izigame.me

First I want to say that it's nice to see something close to home. I live in Northern Norway and it's a 3 hour drive to the Finnish border.
But that being said I'm very disappointed with this DLC, it's all over the place with the game animals.
Can start of with the reindeer, which is called Mountain Reindeer (Rangifer tarandus tarandus) in this game. The problem is that there isn't mountain reindeer in Finland. They have a small population of forest reindeer (Rangifer tarandus fennicus) and is only found in Northern Finland. And a lot of the other animals would not be found that far north. Like the Mouflon which is only found south east of Finland on private land, and are non native.
Pheasants are also not an arctic species and can not be found far north. (Also non native).
But the actual native bird species like Hazel Grouse, Black Grouse, Western capercaillie, Willow Ptarmigan and Rock Ptarmigan that are common game birds in all of Scandinavia is NOT in the game!
I could go on and on about different animals that should have been in the game, but you get the point.
This is just lazy and you can tell the devs did not do much research in making this DLC.
It's just sad..

This was an enjoyable reserve for me. It looks a lot like my own country (on the Balkan peninsula) during the Autumn, and the same animals roam here, except for moose, arctic fox, and lynx. I like the Finnish accent (if it's not real Finns speaking English, then big kudos to the actors) of the characters, makes me smile almost every time I hear it, and it makes the setting a little bit less unbelievable.
I don't like missable things in stories/questlines, and there some of those here. I didn't want to miss the rifle in the last quest, so I didn't shoot Wispy, so now I am without the Wispy trophy. Mikael's outburst during one of the last dialogues was very unexpected and feels quite unnatural. He would just do what he decides and hang up on the screaming people (I should know, because I don't like talking much either).
I got this one as part of the Map Pack 2 (bundled with the New Zealand / Matariki Park reserve) and I'm happy with both of them.
One thing I don't like is that lynx are solitary animals, but in the game you almost always see them in herds (this is, I'm betting, not a problem with the reserve itself, but with the game's animal behaviour model).

This DLC had a troublesome launch, a bug that was communicated within hours (that caused the DLC to be flagged as not owned despite being so) was fixed within a further few hours. Despite this, a lot of people (of the instant gratification kind?) had to vent their frustration by writing a negative review which caused the DLC rating to plummet.
This map, very much like COTW:s Revontuli Coast portray a somewhat idealized and/or romanticized Finland. Suppose the map could stand in for the whole of Scandinavia / The Nordic countries even if set in Finland as some game species do not really exist in Finland (or are protected exempted from hunting but that is secondary).
Voice acting is really good, one can tell the actors are Finnish and the story is nice. The map is open and accessible (not like some other maps in COTW or WOTH where one can access some locations only through specific routes).
The free update that allow for different types of ammo is excellent and most welcome! My only gripe with the map would be that there isnt really any large portion of coniferous forest with spruce trees, at most we get mixed forest with spruce and pine and a lot of leafy trees such as birch. But, as this is an approximation and an amalgamation of different types of terrain that feature in the Nordics I´m quite happy