Hans and Oscar are the saving graces at first, but pretty quickly you come to realize that Hans is just there to wander around and get sick while Oscar just stays on the train and complains that you're not working fast enough. Kate's still a terrible person, the epitome of the White American Savior trope. To stretch out the story, they included an unnecessary subplot about a PI sent to find Kate, but since he never interacts with Kate (or is even seen onscreen), he has no presence and only serves to fill in cutscene time, which is doubly annoying, since the game crashed every other time a cutscene played and I just had to pray they were short so my system could survive long enough for me to save. The environments and scenarios aren't really as interesting as they were in the first game, and the plot picks up on a place that was already a satisfying albeit ambiguous ending. The puzzles fall apart to meaningless trial-and-error that is misleading in some cases (eg, orange salmon like to eat green frogs, so naturally you have to use the yellow fish-shaped lure to catch them instead of the green frog one), frustratingly precise pixel-hunts (eg, knowing to hit 1 of 100 icicles only because it sways almost imperceptibly and your cursor only indicates it when you have a specific item equipped), or downright nonsensical (eg, I still can't figure out the logic behind any of the symbols in the final puzzle). Starts out with a lot of promise and some interesting puzzles, but after the first act things fall apart, both in terms of gameplay and story. Syberia 3 is in the works to be released several months after this mini-review was written, and I'm really not sure how they can continue this story without it feeling forced. This game feels like its a completion of the story, despite having a lot of unresolved loose ends. I played with a guide, so I can't really judge how well they implemented the puzzle clues. Mechanically, it seems to have maintained the same derpy engine as the first game, making controlling Kate with a mouse downright annoying in many places. Many of the cutscenes regarding the search for Kate feel unnecessary other than to remind the player that this feels like an unrealistic adventure in the real world, but at least the people back home do not call Kate all the time this time around.
![syberia ii orange salmon syberia ii orange salmon](https://www.theroastedroot.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Orange_Butter_Honey_Lemon_Salmon_2.jpg)
I guess I can understand the motivations of Kate in this game, but I'm not really as invested in this leg of the story as I was in the first game's story. The story continues to be something that feels like it could take place in the real world, but has too many fantastical elements to be believable. The second Syberia game continues immediately after the point where the first game left off.