This I think might be the best adventure game ever made. What Cyan pulled off with Myst and Riven is nothing short of tremendous. There's no dying, no permanent fail state, no violence that occurs onscreen, and no HUD to speak of. There's nothing between you and the atmosphere of the world. And what a world it is! These graphics STILL look good, over twenty-five years after its initial release on the Mac. All the upcoming remake really needs to do is just polish up what's already here and put it in a higher resolution and it would still turn heads.

The story is equally compelling and remains mysterious even now. Be warned though, that it's told all through text. Make sure you can read cursive, or you might not be able to fully understand what's happening. And do not be afraid to use a walkthrough. Some editions of this game even included a hint book, because these are some of the trickiest logic puzzles ever put in an adventure game, but once you figure them out, it's simple. it's like they were built for inhabitants of the islands rather than for a game. Since you're an outsider, you have to learn all about the culture of Riven in order to complete the game, which requires you to be immersed in the world and the lore.

Truly, a gaming experience like no other. Make sure to take notes, and you'll find a desolate, contemplative experience like none other.

Nun, die meiste Zeit war ich damit beschäftigt, umherzuirren, den Walkthrough zu lesen, an komischen Rätseln zu verzweifeln, mich zu verlaufen und erneut den Walkthrough zu konsultieren. Wie man auf die Platzierung der farbigen Murmeln oder das Zahlen-Symbol-System kommt, habe ich auch mit der Komplettlösung nicht verstanden. Das Spiel sah aber sehr schön aus, nur leider war es viel zu verwirrend.

Ich habe mich nach 5½​ Stunden aus Versehen selbst im Gefängnisbuch eingesperrt und der Abspann kam. Natürlich habe ich vorher nicht gespeichert, aber technisch gesehen ist das Spiel damit durchgespielt.

Peter: But since we're all gonna die, there's one more secret I feel I have to share with you. I did not care for Riven: The Sequel to Myst.
Lois: What?
Peter: Did not care for Riven.
Chris: How can you even say that, dad?
Peter: Didn't like- didn't like it.
Lois: Peter, it's so good! It- It's like the perfect game!
Peter: I- This is what everyone always says. Whenever they say...
Chris: Gehn, Catherine, I mean, you never see, Atrus!
Peter: Listen, I know, I- Fine. Fine. Fine character, did not like the game.
Brian: Why not?
Peter: Did not...couldn't get into it.
Lois: Explain yourself. What didn't you like about it?
Peter: It's too hard, Lois.
Lois: What?
Peter: It's too hard.
Lois: And you liked Myst?
Chris: Because it has good puzzles, it's allowed to be hard!
Peter: It takes forever getting anywhere; you spend like, you spend like six and a half hours riding minecarts. You can't try anything new without wasting a ton of time watching bridges lower or doors open... You know, I gave, I looked up the solution to both the animal stone puzzle and the marble grid puzzle.
Chris: You looked up the solution?!
Stewie: How can you say you don't like it if you haven't even played it properly?
Lois: I agree with Stewie. It's not really fair.
Chris: It's outrageous.
Peter: I spent two hours at the start of the game, marooned on Dome island with no clue where the hell I could go or what I could even do. I wrote down two pages of notes-
Lois: Yeah, that's what makes Riven good. I loved jotting down notes.
Peter: I eventually got irritated enough that I googled a hint guide. I had missed a lever at the side of one of the screens. Missing a lever is not a fun or interesting puzzle. It's an "everything is brown or gray" problem.
Lois: You know what, Peter,
Chris: You're supposed to use your eyes!
Lois: Riven is a masterclass of subtlety and immersion; it's something you don't understand.
Peter: I loved the part where you figured out the numbering system. That is my answer to that statement.
Lois: Exactly.
Peter: Well, there you go.
Lois: Whatever.
Chris: I liked that part too.

Not as strong as 'Myst'. The soundscape is cutting-edge, and allows for more sophisticated puzzles. The puzzle design is abstruse and the clues are disparate. Unlike the first game's five maps, 'Riven' is one big map, and so the gameplay is a bit less engaging as the scope of the puzzles is a bit overwhelming. The story isn't as involving or captivating as the first game either, and sometimes a bit confusing. Like fuck am I gonna read 30 pages of journals, not least with that shitty cursive handwriting.

i don't think i could have finished this game without being having someone back (and even at times front) seating me because holy shit are those puzzle games convoluted (but once you get what to do, they're actually cleverly simple)

but i believe you'd get a really good experience even without solving a single puzzle in this game because as cool as the story/progression is, the game's biggest strength is just how GORGEOUS it looks. i'm sure almost anyone will agree pre rendered backgrounds in games look awesome, and Riven is definitely up there in term of looking amazing. I can't count the number of times i've just been getting to a new screen only to go "wow this looks so awesome"; getting to a different island triggers a cutscene that looks so dope i only skipped it a few times because i was backtracking a lot, that's how good this game looks. Add to that a really atmospheric soundtrack and you've got a killer of a game where you could just explore around and feel satisfied, the puzzles and story are just the cherry on top

I couldn't beat this game without the strategy guide because I was like 11, and some of the game's puzzles would be overly esoteric for me even today. But still, my willingness to parse a confusing unofficial (non-Prima) strategy guide to unpack this confounding and achingly beautiful world simply made this masterpiece accessible to me, and thus changed my world forever. Thanks to that strategy guide I played through this game five or six times, each time in a single unbroken sitting. Oftentimes on my dad's laptop in the back seat of the car on long road trips. It was, in 1997, the most effective escape into a strange world that I knew of. One that didn't require me to be good at anything other than reading the instructions.

