While I find the original Syberia something of an annoying and flawed game, it still is a fine story-driven game, flaws and all. Syberia 2 on the other hand, I've always just found an annoying experience, filled with fluff and padding.
At the end of Syberia, Kate Walker, a New York lawyer, leaves her old life behind and joins Hans Voralberg on his quest of finding the mysterious island of Syberia, a legendary place where mammoths still roam the lands. Together, he and Kate, trek through Siberia with the train conducted by an automaton Oscar, both designed by Hans for the sole purpose of taking them to Youkols, who guard the means of finally getting to Syberia. Obviously, through all the troubles, Kate and Hans finally arrive at Syberia and the old man is granted his final wish when he rides away with a mammoth herd.
I have several issues with Syberia 2. First and foremost, it feels like an overly padded epilogue to the first game. In Syberia, the main goal was to guide Kate through former Soviet lands to Hans as well as witness her personal growth from a corporate lawyer, who was unhappy in her life, to a fearless adventurer, who says goodbye to her former, unhappy life to continue the journey that wasn't originally hers, but which brought her more content than her previous existence.
Now, in Syberia 2, the rather simplistic main story of getting the old man to his final place of death is padded with a rather unnecessary side story of two Russian hoodlums, who capture the train and Hans. Then there's the pointless story of a never seen detective, who is sent after Kate by her former employer. While the Russian crooks have a visible part in Kate's story, the company's futile attempt of finding her is completely pointless from the point of view of both, the player and Kate. The crooks at least provide some puzzles, the company subplot doesn't do even that.
Another thing Syberia 2 doubles down is the number of empty screens that exist solely as padding. A good deal of the puzzles requires you to go a couple of times between point A to point B. Each time, you need to go through all those locations, again and again. While the graphics are very pretty to look at, they aren't so interesting. This time many of the screens are just filler landscape pics of Siberian forests. If half of them were removed, nothing of value would be lost.
Navigation on some screens is a bit of a problem as well. In some scenes, exit points can be somewhat close together, so it is easy to miss a navigation point, which would have led to the answer to the puzzle you are currently trying to solve.
If you look for positives, there are more puzzles this time around. The bad thing is, that some of them are very old-school adventure games like in nature, leaning more towards a bit more obscure solutions or just demanding you to pixel hunt scenes with due diligence.
Overall, if Syberia 1 was a bit of a mixed bag, Syberia 2 is more on the bad side of the spectrum as far as game design and the narrative goes. While the ending for Hans' story is fantastic and well done, getting there leaves a lot to be desired.
Just like the first Syberia, Syberia 2 can be bought from GOG and Steam. It's also available for consoles as well as mobile devices. If nothing else, it's at least pretty to look at.
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