Myst is notorious for its incredibly complex puzzles, yet its captivating world and style captivate and compel exploration. I remember and recall playing Myst III in the early 2000s in my local library, having only seen copies of the game on the shelf for various systems at stores throughout the years. However, I refrained from playing it due to its incredibly complex puzzles, which even a small child would struggle to understand. Cyan completely remakes the game in real-time, so you can freely walk around these areas, unlike previous versions, which were fixed pre-rendered images.
Myst isn't very story-heavy, but the world is interesting, and as you explore the main island, you eventually learn the pattern of how to travel to other islands and get to the ending. Technically, you can reach the end of the game in two minutes (there's an achievement for it, and I got it after many frustrating tries), but you also want all four endings, so I recommend following a guide the first time around. This game is very landmark-heavy, so it's important you remember where everything is. The main island has a hub that will transport you to the islands, but you must solve the puzzle to unlock their doors.
You can follow this pattern by locating a map in the main library and directing the laser to various locations. Once you have done this, you can go up the library elevator and look for a single clue to help unlock the door to that island. These puzzles on the island are fairly easy and not hard to figure out at all, and each island's puzzle gets progressively more complex and obtuse. Channelwood Island is the easiest, with just levers that you need to flip to make water run through a pipe to power elevators and bridges. It's very straight-forward. By the end of the game, you are using audio cues to determine what direction a train goes via a compass rose. These sounds are from another island, which you hopefully wrote down or memorized. It's very overwhelming at first, but doing a guide playthrough allows you to do randomized playthroughs later to get the last few achievements.
Outside of the run button, the gameplay is very simple. You interact with objects, and that's pretty much it. Each island has a very linear path, so you can't get lost, but the cryptic symbols on doors and switches may scare some players and turn many away. I did run across a glitch here and there, such as an achievement not popping up or getting stuck in the game world (there's a reset option, thankfully), and you can save anywhere, which is nice. Despite the pleasant music and voiced dialog in the cutscenes, the game still feels dated, even with effects like HDR and ray-tracing enabled. The textures are fairly low-resolution, and the lighting just feels very artificial. There's also a low draw distance, so outside of the island you are on, there's just endless fog. I would have liked to have seen more stuff in the distance.
Overall, Myst is mostly for those who played it years ago, in 1993, but newcomers who crave brain-scraping puzzles will love this game. With a guide, you can breeze through the game in about 2 hours, but I went back and got all but three achievements, as they were fun to get. Once you get to know the island and the puzzles, the game becomes more fun with random playthroughs. Even though the puzzle solutions vary, you already know how to solve them, which is half the fight.
Myst isn't very story-heavy, but the world is interesting, and as you explore the main island, you eventually learn the pattern of how to travel to other islands and get to the ending. Technically, you can reach the end of the game in two minutes (there's an achievement for it, and I got it after many frustrating tries), but you also want all four endings, so I recommend following a guide the first time around. This game is very landmark-heavy, so it's important you remember where everything is. The main island has a hub that will transport you to the islands, but you must solve the puzzle to unlock their doors.
You can follow this pattern by locating a map in the main library and directing the laser to various locations. Once you have done this, you can go up the library elevator and look for a single clue to help unlock the door to that island. These puzzles on the island are fairly easy and not hard to figure out at all, and each island's puzzle gets progressively more complex and obtuse. Channelwood Island is the easiest, with just levers that you need to flip to make water run through a pipe to power elevators and bridges. It's very straight-forward. By the end of the game, you are using audio cues to determine what direction a train goes via a compass rose. These sounds are from another island, which you hopefully wrote down or memorized. It's very overwhelming at first, but doing a guide playthrough allows you to do randomized playthroughs later to get the last few achievements.
Outside of the run button, the gameplay is very simple. You interact with objects, and that's pretty much it. Each island has a very linear path, so you can't get lost, but the cryptic symbols on doors and switches may scare some players and turn many away. I did run across a glitch here and there, such as an achievement not popping up or getting stuck in the game world (there's a reset option, thankfully), and you can save anywhere, which is nice. Despite the pleasant music and voiced dialog in the cutscenes, the game still feels dated, even with effects like HDR and ray-tracing enabled. The textures are fairly low-resolution, and the lighting just feels very artificial. There's also a low draw distance, so outside of the island you are on, there's just endless fog. I would have liked to have seen more stuff in the distance.
