Fear & Hunger 2: Termina

Fear & Hunger 2: Termina carries one of the more extensive content disclosures this library has encountered, and it's worth stating up front rather than working around: Steam's own storefront notes explicit violence and dismemberment as a core mechanic, alongside depictions of drug use, self-harm, sexual content, and themes including child abuse and war atrocities. That's the developer's own framing, not an allegation this library is repeating secondhand, and it's the single most important piece of context for deciding whether this game is for you before anything else in this review matters. What follows focuses on the game's systems and its reception, not a tour of its content.

A cult favourite, almost unanimously

Against that backdrop, the review numbers are striking: 97.3% positive across 8,773 English reviews, Overwhelmingly Positive, for a game that is by design difficult, opaque and unforgiving. Reviewers consistently reach for serious horror touchstones rather than genre-generic praise — one compares the atmosphere directly to Silent Hill, another calls the turn-based combat "more like a puzzle than an actual" action system, rewarding preparation and knowledge over reflexes. A detailed 147-vote review calls it simply "one of the most interesting games I've ever played." The dark fantasy world-building draws specific praise too — the screenshots show a grimoire entry on one of the game's demonic deities, and that level of invented lore and lettering runs throughout, built by, as multiple reviews note, a single Finnish developer working largely alone.

The complaint that dominates everything else

Reading the 100 most-helpful English negative reviews in full turns up a single overwhelming pattern rather than a scattered list of gripes: the save system. Forty-four of the 100 raise it directly, and the specifics repeat with real consistency. "The difficulty tied to the save system leads to a frustrating experience," reads one review; "i enjoy how brutal the game is, however that brutality is ruined by having to skip through what i've done already over and over again." Another, more pointed: "since there is barely any saving, you can spend 4 hours playing and accidentally attack an important ally because it doesn't even ask if you are sure that you want to murder an ally." A third sums up the shape of the whole complaint: "I don't think its bad bad per-say... What I do enjoy is that it does feel like a lot of love is put in" — followed immediately by a detailed account of losing hours to the save system regardless.

This isn't a complaint about difficulty in the ordinary sense — several reviewers explicitly say they enjoy the brutal combat and the constant threat of death. It's specifically about repetition: being forced to replay content already seen because the game rarely lets you preserve progress without a real, often severe, cost. Multiple reviewers mention using a community save-editing mod as close to essential for managing this on a first playthrough.

An unfinished feeling, from a beloved but overworked project

A second, smaller thread describes the game as under-polished for its age. "It's almost laughable how unpolished and unfinished this game is," reads one 2024 review, four years after the original Fear & Hunger. Crashes compound the save-system problem specifically — "the game IS good... has great narrative, art, gameplay and more BUT... it lack[s] enormous amounts of polish," reads another, describing systems that are "overpowered, underpowered or just don't work at all" by the late game. One of the most-upvoted positive reviews, from December 2025, makes the same point from the other direction: "Please Miro, if you can read this release the update. I have spent so many hours in this game and am itching for new content." That's not a complaint so much as a testament to genuine investment — but it confirms the game, three years post-launch, is still felt by its own fans to be a work in progress.

6.5 out of 10. Fear & Hunger 2: Termina earns its cult status honestly: it's a genuinely singular, unflinching piece of horror game design from a single developer, and its 97% score reflects real devotion rather than hype. But its own most detailed reviewers, overwhelmingly positive as a group, agree on one specific, fixable flaw that costs real hours and real goodwill — a save system that punishes patience as harshly as it punishes mistakes. Go in for the atmosphere and the dread, and go in prepared to lose progress you didn't expect to lose.