Syberia Remastered review: Whatever it is, at least it’s still good

I don’t know what “remastered” means anymore, but that’s okay because Syberia is still a great adventure game

Syberia launched on PC in 2002, but that’s not when I first got my hands on it. I played the game originally in the worst possible way to play it, and that is on the Nintendo DS. Given how my job was at the time, I got to just hang out alone and play visual novels and adventure games without anyone interrupting me. I would eventually go back and play the PC version, which is a night and day difference in terms of interactivity, because on the little tiny DS screen it’s really easy to miss what we’re supposed to click on. But it worked, and I played a lot of it, somehow.

Now I think the one thing I have to say is I don’t know what “remastered” means anymore.

This latest release is not just like a spit-polished of Syberia. Tthe story is the same. The voice acting is the same. The cut scenes are the same. (That is not a positive, by the way. They’re shrunk down into the barely up-res kind of execution and are very jarring.) But, obviously, all the textures are new and the game is in 3D where we can walk around using modern controls. It’s not just clicking to tell our hero where to go. We actually move her around.

And the puzzles are different, too. I remembered a puzzle solution from the original version because it seemed so stupid — sometimes the stupidest thing just kind of stays with you. So when I got to the puzzle in THIS version I thought, “I remember this one,” because it seemed like it was gonna be that big, stupid, complicated thing where we go to a console with a bunch of switches but only one switch works. But now *ALL* of the buttons work. We actually have to consult the guide that they’ve sort of presented us with to figure out exactly what buttons we need to push. They didn’t just update it, they completely changed it.

I started looking at the orignal strategy guide while going through what I’m playing and seeing just how much they had changed puzzles-wise. In many cases the developers have taken out the extra steps from the original puzzles because a lot of early 2000’s gaming had overcomplicated things just to keep us going. But now they’ve cut out some of the nonsense just to streamline it, and it’s really a great Quality of Life improvement.

That was fascinating to come across as it’s definitely streamlined, but it could also be a dangerous line to walk as a developer because some of the original fans might be turned off. I don’t mind it; The game is still the same to me. It’s a little easier in how some of the puzzles play out, and the Quality of Life stuff may be a little too Quality of Life, but the game knows that we understand its logic. It’s not dense.

Is this a remaster? A remake? Something in between? I’m not sure. At the time Syberia was probably the best point-and-click adventure that had come out since LucasArts stopped making them, but luckily the adventure game genre, especially with indie studios, has sort of made a comeback. So, it’s nice to see something like this get its second wind, because it deserves it.

This review is based on a Steam code sent to SideQuesting by the publisher. The video originally appeared on The SideQuest LIVE on November 6th, 2025.