I’ll start with the positive: this is just a remaster and isn't trying to change the story or characters. The new, rebuilt environments look pretty good and pretty faithfully recreate the environments of the original. All of the documents have an optional “read” mode which gives you the text in a larger, easier to read font. Now on to everything else.
The game’s difficulty has been toned down a lot, in ways I both like and dislike. Many of the puzzles are simplified, with necessary objects in closer or more obvious places. Hotspots are highlighted now, and there’s no confusion if two of them are close together. Most of the useless hotspots have been removed, so no more wondering about a bunch of locked doors you’ll never need to open. There are a couple of new or reworked puzzles, all of which were pretty straightforward. These changes help with some of the more unfair or annoying puzzles from the first game, but even in Adventure mode, the game holds your hand a lot. Some people may like this overall, but I prefer a more challenging experience from this kind of game.
The voice acting is all the same. There are a couple of places where extra lines were added, but these were sourced from cut material from the original. While I loved hearing characters like Kate and Oscar with their original voices, I have to acknowledge that some of the voice acting is just bad. The new puzzles are also noticeably silent; the characters can’t comment on any of the new things they have to do unless there’s a suitably generic line from the original to repurpose. Despite the nostalgia, I think the game would have benefitted from some modern voice acting and even a few line rewrites. It’s also very strange to me that none of the cutscenes were redone, even though they have no talking and are arguably the most dated part of the original.
The 3D environments look nice but don’t feel great. The camera is locked to specific angles and some of those are very awkward. The game often tries to mimic shots from the first game that just don’t make sense in the 3D environment and make navigation confusing. Navigating around the screen with the mouse is very awkward. In some of the more crowded rooms, it’s hard to navigate around the scenery, some of the narrower walkways are a pain, and the exit hotspots are sometimes in weird places. Many of the areas, especially outside areas, are massive in 3D, which means they take forever to walk through but occasionally still have hard-to-find doors or staircases. Kate often clips into objects or the floor when she moves, and stares at nothing during conversations.
I often had conversations happen out of order. For some characters, the conversation topics are listed in the wrong order, and following them results in a weird conversation where you introduce Kate and her mission in the middle of a conversation where both things were already referenced. One of the phone calls can’t be triggered by you calling the character and now involves you reaching a specific spot, which in my playthrough meant that the first three or four phone calls Kate got all referenced a conversation that hadn’t actually happened yet.
I really wanted this to be good. I generally like to see classic adventure games get updated to be playable on modern systems and more accessible to modern audiences. Syberia is one of my favorites and it would have been great to see it get a new coat of paint, but this remaster feels cheap. It wasn't all bad, but there were so many mistakes and so many things they could have updated and just... didn't. You might have a marginally better experience than I did if you play with a controller and want more hand-holding with the puzzles, but even then I don’t think it’s the best way to enjoy this story. Maybe one day we’ll get a remaster that feels like more of an upgrade, but until then, when I revisit this game, I’ll go to the original. 3/10
