just finished Myst. it was neat, but i came away with a distinct feeling of "that was it?". i guess i expected it to be longer, and have, uh, better quality puzzles lol
still, the premise is cool. im gonna play riven next, but does anyone know if any of the sequels after that are worth playing? ive seen mixed feedback on them
@typhlosion Riven is excellent, the rest are worth a look for the world design at least?
-F
@Hearth i am hoping riven's puzzle design is better than myst's was. the clock tower and the sound-cue puzzles made me kind of upset lmao
@typhlosion i don't think there's anything like that in riven but it has also been a very long time and we had forgotten the sound puzzles in myst before you mentioned them
-F
@typhlosion afaik Myst III can be worth playing, but it's weird in its own way and I never got into it, so I don't know a whole lot
Riven goes way harder than Myst did though, enjoy the ride hehe
just rambling about riven now
@typhlosion I actually played Riven long before Myst (it was on the 5-CD set, too!), so yeah I get how Myst can be underwhelming, even if it has its own charm
Riven has its aesthetic and ambience dialed in super tight; the improvements in rendering fidelity, greater use of full-screen motion, and more detailed sound design really kicked it to the next level, I think. as a kid it certainly hooked me, even though I was terrible at solving the larger puzzles myself lmao
I always appreciated the, like... "pseudo-photorealism" is how I keep describing it? the textures and lighting give the impression of an actual physical setting, even though parts of it are clearly unrealistic or fake; yet, the "unrealistic" elements still feel like tangible parts of the environment, as much as any other piece. it's a strangely fascinating style that I'm not sure has really been matched anywhere else. (I'm sure the low resolution helped sell the illusion to me too, especially when I was young and impressionable, but still...)
anyway, I have a very cursory knowledge of Myst III and never touched any of the follow-ups, but I recall reading that they're not all that :p
@typhlosion riven is way better than Myst
@irenes yeah, that's fair. i suppose i expected more from one of the games people call one of the best of all time. maybe myst did it first but many many other games have done it way, way better since
@irenes that said, i am excited to jump into riven, basically everything i've heard about that game suggests that it's like myst but way better in every way
@typhlosion oh nice, I've never actually played myst properly before, that's funny the puzzles aren't actually that great now
@typhlosion we have heard of rhem as a myst clone but do not recall if it was in a positive or negative context
-F
@Hearth well, i own it, so i spose i'll find out \o/
@typhlosion also random fun fact: riven is the psx game with the most discs released outside japan
it came on five discs, no others i think had more than four
-F
@typhlosion RHEM is legendary, make sure you keep super detailed notes
@typhlosion
Thankfully, Riven on gog looks pretty cheap...
@typhlosion aw heck, I was looking at the ScummVM site out of curiosity and apparently they used to get affiliate-link commissions for GOG games they listed, but now GOG has switched to some tracking-based affiliate systems and ScummVM understandably bailed :( https://www.scummvm.org/news/20231206/
At the time, Myst was great, but you gotta remember that time was literally some 30 years ago, and CD-rom games were still in their infancy.
Riven is MUCH better and harder.
huh. i thought i owned riven on cd, but if i do, i can't find it. all i have is this knockoff-looking game called, uh, RHEM? oh well, ill plunk some money on gog or something for it, i spose