The characters have better expressions, the backgrounds are more detailed, and the cutscenes are even more cinematic. All of the cutscenes, the backgrounds, and the characters look beautiful and are all improved on in some way over the first game. Everything is even more gorgeous this time around than the original, if that's possible. Once again, the Microids art department has outdone themselves. What are very tantalizing, however, are the graphics. machinery, abandonment, loss, and faith are all still present, but they aren’t as tantalizingly de-constructible as before. The themes of life and death, spirituality vs. The player is left to extrapolate possible motivations for Kate based on assumptions, not by material that is present in the game.Īlso less prevalent in this game are the symbolisms that in part, made the first installment so interesting. By all but removing that device, the game suffers from lack of character exposition. In a journey where your character is by herself most of the time, the presence of the cell phone is often the only thing to give the player insight into Kate’s emotions and thought processes. In response to general criticism, the use of the cell phone has been marginalized in the sequel although I am in the minority, I never minded the use of the cell phone as a storytelling device in Syberia. But as Kate wanders further and further away from civilization, meaningful character interactions become less and less common.
In the first game, much of her personality and character arc is explained through her interactions with other in-game characters and her conversations on her cell phone. What the game gains in puzzle design though, it loses somewhat in character development. The most impressive aspect of the game, to me, was the real effort to put a variety of puzzles into the game - not just inventory-based puzzles as was the case before, but puzzles that run the gamut from the relatively simple inventory-based puzzles to more difficult logic-based ones - you may even want to anticipate getting stuck for a while!(Something I never would have dreamed to happen in Syberia.) The addition of more varied puzzles that range in difficulty has helped lengthen the playing time to almost double that of the original game, giving the player much more bang for their buck. It is obvious that the game developers took this criticism to heart, because the largest area of improvement in the game over its predecessor is indeed the puzzle design. The main complaint with Syberia was the short playing time and lack of challenging puzzles. There really are no interface differences between this and the first game to speak of, which I see as a good thing the original interface worked just fine and by keeping it the same it makes the two halves feel like a single larger whole.
It is so simple that anyone could start this game and ease right into the gameplay without having to consult a manual. By right-clicking you can access the inventory screen to either use or view items. Everything is completely point & click, with hotspots indicating when an item can be picked up or manipulated. After the opening cutscene, you gain control of Kate, and you will quickly realize that the interface is exactly as before: very simple and streamlined. Therefore, I strongly recommend that if you have not played through the original Syberia yet, you should do so before taking on the sequel.Īs the game begins, your train makes a stop in Romansburg - the last bastion of civilization before the endless tundra. While there is a video recap of Syberia to assist new players, I don’t think that people who haven’t played the first game will care very much about the objective at hand. Syberia II picks up exactly where the first game left off, and in reality, this game should be looked at as more of a direct continuation of the first game, rather than a sequel that stands on its own. When we last saw our intrepid heroine, Kate Walker, she was jumping onto a train, essentially leaving her former life as a corporate yuppie lawyer behind to accompany the eccentric dreamer Hans Voralberg on his quest to find the land of Syberia. There are a few slip-ups on the way, but thankfully Syberia II withstands those enough to succeed at its task. In the two years since the original’s release, the adventure community has been through many disappointments, leaving Kate Walker again the task of breathing a little life back into the genre. It told a rich and enthralling story that left fans wanting more. The original Syberia was an excellent game that came at a time when great adventures were scarce at best.