A disappointing adventure game which has all the weaknesses of the genre without the strengths...
The game looks very dated. Perhaps the game suffers from having been released so close in time to Dreamfall, whose presentation really does move the genre forward (a point which I wish I had highlighted more in my Dreamfall review even more now that I have played Paradise). The graphics are locked in very low resolution, and are blurry and undetailed compared to other recent adventure games. While the character models are in 3d, they look flat and uninspired. Animation is jerky and unrealistic. Some genres can get away with this, but adventure games are supposed to be immersive, and all of these things add up to a game that seems to continually kick you out of the game universe.
The game universe--where to begin. Benoit Sokal's Syberia series was not my favorite, although I found it entertaining (if a bit odd for my taste). Paradise seems to be a rehash of a lot of warmed up leftovers from Syberia and Syberia 2--things Sokal and his team didn't use there (because they weren't that great?) and dumped into this game. There are flashes of creativity, but they seem dragged down into a world which simply doesn't make sense, and which appears disjointed. Some games carry this off well (like the aforementioned Dreamfall), but this game fails for some reason, and the world seems less than fully realized.
The dialogue is juvenile, disjointed, and boring. Sorry to say it, but it is true. Dialogue should feel natural (again, see Dreamfall as an excellent example) and characters should seem to be responding to you. Instead, this game seems to put advancing the plot as more important than the characters responding realistically to what is said. Even in fantasy adventure games, you need to have some touchstone in the dialogue to root the game. In short, the writing is attrocious.
While the main character is voiced well enough, the other character voices are simply ridiculous. Everything is sing-songy. You want to laugh (and not in a good way) at most of the minor characters in this game every time they open their mouths.
The story is similarly ridiculous. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as the game does have moments where one can almost see what the developers had in mind. But for the most part the game doesn't have a reasonable plot. It begins with the cliche of all cliches for adventure games--the character with amnesia. Please. Anyone who has played Sokal's other games will immediately recognize characters from other games. Not that these are the same characters, simply the same personalities, relationships, etc. in new packages. You'll even recognize slightly reconfigured stock plot points from other Sokal games.
In the end, Paradise feels like a Syberia retread, with many of the same characters, plot points, emotions, relationships, etc. And while adventure game developers seem to be fascinated with women protagonists these days, they manage to make them all the same. Even the main character in Paradise becomes a parody of women leads in adventure games. This doesn't happen with male characters in adventure games! Come on, now there's a lot of ground to explore here, guys! Come up with a new woman lead that is original! The lead character in Paradise is even following the same "in search of a unique leadership calling" that was the core of Syberia!
The only thing going for Paradise is the puzzles, which are really only mediocre. They're not difficult by any stretch of the imagination, but they will keep you moderately entertained. That is, if you can stand the retread cliches, bad voice acting and atrocious graphics.
Again, I ask--why do adventure gamers settle for such lousy storytelling? Why do we allow developers to get away with shoveling us such thin gruel? The adventure genre is supposed to be about good stories. We used to have them. Limited graphics aside, those older games provided great experiences. This game is not one of them.
But at least it doesn't crash.