Syberia has been one of my favorite point-and-click games since its release in 2002. It’s a surreal, atmospheric adventure, complete with great writing, memorable characters, and beautiful environments to explore. So, naturally, when I heard that a version was in the works for Nintendo’s little two-screened wonder, I got excited about the prospect of being able to carry this outstanding game in my pocket — the only x-factor was the quality of the port. Now that it’s here, it’s my sad duty to report that while the brilliance of the original game shines through in spots, Syberia on DS is hampered with so many technical flaws as to be nearly unplayable.

Syberia places players in the role of Kate Walker, an American lawyer on a business trip to a small town in the French Alps. Kate’s law firm is brokering the sale of an old clockwork toy factory to an American corporation, and she’s crossed the Atlantic to secure the signature of Anna Voralberg, sole heir and owner of the factory. Except that by the time Kate lands, Anna Voralberg is dead, and a letter she left with her attorney tells Kate that there is another heir to the factory — Hans Voralberg, Anna’s brother, long believed to be dead. Now, if Kate wants to finish the deal and get back home, she’s got to track Hans down — and that means following his 60-year old trail across Eastern Europe, deep into the snowy depths of Syberia, where Hans traveled in search of the mammoths that supposedly still roam the countryside.

 
If Hans Voralberg never really died, then what will Kate find in his tomb?

Syberia’s story was written by European comic artist Benoit Sokal, and the great writing is evident in this version as well. The story’s got many things going for it, like its haunting tone and a genuinely compelling central mystery, but its strongest element is its cast of characters. Each is unique and full of personality, especially Kate herself; as the plot unfolds and Kate uncovers the tale of Hans’ journey across Europe, she’s forced to re-examine her life in light of her discoveries. The greatest literary heroes are the ones who have an arc, who grow as the story takes place; as she gets deeper into the continent, Kate is changed by her experiences, and these changes really resonate with the player.

 
Kate will visit many strange and wondrous locations in her quest.

So Syberia’s story pretty much survived the porting process. It’s when you get into the actual gameplay that the problems become apparent. Gameplay in Syberia is pretty standard for the adventure genre: by using the stylus on the touch screen, you’ll make Kate walk from place to place, investigate various areas and objects in the environment, and use the items you collect to solve puzzles in each location. So far, so good, except that each of these different actions has at least one major flaw that, when taken together, more or less ruins the experience.

Take simple navigation, for instance. Touching an area of the level makes Kate walk there — what’s there to screw up about that? Well, for starters, Kate walks at a glacial pace, and there’s no way to run. It takes forever just to walk from one side of the screen to the other, let alone from one end of the map to the other. Kate also seems to regard your taps as a vague suggestion of where you want her to go — there were times that I would tap an area to the left of Kate, and she’d turn and start walking to the right. It’s also tricky navigating through narrow indoor environments, as Kate tends to get stuck on anything and everything in her path. Just getting around each area is a frustrating pain.

And once you’ve arrived at your destination, the frustrations continue. Whenever you find an area that can be investigated more closely, the game switches from its cinematic area view into a close-up, first-person perspective look at whatever you’re investigating, and from here you can pick up, manipulate, and use various items to solve the puzzle at hand. But on the DS’s small screen, the relevant objects and locations are almost impossible to see, even in the zoomed-in view. I got stuck on the very first puzzle in the game — as close to a “freebie” puzzle as the game ever gives you — by overlooking a tiny clockwork key, essential to solving the puzzle. I couldn’t see it because it was about six pixels big and almost the exact same color as the desk it was sitting on. In fact, if I hadn’t played the game before and known the puzzle’s solution, I might never have made it past the game’s first area.

 
You’ll have to comb each screen, pixel by pixel, to find the items you need to continue.

The problems don’t stop there. The inventory, a crucial and integral element of any adventure game, is unwieldy. You’ve actually got two separate inventories — your normal catch-all inventory, and your field inventory, which supposedly offers quick access to items used to solve puzzles. Having to manage two separate inventories is confusing enough, and the confusing way the game makes you go about interacting with it only makes things worse. For example, you collect plenty of text documents as inventory items, and reading them is necessary to progress. You’ve got a read button in your inventory screen, so it should be simple enough to select the paper then click “Read”, right? Wrong. Instead you’ve got to drag the paper to the empty box beneath the “Read” button, then click it, a fact that took 15 maddening minutes to figure out. There’s no reason for this to be required; it’s just an extra, annoying step the game puts in the way of you being able to advance.

Even relatively simple elements of the game somehow go wrong here. The PC version of Syberia is full of top-notch voice acting, and with the DS’s memory I don’t think anyone can fault this version for forgoing the vocals. But since now all dialog and story elements are written on screen, is it too much to ask for a clear, readable font? Instead, all text is written in a blocky, all-caps lettering style that looks like the default font on a PC from 1983. Every dialog sequence is a strain on the eyes, to the point that I had a headache before leaving the first town.

At the very least the port team has done a relatively good job of translating the game’s visual and audio elements to the DS. The PC original was lauded for its breathtaking pre-rendered environments, and they survive the DS transition remarkably well. Each area is gorgeously laid out, with plenty of details to make the game world feel like a real place you could get lost in. Less impressive are the character models, which are significantly simpler and blockier than their PC counterparts, but that’s got more to do with the limitations of the DS hardware, and they probably look as good as they could have given the DS’s 3D capabilities. The music, a high point in the original, sounds great here as well, and might be the single best thing about the game. Every area is accompanied by hauntingly beautiful orchestral scoring, which along with the environments give the game its mysterious and evocative atmosphere.

 
Even on the DS’s tiny screen, the environments are strikingly beautiful.

I really wanted to like Syberia on the DS, and I tried to get lost in the game the way I did when I first played it six years ago. But at the end of the day, the DS version is simply too flawed to be playable. Sure, Kate’s quest is as compelling as ever, but it’s not worth the aggravation it would take to follow her across Europe. Syberia remains required playing for any point-and-click aficionado, but do yourself a favor and track down the PC original instead.

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