Overall, Myst is mostly for those who played it years ago, in 1993, but newcomers who crave brain-scraping puzzles will love this game. With a guide, you can breeze through the game in about 2 hours, but I went back and got all but three achievements, as they were fun to get. Once you get to know the island and the puzzles, the game becomes more fun with random playthroughs. Even though the puzzle solutions vary, you already know how to solve them, which is half the fight.
30 years since its release, it's very easy to see why and how Myst captivated so many back then and continues to do so even now.
You've heard of pen-and-paper RPGs, yet for entirely different reasons, this surely qualifies as a pen-and-paper puzzle game. There's no handholding, no onboarding, and very little in the way of tutorials on how the puzzles work. You're just dropped off on the island of Myst, and away you go. It's up to you to keep track of patterns, codes, and clues along your journey and piece together what and where they might fit in.
As for the how and why of your present circumstances, those answers are presented as you play in a pretty succinct and natural way by revisiting certain pieces of information along the way and putting together context clues from your environment. The lore behind the island and the story of Myst is simple yet surprisingly compelling, showing how too much power can corrupt the just and unjust depending on how they wield it.
Nearly all of Myst's puzzles and islands are incredibly well-designed, though the tram section in the second half of the Selentic Age is definitely the most boring and uninteresting of the bunch, though that's only because the rest of the roster is superb by comparison.
I suppose where Myst loses its appeal a bit is how the last part of the game works. It essentially involves a scavenger hunt in every region you've visited thus far for specific items (provided you haven't picked any of them up on your journey already), and only then can you achieve the various endings, with the true ending requiring even more busywork.
With no quick and easy way to return to the previous sections, the tedium lets the air out quite a bit as you're forced to retrace your steps. Admittedly, I ended up using the incredibly useful hint guide from UHS-Hints to skip some steps and get to the true ending otherwise the trek to the finale would have soured my opinion on this game far more.
Regardless, Myst, even in this nifty VR-Ready next-gen remake, still holds up as a classic of the adventure and puzzle genres and regardless of how many feel about the changes and visual aesthetic of this version, I am certainly grateful that it exists so I can play it using a controller with my current setup :)
7.5/10
You've heard of pen-and-paper RPGs, yet for entirely different reasons, this surely qualifies as a pen-and-paper puzzle game. There's no handholding, no onboarding, and very little in the way of tutorials on how the puzzles work. You're just dropped off on the island of Myst, and away you go. It's up to you to keep track of patterns, codes, and clues along your journey and piece together what and where they might fit in.
As for the how and why of your present circumstances, those answers are presented as you play in a pretty succinct and natural way by revisiting certain pieces of information along the way and putting together context clues from your environment. The lore behind the island and the story of Myst is simple yet surprisingly compelling, showing how too much power can corrupt the just and unjust depending on how they wield it.
Nearly all of Myst's puzzles and islands are incredibly well-designed, though the tram section in the second half of the Selentic Age is definitely the most boring and uninteresting of the bunch, though that's only because the rest of the roster is superb by comparison.
I suppose where Myst loses its appeal a bit is how the last part of the game works. It essentially involves a scavenger hunt in every region you've visited thus far for specific items (provided you haven't picked any of them up on your journey already), and only then can you achieve the various endings, with the true ending requiring even more busywork.
With no quick and easy way to return to the previous sections, the tedium lets the air out quite a bit as you're forced to retrace your steps. Admittedly, I ended up using the incredibly useful hint guide from UHS-Hints to skip some steps and get to the true ending otherwise the trek to the finale would have soured my opinion on this game far more.
