's got an interesting atmosphere, an art style and NPC's that are at once unsettling and charming and a setting that hooked me at once: a sort of mythical Norwegian mountain fjord setting full of steep climbs, steeper drops, caves, dark woods, etc.

The problem is in fact somewhat with the setting, since where I feel Northern Journey gets frustrating/annoying is at four points:

Firstly, the level layouts. While they start out relatively linear, they rapidly enter some areas(looking at you, Greenslit) where I just cannot mentally map them out. I keep turning in circles, there are areas I for the life of me can't find my way back to, etc. and that would be great if it was a game that left some stuff as optional and allowed me to move through areas without 100%'ing them, but as far as I can tell *everything* in the game in some way gates your progress.

Secondly, the "physics" and level geometry. The physics are at once sticky and slippery, clip planes at odds with the visible design will bar passage right until they don't and you suddenly rocket at 100 miles an hour over a cliff right down to instant death(and there are a lot of falls in the game that lead to instant death). I've also lost count of how many times I've gotten stuck in rocks, stairs or the ceiling above stairs since they seem to have been designed for a player model half the height of the one we actually got.

Thirdly, the colour palette. And it's a damn shame because in real life I absolutely love the same colour palette, it's cool and soothing and it's the sort of thing I could look at all day. But in a game where I need to be able to quickly distinguish one thing from another, because sometimes one of those things is trying to kill me and the other is a harmless rock with a bit of moss on it, it's really bad and lacking for contrast.

Lastly, the combat is... enemies come in two and a half varieties. They are either melee enemies which, if they reach you, will clip inside your model and keep attacking you while you can't retaliate, seeming to get stuck on you for a while, they're ranged enemies tethered to a location allowing you to effortlessly kite them and whittle them down with even the most basic weapon to conserve ammo OR they're a boss version of the former two which lock you in a small arena with them.

The enemies that work best are absolutely the ranged enemies, but they also generally feel like they only really work when they're in arenas, to prevent them from being super trivialized. Melee enemies also seem to stun you for brief moments, which is INCREDIBLY annoying when like ten of them are seeping out of the floor at once(hello haunted tower, please go to hell haunted tower). I don't mind being attacked by enemies or hit by them if I flub my dodges, but the way enemies get "stuck" on the player and jam up the controls is just incredibly annoying.

Enemy movements also often just feel... extremely unpolished. Like they'll do random spins, get stuck on objects, etc. I'm not sure if it's an attempt at low fidelity or just the best the devs could do, but all it does is jar me out of the game.

I suppose my ultimate verdict is that Northern Journey was a game I heard a lot of great things about and was really prepared to love, but in the end it was really just too rough for me, and worst of all, too rough in a way that it doesn't feel like patching can really solve since it would require really, really basic changes to the game.

Oh, and as a final complaint, whoever thought up what should limit your quicksaving should be whapped with an over-ripe pineapple. I can get not letting me quicksave while falling or in the air, as many games do, but not letting me quicksave while an elevator is going through its two-minute reset animation or because I'm on ground that's at a slightly sub-optimal angle OR because an NPC is going through their "looking pensively at a pea"-animation several kilometers away, is incredibly annoying.

Especially when it's a game that because of all the instadeath falls really demands constant quicksaving.