Shooting stuff in these super well designed destructible environments in a thriller storyline with a Lynch-esque influence is incredible. At the same time, gameplay does gets kinda repetitive by the middle as its mostly 'shoot the same type of enemies' and its disappointing how limited are the interactions with the environment, enemies are super dumb and will only stay in a specific area, never trying different tactics, interaction with objects is mostly done through telekinesis and the overall lack of animations for small things hurts the immersion(the game doesn't even pass the walk against a wall test).
Its a point & click that tries to be an RPG, for '94 standards I guess its kinda ambitious, but its ideas just don't work well. Still it could have been one of these 'so bad its good' game with how outlandish everything is, but sadly the gameplay is too clunky and annoying, with probably one of the worst inventories and navigation I have ever seen.
While not all bad, this sequel is a big departure from the first game and its developed by an entirely different team and it shows. Writing and voice acting are noticeably worse and while they do care about continuity, the original case gets a half-assed resolution and the story focuses on a different, unrelated case. Gameplay is slightly different and there are some really annoying carry limit mechanics and a lot of backtracking, plus some annoying timed puzzles. It discards the beautiful pre-rendered backgrounds of the first one for real time 3d environments, but both movement and camera feel worse. Also most of the game happens in a single location, that isn't necessarily a bad thing, but specifically in this game it feels disappointing, there are small areas in the first game that feel more original/better designed than the whole place, plus the backtracking is so bad here that you will hate the areas. On the good side, searching for fingerprints, examining blood and all these FBI kit related mechanics are kinda fun and it feels rewarding unlocking your way through the killer's mansion.
Super solid point & click that despite being very linear, hits a good balance between too streamlined and too confusing/nonsensical and it overall improves everything compared to its prequel post mortem. There are hard puzzles, but everything is doable and more importantly, don't use nonsensical logic. Plus while not as memorable as something like TLJ, the voice acting, art direction and story are all great. I hated the ending though.
It's pretty enjoyable, it blends good pace, set pieces, artstyle and music. Maybe the gunplay and stealth is nothing above average, but everything else makes up for it. With exception of the story, which feels overall rushed and lacks a proper ending. Also the first part of the submarine level is awful.
Overall a good game, very good start with great ambience, interesting level design, enemies are not brain dead, magic variety is interesting although not every magic is useful and story is good. However at times it feels like a very rushed game, later levels can get repetitive with tons of identical enemies(still nowhere as bad as some other FPS with their endless backtracking and scripted enemy respawns) and the last level is just a "boss rush" in previous levels without a true final boss; in other context that could even be an interesting design choice, but the way its done makes you wonder if the devs didn't simply ran out of time.
Honestly there is the base for a great game here, but it just isn't there yet, everything it does feels half-baked and the huge number of trash mobs and slow beginning in which both your characters and the monsters miss the attacks again and again as you patiently wait for the animations to play ironically makes me wish it was RTwP instead. The late game also suffers from being really buggy and unfinished, even if it has some cool battles. I won't blame this 2003 game for being crash heavy in a modern system, but bugs like skills clearly not working as intended or some summons being so buggy its impossible to dismiss then and they are somehow immortal or even buggy quest progression are things impossible to excuse. Story-wise there is nothing that interesting either, but at least the village and environments are quite nice, would have liked to see then expanding then a bit adding more depth to then(for example you barely interact with the environment itself in this game) and adding more vendors too, there is a lot of money in the game, but very few places to use it. Maybe the fan mods fix some of these problems, but as far as the unmodded game goes I can't say it really impressed me.
An actually great underrated point & click, and probably the best game by House of Tales, also developers of The Mystery of the Druids and The Moment of Silence (and 15 Days, which I have yet to play). It somehow feels smaller and lower budget compared to The Moment of Silence, with fewer set pieces and a smaller scope (also buggier, save often!), but its clear and more focused design, along with the honestly much more interesting and down-to-earth story, made it a stronger experience. It's also a much darker and more depressing game overall, while still being very human. Like others have mentioned, the core gameplay has you going back and forth between cells, recording sessions and playing them back to other patients to trigger memories. Unlike what some reviewers say, it's not just guesswork. You must play what is related to the story each character is telling, and most of the time it's actually quite obvious, unless you haven't played for some time and forgot what you were doing. The puzzle elements are mostly light, but not to the point of those braindead interactive fiction games that have you walking forward and doing QTEs. I honestly think this "middle ground" approach works extremely well for what they wanted to do. The gameplay complements the story instead of detracting from it or serving just as an excuse to have the player press buttons. I really don't want to oversell it, it's a game that clearly has its problems, and yet I'm not going to lie, it's easily one of my favorite stories in point & click games.
Although I only played the first Syberia, I was curious when this released as it looked really beautiful (well as far as a non million budget game can at least) and to my surprise it was made available via prime gaming this year. So, how does it fare? The presentation is great indeed, but there is not much more than that, behind its beautiful setpieces all you get is a fairly cliche adventure-drama story with a cute sidekick that sometimes reminds of a pixar film and doesn't even give you much of a reason to care about the story in the first place. The characters aren't very memorable, and while it has a few moments of inspiration, its storytelling is fairly clunky and predictable overall. It's like it tries too hard to be a movie and manipulate your emotions with touching scenes, but ends up feeling too derivative and forced. I'd much rather play something more sincere with a simpler presentation like the first Syberia. Gameplay is very linear, most puzzles are too easy and boring and lot of its interactions require pointless mouse movements or keep button pressed and whatnot, and while it may fit a bit its mechanism theme, a lot of times it just seems like an annoyance inspired by these brain dead interactive movie games that became popular with Telltale games. I had to take a break from it for a few months to stand it. With all this said, it's not a terrible game, it has its moments and I can see why some people liked it, but its definitely not the direction I want point & click games to go.
Decent start, despite already starting making the mistake of introducing you to this silly looking alien temple right out of the bat. Then the city has a very dark and interesting atmosphere sure, but again it lacks the subtlety and slow build up that made Lovecraft so memorable. The writing is serviceable at best. Eventually I lost my interest during one of the stealth sections, I really hate waiting around and walking at the speed of a snail because there is 100 goons in every room and this detective guy couldn't possibly bring a gun to one of the most dangerous places on earth. If that is supposedly the better part of the game I can't even think how bad it will get later.
