LogFAQs > #970842372

Syberia 3 (PC)

If you told me that I was a playing a game about a girl who's been saddled with a responsibility and a calling beyond her station, as she braves challenges set before her in a post-apocalyptic but anachronistic steampunk setting...no matter how cliche that premise is, I'm going to get into it. Unfortunately, this premise has the misfortune of being called Syberia 3---as in, it is a sequel to an already established terrible plot. Not only does it have nothing to do with the first 2 games (only having a few callbacks) but it serves to make the canon even worse. My god, just let Kate Walker die already I could give two shits about her (yeah I'm aware there's a 4th game. Don't worry, that day will come.) I'm not gonna bore you guys with how stupid Kate's arc is but needless to say its been 3 games now and she has never had a significant arc. It seems to me that Sokal god bless his soul didn't really want to tell her story as much as just tell the story of a journey and pepper it with eye candy in an attempt to give it substance.

This isn't the worst point-click adventure I've played. But it's pretty bad. I mean, technically, it's not really a point-click adventure as it only scrapes the most barebones definition of the genre. Its somewhere in the middle and resembles crappy First-Time-3d Adventure Games of the 2000s. The problem is this game came out in 2017 well a decade over. Not to mention, its suppose to follow-up a decade's worth of cliffhanger but failed to satisfy so not even the fans could get into this. I often think about Dreamfall Chronicles who's episodic cap to a trilogy redeemed itself after its 2000's 2nd game of shit. Syberia 3 would be like a failed example of that.

As I mentioned in last year's topic, morbid curiosity got the best of me and I decided to play a godforsaken sequel to one of the worst adventure games I've ever played. Syberia 1 and 2 is a very polarizing series of games. You either have someone who will put it up there with The Longest Journey, and then you have the rest of us who think that it's just a bunch of backtracking, with useless screens, and "non-puzzles", mainly dialogging and watching steampunk things move around. Well if you're a fan of the latter, the great news is despite now being in 3d the third game has these exact qualities: Backtracking, pointless screens (now peppered with bland 3d modeled setpieces), an unintuitive UI, a stupid inventory system, terrible unskippable dialog, and blank puzzles. I guess you can say that this really IS a Syberia game.

And you know honestly in the 5% of the time I played this, in the times where I take a deep breath and surface from the mediocre muck....I can feel a semblance of a good game. I can see well written dialog. I can see ambitious setpieces. Camera angles that wouldn't be out of place in a 3rd person game like Resident Evil or Silent Hill (I'm not kidding, you just have to believe me here). But all that is wasted on a flimsy premise, with stupid forgettable characters, and a lore that butchers itself. Like, they could only find 2 voice-actors with distinct russian accents, and everyone else just sounds American. It's like Secret Files all over again.

I hope I'm clear on this---nobody should play Syberia 3. It's really bad. If you had any doubts that a 3d touchup could salvage the series, rest assured I've busted this myth.