Customer Reviews
Not Up To Benoit's Standard 
2007-07-27
The only clue that this is a Benoit Sokal game is the sketch book like the one in "Amerzone." Otherwise you would think that this is a creditable first time effort by someone. The graphics are average. The plot is cumbersome and tepid. The dialogue is pointless.
The first rule of a storyteller is to get the attention of the audience. Here, that is not true. The game starts off with several hours of puzzles which serve no purpose. Imagine congratulating yourself on solving some five or six puzzles only to find out that they were totally unnecessary. Not an auspicious beginning to a game. When the story finally starts, it is rambling and uncertain. You wonder exactly what this game is about after all. This is completely uncharateristic of a Sokal game.
There is a black leopard in the game. Here, Sokal is at his best. The representation is amazing. However, that is the only interest in the game. It is my belief that all the effort was directed to the sketch book and the leopard, and then a game was tacked on.
This is not a bad game, but it is one that you will find easy to put down.
Terrible - full of bugs, puzzles are stupid 
2007-07-07
I can't believe Ubisoft put out something like this. It's terrible. From the same company that put out Myst games, this is what they've come up with???
We played this game and got so frustrated with how buggy the game was that we almost quit altogether - but if we had quit it would mean that the game beat us, and our egos kept us going.
Example of a bug: At one point we were talking to one of the characters and accidently terminated the conversation earlier than we had intended to. At that point we were stuck, it wouldn't let us talk to him again and he needed to give us an object to continue. We had to go back to an old saved game to even continue.
Another example: If you don't do EVERYTHING in order, including talking to the right people at the right time, you can mess up the flow and get yourself stuck.
It's terrible, it was like it was debugged by my 4 year old. And that is almost an insult to my 4 year old.
Skip this one. Seriously.
Stay away 2007-07-05
If you're looking for a new game to play, go buy Syberia instead. Or Syberia II. Or just put your money on the floor and set fire to it, because that's effectively the same thing as spending it on Paradise.
The other reviews are spot-on--while the graphics (particularly the pre-rendered backgrounds) are luscious and the story is interesting, the gameplay itself is terrible. Playing in the third person as Ann, you are reduced to pixel hunting over and over again because of glitches; sometimes you can find the hotspot, sometimes not. Even with the patch, my game hangs, freezes, and crashes with depressing regularity. Conversations are jerky and for some reason I repeat the same questions to certain characters endlessly. I never could play as the leopard.
Bottom line...while I loved Benoit Sokal's earlier games, this one is a dud.
Very interesting 
2007-05-17
The game is absolutely well done. The scenes are great. You will go through a different Africa. With different animals and it's kind of spooky. But I really enjoyed. Specially visiting the Tree People. The character, Ann Smith is very smart and beautiful. No, it's not a free will game like some I played before where you can go anywhere and get lost. It' click and go. The story is very strong. A girl princess who comes back to Africa after so many years and lose her memory. And she has to go around many things to get where she needs to be. With no memory. Just information people give her around the places. The leopard is fun and pretty, if you decide to play with him. It's like a movie, but you move the character to find out the answer of the plot. And the end is like a movie... enjoy. It's a great game, with a good story, and different characters. The end... you judge it.
Dark & Gruesome Story with Average Puzzles 
2007-03-10
This game definitely has a dark story, rife with death. There were several things about gameplay that were frustrating. First, there is a lot of talking, and sometimes, characters will keep repeating the same thing to you for a given topic instead of considering the topic "closed". At the same time, the game will not allow you to skip over the dialog--you have to listen to the character speak it in full each time. Also, movement was a bit tricky at times. I would click on the right side of the screen and Ann would turn and move left! I also do not like games when you need to walk to the edge of the screen to find out that the scene will scroll horizontally instead of using the cursor to indicate that part of the scene is off the screen. Note that there is also a bug that can cause a crash during part of the game, so be sure to download and install the patch from Ubisoft.
Paradise 2007-01-13
Paradise is an amazing point-and-click adventure where you'll encounter fantastic, unknown animals and explore an unseen world. As a young woman travels to the heart of Africa to return a leopardto Kilimanjaro, she'll dicover a new kind of jungle... and a new world of mysteries.
Not Sokol's Best ... But Still Good 
2006-12-01
This is a Benoit Sokol game. He is the only creator of point and click adventures who plays in the same league as Rand Miller. This game is not as good as Syberia or Amerzone, but it's still better than most. The graphics are terrific and the environments are exotic and fun to explore.
This game uses considerable computer horsepower so make sure you meet the minimum requirements. I played on a 1.3 ghz Athlon with an ATI video card with 64mb onboard and there were a few spots where my machine struggled to keep up. Puzzles are of the inventory and conversation type and are for the most part not a hinderance to the advancement of the story line.
paradise... 2006-10-29
it was an overall fun game... had i had a faster computer it would have been more fun... but i got through it ok... i finished it in a couple of days which was slightly disappointing. the end of the game could have been more plesent i thought but w/e. and there were some parts i had to look at aa walkthrough to get passed them because you couldnt use common sense to get through (there's one point where you are hanging in a basket and you have to get a stick from one side of you and hit the beehive on the other side, you would think that to get the basket to swing you would rock back and forth but you have to just click one direction and then let go when it hits it climax...) here's the walkthrough i used: [...]
Paradise - maybe once upon a time. 2006-09-17
I truly enjoyed the Syberia Series and have replayed them several times. I really liked the fact that Paradise contained the same very detailed environments that one would expect from Sokal's previous work. However, one major difference between Syberia and Paradise is that Paradise is a pretty dark story. I have to admit that I was very surprised by the ending. The main character "Ann" is one of the more interesting characters that I have seen in this class of game play. Sokal does a good job of developing and revealing "Ann".
The game ran acceptably on my computer (eMachine T 6524 with an ATI Saphire X550. The graphics were certainly not as smooth or clean as the Syberia Series. (Leopard at one point submerged part of it's body in a boulder) I had one serious glitch in the play that prevented some key dialogue to take place (even with the 1.1 patch). I recovered by loading a previous saved game after restarting my computer. The "night of the leopard" sequence only worked on the last of the 3 sequences and even than the play with the leopard was not very smooth. Fortunately you can exit those sequences easily without major impact to the game play although one feels a little cheated in not having the game entirely functioning.
In the end, I have mixed feelings about the game on two levels, technical quality of the product and the actual story. I felt that the game was released prematurely and should have had more beta testing. The actual story line was perhaps darker than I wanted or expected after being exposed to Syberia. But in the end, I'm sure I will buy Sokal's next release. His ability to tell a story in this media is second to none.
Paradise PC Game 2006-08-25
The game is not like Syberia I and II. Many of the clues are not connecting so you can get to the next level of the game. I do not enjoy this game.
