I have a long history with Syberia games, as I've played them since childhood and replayed the first two parts countless times since then. I've also played Syberia 3 and Syberia: The World Before several times. While there are some positives to this remake, I would not recommend you to play it as an overall, and I will outline specific reasons below. I am staying as impartial as a long-time player can be.
1. Use of AI for enhancing the cutscenes. I was generally disappointed to find out that the remake will not be remaking the cutscenes, it felt like a big part of the game was lost due to this. That's probably the reason it's called a remaster instead. The original cutscenes used in the game are very visibly and sometimes badly enhanced with AI - not tragically bad, but some of the detail on the surfaces can be lost. Depending on what someone's stance on AI is, this is also a major factor.
2. Facial animations and lyp-sync are not matching what is being said most of the time. It's somewhat better with French voiceover, but is more noticeable with the English one. Lack of facial expressions as a whole for the characters threw me off as well.
3. Most of the character animations in the remake have a wonky/bouncy style to them, which quite frankly doesn't work at all. Lots of rapid, jumpy, cartoonish movement in a realistic environment, which breaks the immersion and looks silly.
4. In addition to animation, some of the animations for Kate (e. g. door opening, walking up the stairs, climbing up the ladder, jumping from one platform to another - that were in the original) were removed. Or simply, not done. There is a simple fade out transition between these movements instead. Oscar has a door opening animation, unlike Kate, the protagonist, though.
5. The soundtrack plays non-stop. The execution in the original game, where the soundtrack unique for each location would play after making progress, would symbolise a breakthrough and be rewarding. Here it plays unstoppably and becomes tiring after some point, no matter how much I love the soundtrack for the first game. I remember this being an issue with the third Syberia too.
6. There were a few locations where some of the places would be off proportinally wise. For instance, [spoiler] the train station in Valadilene is much bigger on the inside once you enter it than its exterior model is; the organ in Komkolzgrad had a grandiose feeling to it due to its proportions, and in the remake it looks rather humble, just like the rest of the factory on the inside. The vibes in Aralbad were also off due to excessive fog and dim lightning. [/spoiler]
7. I used to love the intricate and detailed UI implemented in the original game. I loved the notebook for the dialogue options, the literal phone, the item menu and the main menu as a whole. The remaster drasticslly simplified these things into a generic dialogue selection with a half-transparent black background and made the inventory have a form of a diary/personal notebook that was most likely reused from Syberia: The World Before.
8. There are no pauses between the lines in dialogues. To give a better picture of what I mean, the original games would have a brief stop between every line said by a character in a dialogue, by about 0.3 or 0.5 seconds. Which is not much, but it played a big role in pacing the game. In the remake, it feels like each and every character is rushing to interrupt one another to say something in a hurry. It may be a minor, but a noticeable detail that played toward the overall atmosphere.
For the most part, it felt like the game was rushed and majorly oversimplified. Like a lot of work was performed by people who are still learning. It did not feel like appreciation of Sokal's art and precision towards recreating the world he carefully crafted, more like a search of the most affordable and fast solutions to fast-track the game's production.
As a closing statement, I'd rather recommend you play the original, especially if you're new to the games and looking for an option that will run well is your only reason for considering the remake. I didn't have trouble with the Steam version of the original Syberia, and if you're going to play Syberia II next, it would be easier to play the original Syberia I rather than have to readjust from the more odern graphics of the remaster to the looks of the original second part.
