Ho boy, I have a lot to say about this one. I was looking forward to this VN as it had high praise from others, and the visuals looked great. However, my initial reaction reading this VN for the first time was... not great. However, I have warmed up to this VN, although my enjoyment of the VN is still rather limited. So I'm going to do something unusual. I'm going to split this review: a non-spoiler section and a spoiler section. I can't exactly get into my thoughts about the VN without spoilering the game, which is why I'm formatting my comment like this.
So first off, the presentation's pretty great. Backgrounds and sprites look great and fit the fantasy setting pretty well. Music is good and appropriate for any given scene in the story. The Godot engine does most of the things Ren'Py does, except for auto-play, which was a little annoying to deal with. It also had issues where going back turned off the music. It does kinda drag on in certain scenes where there's a bunch of fluff, which can make reading certain scenes a chore, but thankfully, that doesn't happen with the whole game. I also couldn't understand the game's world building that well, but I have trouble with that sort of thing in general, so that's probably a me thing. That's about it for the non-spoiler stuff, but I will say that you'll probably enjoy this VN a lot more if you assume North of Moon is all a figment of Ilmari's imagination and/or none of the characters are actually real. The VN is ambiguous on whether or not that's the case, but I find that interpretation to improve the experience for me. I'll go more into detail in the spoiler section. Which is now.
SPOILERS BELOW
Okay, so I don't get the whole point of the surgery scene with the metal object in Sampo's belly. I get that it's to show off Ilmari's medical skills, but it's never explained how the metal part got inside Sampo. Honestly, it would have been better to have a monster attack Sampo and infect his belly.
I had to discuss this privately with a friend to understand Ilmari's and Sampo's motivations and try to better grasp the story. It's not really explained why Ilmari liked to hide away as a kid. It couldn't be his sexuality since it's not like six-year-olds usually deal with that sort of thing. I had assumed that Ilmari had a pretty happy family life, all things considered, but the whole thing about hiding away in the wardrobe implies otherwise. It's frustrating that we only get to see what's troubling Ilmari in the wardrobe world and not the real world, because the wardrobe world is blurred by Ilmari's potential influence and possibly being a mirror for the real world. This all makes Ilmari hard to understand as a character, let alone sympathize with. Which brings me to the breaking point of the story: when Sampo kissed Ilmari. This was the main thing I talked about with my friend. I didn't understand the motivations of Ilmari and why he did what he did. It was only when I considered that he was following the doctrine that more of his character made sense, and I got the critique on religion. I still don't like Ilmari, but at least I understand what the VN was trying to do. Ilmari is a consequence of religious dogma, whose doctrine is strict about material things and homosexuality. He's wrapped around what he thinks is right, as taught by his religion's domination. Sampo is then representative of going against that dogma, believing that certain "sins" aren't actually sinful, reflecting Ilmari's desire to explore his sexuality, whether figuratively or literally. Ilmari only realizes the consequences of those actions when he realizes that the doctrine he followed caused the death of his best friend, and he's able to grow out of that ideology from that experience. Once I understood that, I came to appreciate the coming-of-age story it tells as well as the criticism towards religious dogma it has.
But there's still one problem. Ilmari basically gets a slap on the wrist for what he's done. All the consequences of his actions hit everyone in the wardrobe world besides him. Meanwhile, he's able to become a best-selling author in the real world. Like why? Sure, he does get imprisoned in the dungeon, but that only happens for a short time. And he does have to experience the trauma of losing his best friend, but he seems to recover from that pretty quickly. I don't want to read about a person who caused an innocent person to die as well as an entire village to go to shit to become successful just because he learned to better himself, I want him to actually atone for what he did or suffer for what he's done. I personally think it would have been better for Ilmari to initiate the kiss, thinking it's a friendly kiss, and instead have Sampo be the one to betray him while Ilmari refuses to confess because he thinks he didn't do anything wrong. Then Sampo realizes his mistake and sacrifices his life to save his human from being exiled. That would have gotten Ilmari to realize the same lessons while being a more sympathetic character. Now there's an easy solution to the whole "not facing the consequences of his actions" issue, and it's one I mentioned in the non-spoiler section. That is, to assume the entire wardrobe world is imaginary, which would mean that any harm he caused there isn't actually real. Therefore, Ilmari doesn't actually deserve punishment for what he did when it didn't affect anyone in real life. The issue with this interpretation is that there are hints that the wardrobe world is real and exists alongside the real world, so I hesitate to believe that this is the case.
Overall, this visual novel took me a while to understand, and while I can't say for sure if I'd recommend it, it does do some pretty great things all in all.