I thoroughly enjoyed these games. That said, I think most will struggle to get their heads around them, at least initially. Right from the start I was completely at sea with even the most basic gameplay elements, I had no idea how to do just about anything: start the game, save the game, play the game . . . it took me minutes to many hours to figure out. A few things still leave me clueless now having finished both Starfleet 1 and 2 (e.g. I cannot get the blastpods in SF2 to work for me once activated with F10). So yes, I can fully understand why many might give up on this game and if circumstances had been different (no Covid pandemic) then I probably would not have bothered either. I am so glad I did bother. I finished SF2 earlier and I'm still buzzing -- this happens too rarely with video games (or books) so when it does it's ***jazz hands** AMAZING. The website starflt.com has lots of info on the games should you be stuck at any stage. Earning credits (through mining in SF1 and trading in SF2) is an important aspect in both games but if you don't have the patience for it I would recommend using the cheats mentioned on the Starflt website to get "infinite" credit because imo it is worth taking a small shortcut like that if it will allow you to enjoy the real beating heart of the game: exploring the SF universe and making first contact with different alien races. Gameplay of SF2 is a huge step up from SF1 (especially the save game functionality). Another recommendation I'd make is, if you really struggle with SF1 then use a walkthrough as it will help with getting the hang of the game and it should set you up for playing SF2 (mostly) spoiler-free.
What this is: Life Is Strange (LIS) is an animated "Choose Your Adventure" story (the older folk will remember the books, the younger folk will know Black Mirror's Bandersnatch). What this is not: While you are given some agency to move your character around, choose from a list of decisions and take prescribed actions at certain points, it is, in my view, not sufficient to call LIS an adventure video game - it is too passive an experience for that. What gaming element there is is far too trivial/restrictive/obvious/chore-like to really engage the brain or entertain. As an animated story it has charm, though it may be more appropriate for people closer to the age of the characters. I am sure I was just as teenage-y at 18 (if not more) but as an older adult I have limited capacity to sit through the angst or cringey affectations of youth which are abundant in LIS (the name-dropping especially - yikes!). The game does not let you think for yourself, for example: in one scene your character needs to get something off a display case. You cannot pull up a chair to reach it until first trying to do it without the chair, the game will only show the interactive action element with the chair after trying without. There are some really stupid actions which seem to be there only because someone must have suddenly remembered that they were supposed to be making a video game: for example, within a long (and unskippable) cinematic scene you look through a photo album with Chloe. The game is forcing you to take the action to turn the pages, an action which has no other function or purpose to it, so why it just couldn't have been part of the cinematic I have no idea. The music is cutesy. If you need to play it on a PC with mouse and WASD, like I did, then you may find the game play cumbersome: lots of walking into walls, lots of awkward camera angles, lots of needing to move your character out of the way to stop her blocking your view of the interactive action element.
I can't recall an other game where I found the walking so tedious. Yes, the world is pretty enough for a game from 2002 and the Art Nouveau stylised buildings are gorgeous but all that walking back and forth is mind-numbingly dull, even at double-click speed. Then there are the stairs . . . so many stairs, all of which the character takes soooo slowly. Aaaaaargh. The dialogue grates with me, it is in my opinion poorly written. There comes a point where (attempts at) jokey dialogue just turns into flippant banality and Syberia overshoots that point by a mile. Throughout the game your character gets calls from various people, supposedly to create back-story and flesh out the whole thing. I find them completely uninteresting, unnecessary, gimmicky and a total waste of time and am grateful to have the ability to fast-click through them. The puzzles, because of the tediousness of the walking, quickly turn into chores. A good example of this is the puzzle involving the Cuckoo birds: ***BEGIN SPOILER*** You need to climb to a higher level to get an item for a puzzle but birds are blocking your way. You later find out from a book that the birds like a certain grape so a new puzzle is now to get this grape to lure away the birds. At first every character you speak to says they know nothing about the grapes. If you ask the professor he tells you to ask the station master who denies all knowledge and walks away. You then, counter-intuitively, need to ask the station master AGAIN who now tells you to ask the professor, so back to him you go. He now tells you to ask the rectors (who if you asked them previously would have said they know nothing about it). They then tell you to go back to the station master who will now open the door to the garden with the grapes for you. All this back and forth feels like EONS of walking and walking and walking and stairs and stairs along the same bits of scenery over and over again. Aaaaaargh ***END SPOILER***
