Syberia II

At first glance, I was a bit afraid of Syberia I and II : the screenshots seemed somehow sad, cold, grey... The game looked like a story about strange robots, with no signs of life around... It looked like there was no fun at all in those games. I was completely wrong : Syberia 1 + Syberia 2 form a wonderful tale. Indeed, the beautiful landscapes are not very coulored, but you'll find so many colors inside the characters's hearts ! Those characters are unforgettable : some are real people, some are automats, and you'll also meet great animals. Overall, The atmosphere is truly unique. The story is impossible if you think about it, but while playing you'll find everything natural, plausible : you'll just live Kate Walker's story. And the game is also quite funny, although this is a very subtle humor. There are a lot of references to the world we're living in and its absurdities. Some themes are very deep and rarely met in video games (for instance, Syberia I starts with funerals of an old Lady, and the story often treats about life and death !). Nevertheless, those themes are introduced in a very nice and poetic way, so you should not cry too much :-) ! The game does not takes itself too seriously though, so anybody can enjoy it. For instance, my 5 year old daughter watched me playing entirely Syberia I and II. She loved the story and was very sensitive to the story main themes : friendship and dreams. Well... Now just try Syberia I and II :-) !

It was kind of a mixed bag for me. While I enjoyed it (actually more than the first one, personally) it had its downsides. The visuals were most impressive, immensely helping building a mystical atmosphere, together with the awesome musics Inon Zur created as expected. While I never understood what made Kate so hellbent on realizing Hans's dream, the story was interesting enough for me. I really wanted to arrive at Syberia, if only to see how it looked. I didn't like some of the puzzles though. They were too focused on trial and error and some mechanisms seemed to have no sensible logic behind them. I.e the horse puzzle, and that puzzle in the plane? Randomly pressing buttons and wishing it works. At least it did give the sense of a layman trying to figure out something, after all it makes sense for Kate to randomly press buttons since she has no idea as well. Other parts of the same puzzle and some other puzzles do force you to think though so it wasn't all bad. Other trivial cons: Lack of feedback from the characters. Kate doesn't comment on the weird things happening most of the time. Some hotspots blend in the environment badly, in some I understood what the solution was but just couldn't find the area to click on. Finally Hans really got on my nerves, the guy knows most of the solutions but the only thing he adds is "you can figure it out". Yeah thanks for nothing. Just sit there while I do all the work. Anyway, overall I enjoyed the game. If you like adventures you probably will too. 3.5 rounded up to 4.

I really loved Syberia and wow, wasn't this sequel breathtaking. Sure, the ending was quite open and at the time there wasn't another sequel announced (there is now, getting a release on December 1). However I still feel that this game took us deeper into what the first game was about. Following your dreams, making sacrifices (the train, Oscar, etc.) and just exploring. I felt that the ending was good, better than the first game's ending. I am satifised by have playing through this game and that enough makes me want to recommend it for everyone!

About a week ago, I finished Syberia and shortly thereafter wrote a review you can find on that game's page here. It wasn't pretty. I really, really didn't enjoy Syberia - it felt like a decent story and good art direction surrounded by a bevy of design flaws that made it a frustrating mess. But I had already purchased Syberia II, and I had heard that the second game was better, so I decided to go for it anyway, while the story of the first game was still fresh on my mind. I found that Syberia's aesthetic and story strengths were significantly improved upon in the sequel, and while the game was built on the same technical foundation, and it still lacked much flavor outside of the visuals and story-necessary encounters, it was a much better experience overall. The greatest improvement from the first to the second is that the second game's puzzle design, while still not excellent, was nevertheless light years better than that of the first game. Syberia was littered with uninspired, tedious puzzles, many of which felt totally superfluous as Kate could have easily achieved her goals in a less roundabout fashion. Syberia II's puzzles were largely more interesting, generally involving less running back and forth, and more thoughtful puzzling where one actually had to think through how to achieve a goal. Sure, there was still some pixel hunting and there were still some basic lock and key fetching missions, but overall it was a much better design. In the end, while Syberia II still carries some of the weaknesses of its predecessor, my overall feeling from playing it was, "This is what the first Syberia could and should have been." Syberia II by no means justifies Syberia's shortcomings, but I'm glad that it was able to avoid most of them.

S1 is a tremendous game, it has a dreamlike world, nice puzzles and an interesting steampunkish story. S2 has the nice graphics in common, but lacks in the 'dreaminess' of the adventure and has a few logical errors and too many program errors. How does it come that Kate can walk around in a monastery where women are forbidden? Is it wise to slide down a hill (in a coffin!) with a man who was dying a few minutes before? But what really annoyed me was that the answers of the people you talk to don't match the situation you are in. So, let's say that you need a certain plant or berry and that you have already found those. You go to the person who needs it and that persons says out of the blue: perhaps you could go and look for some berries to give me. Well, moron, that's what I just did! These kind of program errors are abundant and ruin the conversations in the game.