The adventure genre isn’t the most prominent one in gaming these days, but thanks to developers like Telltale Games it has managed to come back with some new bells and whistles. The Syberia series originally started and ended long before these advancements happened, but now it’s trying to make a comeback and give its contemporaries a run for their money. However, this long-awaited sequel feels like a half-hearted attempt at that in several regards.
Kate Is Back
Syberia 3 sees protagonist Kate Walker back for another round, with her uncertain fate at the end of Syberia 2 being detailed in full. She’s found gravely injured by a nomadic tribe called the Youkol, who then take her in and nurse her back to health. Due to this, Kate now feels indebted to the tribe and vows to help them in their sacred pilgrimage with their snow ostriches. However, she soon learns that there’s a sinister plot to stop the tribe in their tracks, and thus begins her adventure to protect her beloved Youkol.
Those who have played the first two games in the series will find that the formula is very similar here, as you gather clues and solve puzzles to progress the adventure. One big difference this time is that environments are now fully 3D, ditching the pre-rendered backgrounds from the previous games. Puzzles usually appear simple on the surface, but reveal themselves to be a bit more complicated as you take them on. One has you trying to fix a key to escape the clinic Kate is initially being held in, and another has you trying to reproduce a stamp for a pass so you can get past authorities. You won’t always be able to solve them right when you find them, and coming back with the missing component is very gratifying.
The journey presented here has all the makings of another great Syberia game, but it comes up short in too many areas to be one. While the story has that same mysterious and enchanting tone that players have come to expect, it does make a lot of references back to the first two games. As a result, there are certain events that will likely make newcomers confused, as the game doesn’t do much to try and get everyone up to speed on the overall story. Even still, the game’s world and characters are intriguing enough to suck you in despite having no idea what’s going on at times.
It also doesn’t hurt that the game’s soundtrack lives up to the quality featured in the previous games, providing an enchanting backdrop for your travels. The award-winning composer, Inon Zur, returns from Syberia 2 to provide the music here, and it never fails to give each scene a magical quality. The score fits the game’s mysterious world perfectly, and honestly is worth listening to on its own.
Mystery, Intrigue, Bugs
Unfortunately, the game has many issues currently, and most of them are technical ones. While the game’s world is well-designed and has some nice scenic views, it’s brought down by the characters that actually inhabit it. As you make your way through the game you’ll see characters moving around in a stiff and robotic manner, which is similar to how Kate herself moves. The voice syncing here is also awful, as none of the dialogue comes anywhere near lining up with their lips. The characters are apparently still lip-syncing to the original French script with the English dialogue being dubbed over it, and it makes every character interaction appear incredibly goofy. In a game that is so dialogue-heavy, that’s a big problem.
The voice acting itself fares a little better, though that is also a mixed bag. Kate’s returning voice actor does a decent job here, as do a handful of others she meets along her journey. However, many of them sound like they’re just reading lines rather than trying to play a convincing character, and sometimes the character they’re playing doesn’t fit with their voice at all. It’s also worth noting that the game’s subtitles don’t always match up with what is being said, which makes this problem even more noticeable.
Old Dog, (Some) New Tricks
Despite these issues, the actual interactions with characters are one of the bright points of the game. You have multiple dialogue options to choose from, which can either progress the narrative directly or give you more background information on whatever the topic happens to be. It also takes some cues from Telltale’s book and allows you to handle a conversation in a variety of ways, with the game telling you how the character felt about what you just said. You also have the ability to hear Kate’s thoughts before making any of the decisions, giving you a little better of an idea of what the outcome may be. However, these dialogue choices don’t have an impact on the actual game like they would with a Telltale game, which is too bad.
Then we come to the game’s performance itself, which is pretty abysmal at this point. It doesn’t matter what you’re currently doing in the game, as it seems to always lag and stutter consistently. You’ll also find that certain chunks of the environment contain invisible walls where they shouldn’t, causing you to have to try and find the small opening to actually get through. Interacting with the environment is currently a chore due to these issues, with it regularly being difficult to analyze objects due to the poor camera and the interaction prompts being far too finicky. Sometimes you just need to blindly move the camera around the room and hope that a prompt will pop up to progress, making what should be a simple task tedious and aggravating.
A Tale Not Ready To Be Told
The current state of Syberia 3 is unfortunate, as there’s potential here for another great game fitting of the series’ pedigree. However, an extreme lack of polish in numerous areas drag the overall experience down considerably. It remains to be seen how many of the problems can be fixed with patches, and how long that would take to happen. For now, fans of the series looking to get wrapped up in another surreal adventure with Kate Walker are better off going back to the first 2 games.
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