Good game? - Yes Better than Syberia? - Certainly NOT! Why? Read my review
After reading all the previews and watching all the screenshots I saw it all looked a lot like Syberia, the 2 previous excellent adventures of Benoit Sokal. So I wondered: will it be better that the Syberia saga?
Well you want a quick answer then the answer is 'no, Syberia is better'.
1) Story
The most important thing of an adventure game is story. You take control of the character Ann Smith, a young explorer who's plain is shot down by rebels. After the crash she's taken to the hospital and when she's fully recovered they lock her up in a harem. Form then on the story starts...
The only problem with the story is that it starts really slowly. The first story relevant dialog occurs after more than one hour playing time. So the first hour you are just puzzling without much storyline. From the moment you leave the harem the storyline kicks finally in and it's a good story although the end sequence is very abrupt. So the bottomline is that the story is good but not as great as Syberia. The story lacks a lot of emotion and you don't get attached to any of the character because every character hasn't a lot to say and most of them don't have a personality. Most of the time characters are just there because they need to reveal a bit of the story or they need to do or give you something to solve a puzzle. You don't go visiting some characters over and over again as in Syberia, so you don't get attached to them.
2) Puzzles
Another important things is the puzzle department and I must say the game succeeds quite well here. All the puzzles are story relevant and well thought out. The puzzles go from controlling mechanical machines, to climbing walls, to avoiding strange animals. There are a lot of different puzzles and it nevers get repetive. My only complaint is that some puzzles are based on hotspot searching and they are quite annoying. Because the hotspots are sometimes very very small. Other than that, puzzles are great. The puzzles are much more difficult than Syberia (which is a good thing) and easier that Myst (which is also a good thing)
3) Graphics
Like all other Benoit Sokal games, this game is also made with Virtools which means all the graphics are prerendered. All the environments are large and very beautiful. Such beautiful hand crafted graphics are prettier than the latest 3D engines. My only complaint is the consistency. Most of the time there is a lot of movement onscreen such as rain, falling leaves, moving water but other times when you are in mine-area there isn't any movement at all on all the screens. This gives me the impression of 'unpolished areas'...
4) Sound
Scince I was a huge fan of Syberia I remember a lot of the voices in that game. So I noticed that Paradise features the same voice actors as Syberia. In fact the voice of the main character is the same as Kate Walker in Syberia with a higher pitch. So all the voice work is top notch.
Also the background music is very good. It very melancholic music and fits the atmosphere perfectly
5) Value
Because this game is an adventure game it means that when you finished the story, you finished it. There's only one ending and there are no secrets, unlockables etc. So this game is one time experience. I also want to note the the game has A LOT OF BUGS. It seems like the game is released to early. Sometimes my main character didn't want to move to the next screen. Object in the inventory are labled as 'object-125x78a' instead of the good names and sometimes you can't read story relevant documents in your inventory.Also the OK button doesn't work always in the movieviewer so it's not always possible to watch movies you previously unlocked.
Another big problem is that the game is very laggy especially the menus. The main menu and the ingame menu are stuttering everytime. I've tested it on 2 high end pc's and it gave the same problems. This is a simple adventure game with prerendered backgrounds (bitmaps) so I expect great performance on a normal pc. This is not 'Oblivion'!
6) Conclusion
All together Paradise isn't a bad game although the game is far form polished. If you played Syberia you will enjoy the fun puzzles and great visuals but when its over you'll find that Syberia is much better. If you've never played Syberia, skip this one and play Syberia. The story is much better and the game is much more polished.