Regardless, Myst, even in this nifty VR-Ready next-gen remake, still holds up as a classic of the adventure and puzzle genres and regardless of how many feel about the changes and visual aesthetic of this version, I am certainly grateful that it exists so I can play it using a controller with my current setup :)
7.5/10
about three years ago i tried playing this game and couldn't find the right approach to it. no doubt in part due to my inability to find catherine's letter (which also happened again here with equivalent time wasted) but i was also refusing to play ball with myst's framework. i had no desire to read the books in the library, didn't catch the impetus from atrus' message to catherine and as a result i never really found a foot in to the mystery of the island of myst, and i quickly lost interest.
this second go around i found it remarkable that once i actually got to another world, my progression snowballed and i was able to finish the whole game in two quick sessions on the same day i started it. myst is surprisingly not a difficult game, but it definitely requires that certain calibration towards it. what comes after isn't hurt in this way, it's still an incredibly charming world with a very unique aesthetic. it still has a surprisingly nuanced story effectively told entirely by exploration of environments. we read in the library of atrus the beauty of these worlds, these "ages", and what happened in them to better the lives of these people. and then you as the player see them in their total desolation and abandonment.
the remake of riven is a few weeks away at this point, and i cannot wait to continue what has started here.
this second go around i found it remarkable that once i actually got to another world, my progression snowballed and i was able to finish the whole game in two quick sessions on the same day i started it. myst is surprisingly not a difficult game, but it definitely requires that certain calibration towards it. what comes after isn't hurt in this way, it's still an incredibly charming world with a very unique aesthetic. it still has a surprisingly nuanced story effectively told entirely by exploration of environments. we read in the library of atrus the beauty of these worlds, these "ages", and what happened in them to better the lives of these people. and then you as the player see them in their total desolation and abandonment.
the remake of riven is a few weeks away at this point, and i cannot wait to continue what has started here.
Despite being a point & click adventure game player all my life Myst was the one "huge classic" of the genre I always wanted to to get into, but couldn't. The game was just so very hard, and the lack of characters and any easy-to-understand story was always putting me in my place. I just didn't quite understand what to do, or (barely) how to play it.
The meme about being stuck in a place forever and not knowing what a lever does is probably how many experienced it. I could never be sure if the game wasn't for me, or if it was my fault. I always suspected the latter.
So, I actually bought Oculus Quest 2 just to play Myst, and try to get into it, and I'm very happy to report it worked. I'm finally one of the Myst fans, which strangely feels like an exclusive club.
VR is an amazing way to experience Myst. It feels like you are there. The universe is immersive. It's like Myst was always meant to be played like this. It's been said before by many people, but yes, the game and the puzzles is usually pretty hard or even very hard (depending on your skills in puzzles), but it's always so incredibly rewarding when you get something to work.
There's also a quite rich plot when you get into the game. The story with the two brothers, who both want you to help just them, while telling you to NOT trust the other one, is classical, and keeps the tension going to the end.
Myst does need patience though. However, if you stay with a problem long enough, you'll eventually figure things out. You have to imagine being stuck on an island where there is nothing else to do than to figure out a mechanism or a puzzle of some sort. It's also very peaceful and meditative to play.
Either way, I can finally understand the hype. Better late then never. If you have a similar experience with Myst. Keep at it, it's worth staying with to the end.
The meme about being stuck in a place forever and not knowing what a lever does is probably how many experienced it. I could never be sure if the game wasn't for me, or if it was my fault. I always suspected the latter.
So, I actually bought Oculus Quest 2 just to play Myst, and try to get into it, and I'm very happy to report it worked. I'm finally one of the Myst fans, which strangely feels like an exclusive club.
VR is an amazing way to experience Myst. It feels like you are there. The universe is immersive. It's like Myst was always meant to be played like this. It's been said before by many people, but yes, the game and the puzzles is usually pretty hard or even very hard (depending on your skills in puzzles), but it's always so incredibly rewarding when you get something to work.
There's also a quite rich plot when you get into the game. The story with the two brothers, who both want you to help just them, while telling you to NOT trust the other one, is classical, and keeps the tension going to the end.
Myst does need patience though. However, if you stay with a problem long enough, you'll eventually figure things out. You have to imagine being stuck on an island where there is nothing else to do than to figure out a mechanism or a puzzle of some sort. It's also very peaceful and meditative to play.
