Syberia 3 Review – A Rough Start to a New Journey

By Ashley
9 years Ago

When the first Syberia game was released 15 years ago, its darkness and mystery helped to create a loyal cult following&period; The follow-up, Syberia 2, was an entertaining adventure that contributed well to the Kate Walker story&period; After its announcement in 2010, fans waited seven long years for the third game, Syberia 3&period; Unfortunately, it feels as if Microids should have kept it in development a little longer&period;&NewLine;Syberia 3 begins as protagonist Kate Walker is found unresponsive along a coastline by a group of nomads&period; They do what they can to heal her but eventually bring her to a village for additional assistance&period; When she wakes up, she finds herself prisoner in the facility, with doctors who are attempting to hold her against her will&period; Eventually, she finds herself fleeing political enemies and helping the nomads on an important journey&period;&NewLine;<figure id="attachment&lowbar;124710" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-124710" style="width&colon; 960px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img class="wp-image-124710" src="https&colon;//cdn&period;bagogames&period;com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/25105654/22&period;jpg" alt="Syberia 3, Microids" width="960" height="506" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-124710" class="wp-caption-text">Syberia 3, Microids</figcaption></figure>&NewLine;One of the first things I noticed when sitting down to play the new game was that the traditional keyboard and mouse controls were no longer well-supported&period; The Steam version highly recommended the use of a gamepad&period; I expected that maybe with gamepad control there would be better camera manipulation in Syberia 3, but there is little of it&period; The left joystick would move Kate around, but the right allowed very little camera movement&period; A missed opportunity here&period;&NewLine;The next thing I noticed was that point-and-click mechanic was gone&period; This was a risky move for a game relying on the nostalgia of the previous games to catapult it forward&period; Instead, Kate moved around with me as I searched for the next clue&period; But her movement felt stiff, unnatural&period; I couldn’t put my finger on what was amiss until I realized that her head and neck remained absolutely still while she walked around the room&period; The 3D graphics felt outdated, which may have worked fine if the nostalgia of point-and-click had remained, but with the attempted advancement of controls, the graphics needed to follow suit&period;&NewLine;It’s another enjoyable Kate Walker story, complete with new friends, old companions, and compelling character development&period; The story felt as though it meant to teach me real life lessons, but immersiveness was lost on poor voice casting in the English-dubbed version&period; Within the first few minutes of starting the game, Kate meets the young leader of the nomadic Youkol tribe&period; She expresses surprise that a person so young could lead a group of people, but his voice sounds like that of a grown man&period; Many of the voices didn’t seem to belong to the bodies they inhabited, and it was a constant reminder that pulled me out of the game&period;&NewLine;<figure id="attachment&lowbar;124711" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-124711" style="width&colon; 960px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img class="wp-image-124711" src="https&colon;//cdn&period;bagogames&period;com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/25105717/31&period;png" alt="Syberia 3, Microids" width="960" height="540" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-124711" class="wp-caption-text">Syberia 3, Microids</figcaption></figure>&NewLine;I would have appreciated an option to bypass the spoken dialogue completely&period; I could read the written text and click to the next option when I was done, but this wasn’t available&period; Instead, I had to wait until a character was completely finished speaking before given the option to move on&period; However, when it was my turn to speak, if I didn’t choose a dialogue option soon enough, the person I was speaking to would get upset&period; &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;I’m beginning to lose my patience,” one doctor would scold me, if I spent one moment too long trying to decide the best response&period; It was an unnecessary stressor&period; If I can’t speed them along with what they have to say, they shouldn’t be able to bully me into talking faster&period;&NewLine;My inability to skip ahead in dialogue exchanges would discourage me from playing through the game a second or third time&period; Some of the Steam achievements are gained by simply playing through the game, but others are easily missed&period; With no manual save points, there’s no built-in way to revert back to a previous save and snag a missed achievement&period; The only option given is to replay the game, but why replay it and sit through long discussions you’ve already participated in&quest; Sometimes, I wanted to simply read the captions and move ahead, and my patience was heavily tested here&period;&NewLine;On a positive note, the Syberia 3 score is beautiful, and the concept art was incredible&period; The puzzles are just as intriguing as previous games, which almost saves the game&period; There’s something really cool under there somewhere, but it really needed more time in development&period;&NewLine;I don’t think the Syberia fans will give up on this third installment, but it will need some patch work before it’s ready for a broader market&period; It’s still dark and mysterious, but much of that is lost with the poor voice casting and clunkiness of new controls&period; With the cult following behind them, the Syberia 3 team could still turn this into a great game&period; The foundation is there, they just need a few solid patches to bring it up to 2017 standards&period;&NewLine;

Categories: Game Reviews, PC Reviews
Tags: Games PC Top Stories

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