Myst IV: Revelation

My review is essentially, this took me months to finish. Not because it is extremely hard, but because I'd often think "I should play some more Myst IV, finish it off" ... and then go play something else instead. I feel like I _should_ like this. The story is much more ambitious and present than in the previous Myst games, the puzzles are generally pretty good, and there's plenty of trademark Myst imagination. Even the need to read huge amounts of text to understand what's going on has been addressed by adding voiceover. But it all feels like less than the sum of it's parts.

Maybe It's because I'm binging them right now, so seeing them all side by side, but this addition to the franchise feels less technically refined and the story doesn't quite make up for it. Still I gave it 4/5* since it's still well worth playing. Exile had the benefit of an amazing actor as Saavedra (in 2025, you might know him as Wormtongue from LOTR), which undoubtly also skews my opinion. I think Spire specificaly could have been made more user friendly. Not only did it have the typical "I walked right past it and didn't see it" problem that many games of the era had it ALSO had math-based puzzles that needed to be hinted at earlier in the level just in case the player was like me and wasn't particularly good at such puzzles. I feel that this area was the weakest, but could have been the best, so I'm admittedly being a little harsher than usual.

Be careful here, I love this game, WHEN IT WORKS, which is one in a billion, I tried everything out there got it to run just by luck, then shut it off and now it tries and fails with a display freeze. But yet it runs perfectly on my laptop, not sure why it has a problem with my brand new tower computer running windows 11..Tried admin running, compatibility changes..The good part is I can always play it on my laptop (For Now). The Bad part, not everybody has 2 computers.

Just a beautiful, beautiful game. I wishlisted it the moment I saw it on GOG...not because it's not worth the full price, but because I have so many games in my backlog right now that I can't really justify it (it would be the same for X-COM or Civ or any other classic I've played previously). I'm not a huge Myst fan--I forced myself to finish the original way back when only because I felt I needed to justify my ownership of a CD-ROM drive, and I found myself bored by the much-touted Uru later on--but Myst IV really pulled me in when it was released and, yeah, immersed me in its world. "Immersed" is the perfect word in this case, because that's the way I felt while playing it. Now, I can't say for sure without actually playing it again, but my bet is that it still has the power to make me feel that way, even in the wake of other, subsequent, games built with superior technology. (I never did finish M4. My score is more of a nostalgia-based and subjective type emotional score than any measure of the game's difficulty level or buginess or other things like that. Just FYI.)

I played this game when it came out. I figured that GOG had worked its magic to bring it up to date with today's graphics and machines, but alas, that is not the case. I struggled and struggled, found patches and mods, and no matter what, it just doesn't run right. I can't even access the entire menu. Top and bottom are chopped off. Tried all resolutions, even changing my graphics card. It should NOT be so difficult in this day and age. Very disappointed.