While I was previously aware of Riven: The Sequel to Myst, I did not know until just recently that there were four more sequels, or that the story of Myst has now been told in full. Knowing there is a definitive conclusion to the story in Myst V: The End of Ages does make me want to do a full series playthrough, but that's going to have to wait a while because Riven has burned me the hell out.

I know it doesn't help that I also played this for the Sega Saturn, which is curiously absent from Backloggd's list of consoles. Riven only saw a Saturn release in Europe and Japan, and I feel this may be why it was overlooked. As it happens, a lot of my complaints about Myst's Saturn port carry over here. Riven is made more clunky and slow than it ought to be due to limitations of the hardware, and there's a significant loss of image quality over its PC counterpart as well. To be fair, it still looks pretty damn good even if it may be compromised, which just goes to show how much time, money, and pure artistic effort went into rendering the Age of Riven in the first place. Myst fit comfortably enough onto one CD, but Riven is broken into four discs, a necessity considering how much more animation is present. There are fewer static shots than the previous game, and even something as simple as seeing waves crash or flies buzzing around adds a lot more ambience.

The five islands that compose the ruined Age of Riven are also gigantic. There are multiple ways to and from each island, and much of the puzzles you solve span over multiple regions, requiring far more meticulous note taking. It's quite easy to get lost, but the Riven is fun enough to explore that navigating its world never gets too frustrating. You've been sent here by Artus in the hopes of finding his wife, Catherine, who now leads a rebellion against Artrus' father Gehn, a tyrant who has started his own following in a desperate attempt to free himself from this world in which he's been trapped. Gehn has mechanized much of the island, constructing strange steampunk inspired machines to create new linking books, though his methods are flawed, and repeated failures fill him with madness and regret. The story is communicated both in the environment (and quite effectively at that) as well as large info-dumps (which are a lot less effective.)

As you explore Riven you see brief glimpses of people in the distance, giving you the sense that this world is still very much inhabited. The lonely atmosphere of Myst is alive and well, now punctuated by an eerie sense that you're always being watched by groups with unknown intent. Are they hostile, or fearful? In truth it's a bit of both, but it leaves you with a sense of dread that you can't shake from the moment you set foot on the island to the second the credits roll. The fact that you're repeatedly told Riven is on the verge of total collapse also gives a sense of urgency that Myst simply did not have. It's great. It takes everything I liked about the tone of Myst and expands on it in ways that allow Riven to have its own identity without losing sight of what made the original work.

Puzzles are more of a mixed bag for me. On one hand I like that many of them span large portions of the game, at least in concept, but I also found it easy to lose the thread on a few of them because of this. It also becomes harder to see the solution coming together when you spend significant chunks of time away from a particular puzzle. An especially complicated one comes in the form of decoding the numeral system used by the inhabitants of Riven, which is needed to read codes written in Gehn and Catherine's journals. The in-game solution comes in the form of a game you play in the schoolhouse, which is tucked into one of the furthest corners of the game map. It's pretty easy to miss this, and I don't think I'd blame anyone for just looking up a guide to figure out what these symbols mean. However, doing so would rob you of the satisfaction of cracking the code yourself. Simply put, there's times where the game wagers your gratification against how long, winding, and complicated its puzzles are, and I don't think it always works out.

Riven's massive size and non-linear design also means a whole lot of disc swapping is required. I don't normally mind this (and might actually find it a little nostalgic) but the amount of times I had to pop open the Saturn did get kind of annoying, and it really doesn't help your immersion when you enter a room and get told to swap the disc out for the seventh time in a single sitting. God help you if you make it a couple rooms after a swap before realizing that actually you need to turn around. I understand this is the compromise Saturn owners had to make to play Riven, I'm not sure there was a more efficient way to spread data across all four discs. On the bright side, Riven didn't make it sound like my Saturn's disc drive was having conniptions like Myst did.

Ultimately I think Riven won't stick with me the way Myst does, likely due to not having experienced it at such a formative age, but it is a solid step forward and a much better game. There's some design elements that don't hold up to the test of time, and the Saturn is no doubt a terrible way to play it, but its atmosphere is just as strong today as it was in '97.

Oscuro, tétrico, y mucho más adulto que su predecesor. Riven lo conseguí hace poco, gracias a Steam y sus ofertas. En esta ocasión, el padre de Artrus, Gehn ha secuestrado a Catherine, esposa de este (Jope y que familia tiene el amigo, como para juntarlos en navidad) y por eso no estaba presente en Myst, y fuimos nosotros quien encontramos la carta de ayuda y no su esposa… Gehn engañó a Catherine diciéndole que podía salvar a sus hijos y que los tenía con él (por muchos crímenes que hayan cometido, una madre es una madre y haría lo que fuera por salvar a sus hijos)
Diferencias: El juego se basa casi por completo en la ciudad/isla de Riven, un reino devastado y casi destruido por las ansias de poder de Gehn. No hay Eras solo la Isla…
Una recomendación: jugar con el volumen a tope o con auriculares, la mayoría de sus puzzles se basan en sonidos y música y son muy difíciles.