Syberia

I'm sorry but I just post here this bad 1 star just to make people think about buying the game beforehand. I mean, I've read the good comments about the story, the emotion. But this game is one of the cases I must say "it has not aged well". I do not want to write again what FatDragon explained very well. You should read his/her review and give it credit. The game is empty and too slow. Maybe it's poetry that doesn't touch me, but I think lots of people cannot enjoy the tedious walking anymore, while there's nothing to enjoy on the way. Like FatDragon said, everything you can click on IS important at some point or another, but there is almost no interactive elements just to immerge in the story. No comments of the protagonist of everything he sees (the now famous "right click"). Just one example, from the beginning: you know you have to go see a character. Then there's a building, with a puzzle at the entrance. No board indicating this is the house you're looking for, you just resolve the puzzle BECAUSE you can, the game indicates an interaction, so let's just PRESUME it is the place I must go in. I find the game "cold", austere. I cannot recommend to purchase it. One of the few buys I regret.

I've played a lot of point and clicks and this one is great, but the puzzles are very tricky. Don't play it if you're impatient or adverse to using walkthroughs,

I read in many forums bf buying but was the best I could seem to find for adventure games after the myst experience. I enjoyed the storyline but it was very slow in most places, which was frustrating (which I also read). I did learn hints of skipping annoying repeat conversations by pressing esc button to speed that up. You have to be careful though, if you hit esc too many times it could back you out of opportunity for a clue in conversations. I must admit I looked up hints at the universal hint system more than a few times when I just couldn't figure out what was left to do. I was able to figure out how to get places though, and did find most of what I needed by chance. My only complaint is waiting for Kate to walk everywhere. I hear the next one is a little better, I'll let you know!

FatDragon already said it all and this will be buried somewhere deep in the reviews, so I'll keep it short. Syberia feels like geriatric simulator, it takes ages to get somewhere, then you do some meaningless thing like switch a lever and you have to run across the whole map again, which takes ages. When the characters are flat, they are mostly just annoying. The story has some charm to it, but it's presented in the most boring fashion, so many things are done here just to slow the player so he doesn't run through the game in 2 hours (honestly running through locations is like 80% gametime or at least it feels like it). Honestly, you've annoyed and frustated me Syberia.

Kept giving the game the benefit of the doubt, but it never really redeemed itself. And by no means is this a case of playing a game 15 years later - I've played and am playing many other older games, and can enjoy them now, but this one was hard to. - Slow and tedious movement: there are a lot of "empty" screens, put there as visuals but adding nothing to the puzzles or stories. But you have to walk through them - generally multiple times. Sometimes a screen will be used just to show a walking-up-the-stairs animation. Kate can either walk slowly, or if you double-click, she runs, but then wastes precious seconds doing this slowing-down-looks-like-i've-run-into-a-wall animation. Even the original Myst had the lighting-bolt method of quick travel, something this game really needed. - simplistic, linear puzzles: the puzzles were nothing to rave about. Generallly pretty linear, as there are only a few items to collect at one time. Doesn't leave you feeling immersed like many other puzzle games. - unlikable characters: everyone was one-dimensional, annoying, and pretty horrendous voice-acting. And really - you're going to include a "village idiot" kid in a 2000's era game??? - weird story: not a big fan of steampunk in general, and the rest of the story doesn't much help. The long-and-short is that this was more of an Interactive Fiction kind of piece, rather than a puzzle/adventure game, and a fiction that wasn't very engrossing.