Before we had the modern cozy game which is either a farming sim like Stardew Valley or a cutesy sim game like Animal Crossing, we had point and click adventures. They were not all winners but they had charm and plenty of staying power as far as PC gaming went. Think of titles like Monkey Island, machinarium, or Kings Quest which all are classics in their rights, but today we are talking about Syberia Remastered which is an enhanced remaster of the original game in 2002 adding many quality of life features, graphical changes, and more intuitive controls. Does this remaster bring back this cult classic to the light or is better lost in icy depths of Syberia, lets find out.
A classic point and click game
Developed and published by Microids, Syberia is game about Kate Walker who originally was sent to the small french town of Valadilène to close a deal on a toy factory but as fate would have it the owner Anna died and an heir was revealed to be still alive sparking an adventure across the world as Kate searches for Hans and the secret adventures that intertwines her journey. Just like the game was back in 2002, Syberia is a classic in the Point and Click genre that still holds up to this day. It is a tad slower paced compared to some its contemporaries but that part of the charm. Seeing this lawyer learn about the mystery surrounding the toy factory and the boy who isn’t dead but rather alive is a very engaging adventure.
I love the clockpunk aesthetic of the game where you get to see the different mechanisms and automatons operate and function. Some of the best parts of the game are the slower bits where you get to read notes about current events in the story and how different characters reacted to those changes, my favorite example being the diary in the attic in the first area. The train being your mode of transportation between chapters in the game is also a really great touch and really adds to the sense of this being a journey. You even get to customize the cabin of the train car with all the souvenirs and trinkets that you collect throughout the game which really makes you feel like an adventurer.
The puzzles are very fun and engaging, asking you to pay attention to environmental clues and placing items in their correct locations. Kate Bishop is a very engaging character with her relationship issues with Dan and her boss and the way she is dedicated to finding truth being very endearing. All and all at its core this is the same great point and click that came out more than two decades ago and its core game design of exploration and puzzle solving is top notch and definitely worth a play.
Now, Syberia Remastered does not live in a vacuum because if it was about whether or not I recommend Syberia that would be a definite yes, but we have to look at the game as a remaster which plans on reselling the game for a higher price than the original game goes on Steam and other platforms. Syberia Remastered’s claim to fame is that that it improves the graphical quality of the game, reworks certain puzzles and exploration segments, and offers a more modern gameplay experience with an improved interface and control options. How exactly do these changes affect the player experience and how you engage with the world Syberia? Well, it might just surprise you.
A new coat of paint Ms. Walker
Just for reference, the original Syberia has this very blocky aesthetic with fixed camera angles and a focus more on environmental design rather than the fidelity of the character models. Well in the remaster, the team decided to make the character models more detailed and the world more shrouded in dynamic lighting and shadows all thanks to the UE5 engine. I will admit some of the locals in the game look very good with the enhancements that come from newer technology, really making the difference in certain sections of the game. You really get to see the scale of some areas as the camera pans out and you get to see just how massive and grand some areas of the game are.
As good as the environments look, I can’t say as much for the characters, which at times look like they are being puppeteered by Giuseppe. It’s not even consistent when it looks uncanny as well as certain angles the character looks pretty good, but other angles make Kate’s face look like a dead soulless husk of a lawyer. If that wasn’t bad enough, the cutscenes for the game have not been altered at all, which usually I would not complain about because it preserves the original, but in this case it’s for the worse. In the original, the cutscenes looked that way due to the technology at the time and the cutscenes matched well with the more blocky interpretation of the characters. The cutscene and game Kate look way too different and it really brings me out of it. I do appreciate the attempt to bring the visuals of the game to a new level but just like Unreal Engine 5, the little hitches and hiccups really detract from the experience.
Changes can be a good thing… sometimes
One of the questions I always ask when I see a new remaster come out is what features will the developer add to this one. Syberia Remastered offers quite a few quality-of-life features that are for the most part great additions to an already great game that makes the game slightly less frustrating. Fully rotatable 3D camera makes exploring the environment more fluid and engaging in some of the more open environments. Inspecting items is easier with more legible text and when you encounter a puzzle it will give you a roulette of items to use instead of having you go into another menu and drag an item for the puzzle. The menu and UI is more sleek and means you will spend less time in menus and more time exploring. The game also gives you multiple movement options with dragging or clicking which makes exploring more enjoyable. Overall most of the changes made to the game at least when it comes to accessibility and ease of use is very welcome.
One change that was absolutely baffling to me has to be the cutscenes which were upscaled to a higher resolution and look really muddy and gross to look at. The original cutscenes had charm because they were supposed to be the money shots in the original game, but here they just look really awful. They needed to either to do a better job upscaling or they needed to redo the cutscenes to match the new art style changes they made to the game. Along with the cutscenes we also see new walking and talking animations for all the characters in the game which just look really janky. Considering lots of this game includes you talking to other people and collecting clues and lore this definitely hurts the presentation and the pacing of the game. The original game did less, but that simplicity led to a timeless feeling with the dialogue which to the games credit seems to be largely untouched.
A Fragile Toy
One of the biggest complaints for me when it comes to Syberia Remastered just has too be how cheap many parts of the game can feel when it all moves together. I stand by most my praise of the environmental design and certain character models looks very good as long as it isn’t in motion. One of the biggest issues of the game has to be the desaturation of the new art design which really removes a lot of the life from the original game making it feel less authentic. Characters talk and you see their joints move and you get consistent visual hitching when you explore any map in the game. None of this is a silver bullet to the game perhaps but reeks of this will be fixed later in updates which does make it hard to recommend under that context. Even the touted simpler puzzles kind of goes against point and click tradition by making the puzzles way more easy than they need to be.
There is an area very early in the game you need to get to that can be completely missed if you don’t pay attention to a tiny white dot denoting that the door can be interacted which through me for a loop. In the original this door was easier to find at first glance due to brighter colors and more fixed and cinematic camera angles. That’s part of what makes this game hard to label as the definitive version of Syberia as there are so many little things that annoy and hurt the overall experience.
Syberia Remastered is a death by a thousand cuts
I really wanted to like this remaster of a classic point and click game more but it deserves better than this. A remaster that does some good things to offer, but is weighed down by inconsistent performance, a lackluster retention of the original art style, and the simplification of the puzzles with no option to retain puzzle depth. Some of the readable books in the game don’t even have proper spelling like the journal in the attic which misspelled him as “hipm.” There is a good game inside this remaster and if this was your only option then the package is actually pretty solid. Syberia is one of Microids premier IPs and I was expecting to see some higher production value in this remaster
If you do want to wait for Microid to patch the game and fix some of the performance issues then I think this can be a good option to play Syberia, but not the best unfortunately.
The Review
Good
