As a term to define a hugely diverse gaming genre, “adventure” has all but lost its meaning. More often than not, modern gaming adventures are driven by consistent action, head-scratching puzzles, complex mechanics, or some combination of the three. They dazzle with clever gimmicks and gameplay loops, pushing the industry to new technical keystones. French developer Microids’ 2025 remake of Amerzone – The Explorer’s Legacy does none of this. It’s low on action, its puzzles are easy, and its core gameplay consists of looking, reading, and moving objects. And you know what? Amerzone – The Explorer’s Legacy is one of the most seamless and engrossing adventure gaming experiences I’ve had in many years, and kept my attention lassoed in like it hasn’t been since reading Treasure Island or Twenty Thousand Leagues Leagues Under the Seas as a boy.
It’s the late 1990s. You play as an unnamed journalist sent from a Parisian magazine to interview the reclusive Professor Alexandre Valembois in his lighthouse home in Brittany. Prof. Valembois, an aged explorer, has long been ostracized from the scientific community for his obsession with the mysterious South American country of Amerzone, to which he went on an expedition in the 1930s. Now on death’s door, he begs the player to return to Amerzone with a giant egg he stole all those decades ago—a giant egg said to contain a mythical, culturally vital clutch of white birds. What follows is a string of events retreading Valembois’ original expedition into the jungles of an isolationist country that has, in the sixty years since, been ravaged by his former traveling companion, the despotic Alvarez.
The new Amerzone is a faithful remake but complete graphical overhaul of 1999’s Amerzone, the first game from designer Benoît Sokal of later Syberia fame. In the original PC adventure, players clicked and moved around then-groundbreaking (now Silent Hill-esque foggy and unnerving) environments à la Amerzone’s oft-compared elder cousin, Myst (1993). Think walking around in Google Maps’ Street View. This remake of Amerzone has done away with pre-rendered backgrounds and FMVs in favor of depicting the entire 3D journey in first-person. This means they’ve filled the blank gaps between every movement and action with a POV animation, although you can usually skip these by double-tapping the select button. In a way, the movement greatly pads out the game’s runtime, but the slow, deliberate pace also worked to make the journey feel more rewarding. Rather than watch an FMV of Valembois’ transforming mechanical Hydrafloat, you experience every takeoff and landing yourself. I found the pacing very immersive, to the point that when I took a break between each chapter or so, I was genuinely excited to see where I’d go next and often thought of the game between play sessions across its ten-ish hours.
On the other hand, these navigation animations give rise to far too many performance hiccups on the PS5, especially given that the graphics are not near the standard of most modern games. Even looking around via the left thumbstick while stationary, the framerate sometimes chugged, taking me out of an otherwise very immersive adventure. Performance issues could be ironed out later—looking like a late PS3 or early PS4 game, though, can’t. Visually and performance-wise, it’s on par with 2022’s Syberia: The World Before, which was by no means ugly, but it’s a little disappointing considering the whole point of Amerzone is to discover its lush, lost world. For example, it was a little hard to appreciate the creative designs of the flora and fauna when the latter moved as mechanically as the animals in Disneyland’s Jungle Cruise ride from 1955. Amerzone’s dated method of environmental navigation, too, is not ideal. From a new player standpoint, it’s frustrating that I still have to click to watch my character move around rather than freely moving myself, especially considering the smoothness and freedom of more recent first-person exploration adventures I’ve loved, such as Paradise Killer (2020), Return of the Obra Dinn (2018), or Outer Wilds (2019).
One of the major additions made for this remake of Amerzone is the inclusion of “investigations,” in which you gather clues scattered throughout each level to write investigatory articles on Amerzone’s enigmatic history. There are localized investigations for each chapter and ongoing investigations where you collect clues throughout your playthrough. Should you miss anything, you can return to each chapter in the post-game to clean up any incomplete investigations. They don’t shake up the core gameplay much, but they did entice me to take my time and really observe the environment, reading each letter of correspondence, flipping each gathered artifact around for hidden details, and listening in to radio broadcasts on the Hydrafloat. In the long run, the game benefitted from this slower, more thoughtful tempo, especially considering that the main story’s puzzles are never all that difficult, even on the purportedly more challenging “Adventurer” difficulty.
