Syberia II

It's ok, as far as adventure games go. I thought the ending was very disappointing, especially after all you have to go through to get there. You are in the same location for most of the game, with decent puzzles and story but it gets very old being in the same place for so long. It goes downhill from there though with a story that becomes more and more random, unresolved side threads, and puzzles that stump you not because you couldn't put the clues together but because there were no clues at all (the old "put this random object on a random spot and suddenly everything works" puzzle). Do yourself a favor and skip this one. The first is pretty good though.

To sum up: Good story. Good graphics. Good music. Good vocal acting (especially the actress who played Kate). Good puzzles (although the radiation goggles dispenser puzzle was kind of sneaky). Terrible user interface. The game is incredibly buggy. You can't save where you want to, the game only automatically saves at certain "checkpoints". If you get stuck on a puzzle and quit, the game resumes at the last "checkpoint", and you have to solve all the puzzles from that point on all over again. I really wanted to finish this game. But, I got to the point where the ferry was towed onto the beach at Baranour Park, and the game gave up the ghost. The hotspots vanished. Even the cursor vanished, even though the animations continued looping. Microids: please fix your bugs!

This game gets worse in all weaker parts of the Syberia 1 as Syberia did not have many. The main issue is the need to move from one screen across lots of screens to another screen just to proceed in the game, then move back to the first screen etc. All the screens have wonderful graphics though. However some (lots) are missing any interaction. Especially in the Youkol village. Another issue that is quite common in adventures is the "pixelhunting". Which is quite strange because there aren't many items in the screens. Or maybe I am lazy. Just finished the game and feeling a bit bored (not from the story but from the way you have to progress). 6/10

Two re-installs. Dual windows open with walkthrough. Never made it off the platform. Realized I was losing interest in the game, and chalked it up to my own impatience. Thing is, this level of frustration didn't happen with Syberia 1, and I'm left wondering if the issue was my AMD system, using DXWnd, or some patch/update that I missed. It's pretty, and fairly engaging for the first 15 minutes. But... no. I bought this and Syberia 3 on sale. Not sure I'm going to play 3, now. "Logic, meet window." Indeed.

The game as it is is unusable on win 10. Game is going too fast and dialogs are cut. I had to put a specific file in directory to force 60fps and make the game playable again. Otherwise, this game is beautiful, as any Syberia in the serie !