Either way, I can finally understand the hype. Better late then never. If you have a similar experience with Myst. Keep at it, it's worth staying with to the end.
The key in the lighthouse made me go -_-
Excellent puzzles followed by some immersive worlds. The scenery and ambience in Mechanical was so damn beautiful I wish I could stay there forever. The plot was okay but that's not what I played for. Admittedly, I'm glad I got the good ending first lol. Only bad thing was the 2nd half of Selenitic; fucking terrible.
not my cup of tea
It feels like they finally accomplished what they set out to do in the 00s with RealMyst: seeing the island and its associated ages rendered with this attention to detail is stunning. But just like their other 3D remakes, the lack of forced perspective means details that were once clear as day in the original are all too easily overlooked. And there’s just no getting around the reality that these CG models lack the charm and immersion of the OG FMVs. With the Riven remake launching in less than two days, we hope that their redesign of the islands makes for a more satisfying slideshow-to-3D conversion.
The shiny new graphics and free-roaming gameplay certainly make this version of Myst more legible than the 1993 original (especially for modern players not primed for that game), but it also polishes away the plastic-y early 90s CG look that has aged surprisingly well in the era of 'liminal spaces'. The modern gaming landscape has trained audiences to assume that remakes can entirely replace the original work, but this is definitely a case where the remake is more complimentary than anything.
Some of the puzzles don't make sense. Even after looking up the solution, there are no hints that pointed towards that. I can see how this would've been a great game in 93, but in 2020 it has a lot of flaws. Also, some of the achievements are actually impossible on the Xbox because they have to do with timing, and the animation sequence takes too long.
my gf and i played it and the game was fine but the s*x afterward was fire
Well they finally did it justice in full, free-roam 3D, HOWEVER they also ditched the FMV actors for (bad) rendered models, so POINTS DEDUCTED.
After playing the game and finding out that it was a remake of a 1993 game, I can see how influential this game would have been at the time, and it's nice that this remake exists.
The puzzles are well-designed and blend seamlessly into the world, adding to the overall fantastic atmosphere the game provides. For a puzzle game, that's definitely the most important part. There was only one puzzle in the game I got stuck on, which seems to be a sticking point for everyone else, as it was the only puzzle in the game that was really unclear on what it wanted from you.
However, for a remake, the game looks rough, especially the human models, and man are the voice actors extremely grating. There's also some weird performance issues and graphical hiccups, even playing on PC. Overall it's a great puzzle game, with poor presentation.
The puzzles are well-designed and blend seamlessly into the world, adding to the overall fantastic atmosphere the game provides. For a puzzle game, that's definitely the most important part. There was only one puzzle in the game I got stuck on, which seems to be a sticking point for everyone else, as it was the only puzzle in the game that was really unclear on what it wanted from you.
However, for a remake, the game looks rough, especially the human models, and man are the voice actors extremely grating. There's also some weird performance issues and graphical hiccups, even playing on PC. Overall it's a great puzzle game, with poor presentation.
it's myst, the prequel to riven!
Puzles difíciles a veces en demasía, pero en general muy satisfactorio de jugar
Good puzzles most of the time but some are way way too obscure.
But the most disgusting thing is the walk speed. I could make a cup of tea before 100m walk is completed in this game.
It reminds of those cheap games where developers remove sprint and turn down walkspeed down to a crawl to make the game time longer.
-2 stars for that alone.
But the most disgusting thing is the walk speed. I could make a cup of tea before 100m walk is completed in this game.
It reminds of those cheap games where developers remove sprint and turn down walkspeed down to a crawl to make the game time longer.
-2 stars for that alone.
good homage to old Myst
VR was very fun to play on
VR was very fun to play on
pretyyyyy
I never played this back when it originally released. I thought I'd love it as I had a PC back in the 1980s and I get the shortcomings of the time. This game was boring to play even keeping that in mind. It felt like I was dying of old age about halfway through. Being able to flip from new to old visuals was nice, I wish more remakes did this.