Syberia 3: The Complete Journey

Let me start with the TLDR version: if you've played the first two games you might understandably want to play this one as well - but chances are you'll not enjoy doing it anywhere near as much as you hoped; if you didn't, just do - not - bother, full stop. Now, as for why that is: the art itself is quit decent, but the graphics look at least a decade out of date for a game released in 2017; faces are acceptable, but lots of other things are simply way too... chunky. It's objectively bad - still, not so bad it would ruin the game unless you are playing exclusively for the visuals. Voice acting is full-on horrendous: don't expect voice to actually sync up to mouth movement and casting is absolutely atrocious, with Russian locals obviously well over fifty talking with the voice of a twenty-year-old straight out of a Starbucks. And not just one or two of them either - this happens a lot. I'm not much of a fan of the music, but it was good enough. The plot, allegedly written by Sokal himself falls firmly into the "plot? what plot?!?" category. The Youkols need to get somewhere. Stuff keeps preventing their progress. You'll be expected to keep removing obstacles. That's it - no twists, turns, surprises or development. And I mean "expected" - yes, the game begins with the Youkols saving your life, but they spend the rest of it reminding you to kindly get moving, chop-chop! That attitude ends up quite jarring. The gameplay itself is atrocious: you'll need to perform various physical moves to solve puzzles (like literally pulling things open or cranking by circling your mouse) - just clicking is never enough, and I guarantee you'll keep forgetting that. Trying to control movement will drive you insane. If you have any joysticks connected, be aware that it will keep hijacking your controls. Load times are huge even on an SSD and they keep happening literally every ten meters. You can't skip cutscenes. You can't save at will. Oh, and the ending is utterly botched...

I don't mind a bug here or there but this game is a train wreck. Had several game freezes that required save downloads to continue. This is my first negative review on GOG after buying more than 165 games. That's gotta tell you something. I only paid $2.09 during a sale but I still feel cheated. GOG - you should stop selling this game.

Clumsy controls

Sometimes the camera positioning is not too correct, i get lost sometimes. You also can't skip speaking people or petting animals, which are "useless time" spent.

The game try to be ambitious but sadly the execution isn't there. The puzzles are tedious, at one point you do wonder are you really an adventurer or an on-site technician?