As far as the puzzles go, though, I welcomed the breezy difficulty, unchanged from the 1999 original beyond optional accessibility features. The puzzles consistently engage your thinking but rarely hinder your progression for long. New in this remake is the “display interactions button” you’ll likely use a lot. Holding triangle on PS5 showed icons for everything I could touch and every direction I could go—which eliminates the needless click-scanning so prevalent in the point-and-click adventure predecessors to Amerzone. For a truly immersive challenge (or for the old-head masochists out there), you could refrain from using this button at all. If you’re really stuck on a puzzle, you can use the robust journal to unveil progressively clearer hints right up to outright giving you the solution, though it is likely unnecessary. Puzzles in Amerzone are more fun than those of the Uncharted series (to strike a similar tone), more logical than The Secret of Monkey Island (1990), and involve less backtracking than Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (1992). They’ve even added a findable fast-travel map for some of the larger chapters.
To further flesh out the atmosphere, industry veteran and longtime composer of the Syberia series Inon Zur (Dragon Age: Origins, Fallout 3, Starfield) comes in alongside his son, Ori Zur, for Amerzone’s new soundtrack, available for streaming ahead of the game’s launch. At just twelve tracks and twenty minutes, it’s short but excellent at evoking a sense of globe-trotting adventure in the overgrown ruins of an ancient civilization with its deep strings, exotic woodwinds, and pounding drums. I’d compare it to Greg Edmonson’s Uncharted 2: Among Thieves score (2009). The problem is that Amerzone’s music is underutilized, as you only hear snippets of its twelve tracks used as stingers when you’ve successfully unveiled another clue or transition to a new zone. For the most part, the game’s sound design consists of the ambiance of jungles, river basins, beaches, and more so as not to distract players from their puzzles. There is occasional dialogue with figures from Prof. Valembois’ past as well as the occasional soldier in Alvarez’ regime. Microids re-recorded all voiceovers for this release, though the quality is hit-or-miss and, especially with minor characters, feels more rigid and unnatural than the original twenty-five years ago.
The unnamed journalist you control is a suitably blank slate, speaking only through the notes and articles he writes in his travel journal. To some degree, you’re playing less through his story, and more through Valembois’ memories as you try to right the colonialist wrongs done by him and his ill-fated traveling party. Thematically, the finer, more literary and political points are hidden in the scattered letters you can find. I was especially interested during my favorite chapter, the Puebla village, in which you find remnants of a more modern enclave forced out of their homes by urbanization as a consequence of forceful globalization. The final chapter of the game has a few great moments, especially in terms of environmental storytelling, though the finale feels rather abrupt and unsatisfying. Overall, I was never surprised by the story, nor was I expecting to be. This is not Heart of Darkness, but a lighthearted, pulpy adventure. What did surprise me, though, was how satisfyingly the game continued to lead me deeper into the jungle, further upriver.
As a last point, the true main character of Amerzone is Professor Valembois’ master invention, the Hydrafloat. This clunky yet ingenious hunk of metal is both transportation (switching between plane, boat, submarine, and beyond), and hub for much of the game. After each chapter, seeing the artifacts and maps I discovered filling the Hydrafloat’s shelves was a nice touch. By the end of the game, when I thought I’d familiarized myself with all its complexities, it continued to surprise me, and I surprised myself with how much I ended up caring for it.
The 2025 remake of Amerzone – The Explorer’s Legacy is a worthwhile journey whether you’re returning to its familiar rivers and jungles, or if it’s your first time strapping into a Hydrafloat. You will best enjoy it if you take your time and let it sweep you into the well-thought-out pace retained from the original game’s designer, the late Benoît Sokal, who passed away in 2021. From intro to credits, it is an unabashedly classic adventure.
