Syberia Remastered Review – More like a Half Baked Remake

Today, I bring to all of you a Syberia Remastered Review, and right from the bat I can say that things didn’t go right with this one. First off, let’s start talking about the differences between Remasters and Remakes since its crucial to understand what comes next. A remaster focuses on improving the visual quality of a game along with adding the ability to run the game on a newer system, its pretty much a port. Sometimes, remasters will add cut content from the original game that should have been on the original release. Remakes on the other hand tend to re-imagine a game, even to the point of changing the art style entirely instead of respecting the artistic decision.

Syberia Remastered is definitely not a remaster despite what the name implies, because despite it being the same story and puzzles as the 2002 PC release, there’s a ton of changes that feel like a half baked attempt to redo the game from scratch. First and foremost, and for the lovers of old graphics making techniques, this game has been completely slaughtered, pre-rendered backgrounds are gone from the game as things got replaced by fully 3d environments. While some may call it modernization, those same people fail to understand that Syberia is a game that released in 2002.

The 2000s was already a very advanced era on the PC gaming scene, unshackled by the basic conventions of having to save space and optimize like in the 90s. Syberia as a game of that time didn’t even need to be made with pre-rendered graphics, this was a voluntary choice by the developers to represent their world, to show us how they do art. Pre-rendered is an art style and art styles cannot get obsolete, this big misconception around the topic is caused due to people conflating “old” with “bad”, one of the current marketing tactics of triple A developers to shove live service deep down our guts.

Remasters are meant to be loyal to the source material, usually, to all of the source material including the graphical representation. In this aspect, Syberia Remastered’s full 3D environment with advanced lighting effects that tax your GPU is a totally different art style. If this was a remake, there wouldn’t really be an issue with this at all, as remakes tend to be separate titles from the original that carry their own sliver of identity which might appeal to the masses. Based on this, and to be fair, we have to review Syberia Remastered as if it was a remake, because otherwise it would have already failed.

The story of Syberia is great, we follow Kate Walker’s adventure to uncover the mysteries of the mythical land of Syberia, accompanied by Oscar, a loyal automaton, nothing changed in the slightest when it comes to this, this is a good point to take into account, but that’s about it. Gameplay also suffered some modifications that further simplify the experience for those quick gamers who don’t wish to hone their puzzle solving skills. There’s plenty of highlighting and hand holding that does not seem to be a feature you can turn off, which is quite weird due to the fact that the whole gameplay are solving puzzles by yourself.

To adapt to modern gamers, puzzles have been simplified in some cases, such as the box puzzle that one has to tackle further in the story. All of this makes the experience quicker, and while I already completed the 2002 original years ago on a whim, things seemed even easier and it was rather frustrating that the game decided to just assist me. It is as if it wanted me to do it as quick as possible to write this review, perhaps the only thing that got improved might have been the audio quality, but sometimes there was some occasional sound bit bugs that might be exclusive to my system yet I have seen people report on them too.

Like with any modern game, we reached a point where we have to analyze performance, this is an apparent remaster of a 2002 game, which honestly feels more like a remake. Another cool thing about remasters is that they usually try to run on hardware that is old since its pretty much a version of the original game with better textures. This isn’t the case for Syberia Remastered, and while I had more than the required specs to run this one, some people with better specs than mine have found issues when it comes to light effects and refraction in the water.

I did find some stutters when going through areas where lighting was intensive since the algorithm to process it is rather bad to put it lightly. There’s a ton of work to be done when it comes to fixing this game, but there’s a catch to this too, the developers behind it have been laid out by the company employing them. This tactic of exploitation is getting rather tiresome, but the benefit of knowing this is that you don’t have to worry about buying the game either. Syberia Remastered does feel like a half baked remake attempt and it is even possible this was planned to be a remake at some point too.

If you really wish to play this game, you should try out the original 2002 release which is still on Steam, depending on when you are reading this its currently sitting on an 80% discount, way cheaper and better than this remaster attempt. Compared to the remaster, it also runs smooth on every system, there’s nothing to fear when investing 2 to 3 bucks on it, one can always refund in case things go wrong. As a fan of the series, I have to admit I’m disappointed with the state of this game, it could have worked as a remake for new people to get into, but this one pleases nobody.

It does not make fans of the original happy at all, and new players aren’t even happy with how the game runs or looks. There’s of course no fixing in the horizon for a game where the developers cannot work on anymore. If you are searching for a better experience, buying the original ones is the best you can do, if you care about new games only, getting Syberia The World Before might be your best choice.

Syberia Remastered Review – Verdict

[Editor’s Note: Syberia – Remastered was reviewed on PC and a copy was provided to us for review purposes.]