Looking for a game that offers healthy doses of instant gratification? You know, filling bad guys with bullets, or making death-defying acrobatic maneuvers to avoid falling in holes or other hazards? Myst is NOT the game you're looking for. If you're looking to immerse yourself inside bizarre, peaceful fantasy worlds, filled to the brim with challenging logic puzzles, Myst awaits you.
One day, you happen upon a peculiar book, entitled Myst. Upon opening it, you find yourself becoming absolutely absorbed by the story...literally; a moment later, you're stranded on the titular island of Myst itself. With seemingly no way to get back, you begin your investigation of this strange isle. You learn of a man named Atrus, and his amazing ability to create new worlds simply by writing about them. It seems that one of his two sons, Sirrus or Achenar, has run amok and destroyed most of his library. Sirrus and Achenar themselves are now trapped inside red and blue books inside the library, and Atrus is nowhere to be found. Your mission: you must find the remaining "linking books" hidden on the island of Myst and use them to travel to its various Ages (small sub-worlds, basically), where you must search for red and blue pages and return them to their respective red or blue books, so as to free one of the brothers--but which can you trust? And what happened to Atrus?
Beyond that, there's actually very little story in the game. You will find journals in the library, explaining some of the backstory of the Ages and giving a tiny bit of insight about the characters, but that's roughly the extent of it. There's also very little human interaction in the game, beyond speaking to Sirrus and Achenar every once in a while. Some players may decry this approach, but the solitude and vague story coexist nicely with the puzzling atmosphere of the game.
The game plays from a first-person view, where you see the world through the eyes of the main character. Unlike modern first-person games, the 3D world you wander through is "pre-rendered," meaning you're basically moving through a slideshow of still images, linked together in such a way that it appears that you're walking through the world. The whole game can be controlled with just your mouse; all you have to do is click where you want to walk to or what you want to interact with. The movement system does have a few issues, since the way you move isn't always consistent; sometimes turning around makes you turn 90 degrees; sometimes it makes you turn 180 degrees; sometimes you can't turn in certain directions at all; sometimes you can't walk to places you think you should be able to; sometimes you can walk to places that look like they're off-limits. It takes time to get used to how it all works, and you'll have to be observant of landmarks in the environment so you don't lose your bearings. Those issues aside, the interface is blissfully simple to use, and the first-person view really enhances the feeling of being there.
In order to obtain those aforementioned red and blue pages, you will have to make your way through the various puzzles impeding your progress into Myst and its various Ages. Could that sound be a clue? What happens when you press this button or move these levers? To complete these puzzles, you will have to experiment, tinker and generally fiddle with practically everything you come across, observe the results, and gather the necessary information. Luckily, there's no time limit, and it's impossible to be killed in the game or "lose" in any way, so you're free to take everything at your own pace and screw around as much as you'd like. The puzzles in Myst are very fair, as well. Upon completing them, never once did I cry, "How was I supposed to know to do that?" Every clue you need is there, and usually not far away from the puzzle that needs solving. Some clues are far less obvious than others, though, and it may still take an hour or more to figure out what needs to be done with some problems. Keeping a pencil and paper nearby to take notes is probably a good idea.
The Ages are totally isolated from one another, meaning that nothing you do in one has any effect on the others, and the puzzles in each Age are wholly self-contained and can be solved without leaving the Age. This may disappoint some players hoping for a world that was more of a cohesive whole rather than a collection of non-connected smaller areas, but it does make the game a little easier to manage, since you won't be running across the entire game to solve a single puzzle. It also means you can tackle the Ages in any order, bringing some non-linearity to the table.
If you're ever totally stumped, the game has a built-in map and a hint system, and can even give you the solutions to puzzles if you've absolutely had it. It's generally quite handy, as it has varied levels of clues, meaning it can give you just a little nudge towards what you should do instead of dumping the entire solution in your lap. However, the system is imperfect. Some of the longer clues it doled out couldn't fit entirely on the screen; even when scrolling down to the bottom, the last line was cut off and unreadable. The buttons for it also seemed difficult to use, as they were small and it seemed like you must click underneath them instead of on them in order for them to respond. Also, while the maps are nice and well-detailed, they don't mark your current position or show what areas you have and haven't already visited. Worse still, the one part of the game that really, really needs a map (you'll know it when you get there) doesn't have one, severely limiting the usefulness of having the maps at all. The hint system is still very useful, but certainly could have used additional polish.
From a graphical standpoint, the pre-rendered environments in Myst have obviously aged a good deal, but the excellent art direction and attention to detail still remains: long shadows, cast from the mid-morning sun, stretch across the grassy hills of the island of Myst; bizarre, titanic gear wheels litter the rocks of the Mechanical Age; whereas the great swamp of Channelwood plays host to a treetop village, connected with the ground level via wooden elevators and massive spiral staircases climbing up the trees. As long as you're willing to forgive some of the environments for looking very obviously computer-generated, the game is just as pretty and enjoyable to immerse yourself in as it always was.
All interactions with other characters are handled via FMV's (full-motion videos), meaning the characters are portrayed by live actors instead of computer-generated avatars. Their acting is not exceptional, but neither is it overly poor.
As for the sound, not all of the effects are winners (the sound generated by setting the tower rotation threatens to make your ears bleed, for instance), but for the most part, the sound effects are subtle and pleasant, and coupled with the subdued musical scores, they work to draw you deeper into the world, without distracting you in any way.
Sadly, the game has a bit of an issue with length and replay value. Myst and its Ages, though appearing quite expansive, actually offer precious little area to traverse; you can usually walk to the far end of one of them and back again in less than two minutes. Luckily, the puzzles increase the play time dramatically, but the game is still somewhat brief; unless you get hopelessly stuck, it's entirely possible to beat the game in a weekend. There's also almost no reason to replay the game after you're done: nothing gets unlocked upon beating the game, there are no optional areas to explore, and the solutions to the puzzles never change. There are multiple endings, but they are affected by an endgame decision you make, meaning you can simply make your decision, reload a saved game, and make different decisions to see all the endings. You'll have a hard time thinking of a reason to play through Myst again any time soon, beyond just going back to experience the exotic locales once again.
Then we have the glitches. More than once, I had the game lock up on me, usually either when moving to another screen (often when clicking quickly and repeatedly through an area), or when loading a saved game; in one particularly nasty instance, it occurred as I was saving my game--my game ended up not being saved, but thankfully my previous save data was not corrupted. These unfortunate incidents never resulted in hard lock-ups and I could easily CTRL+ALT+DEL out of them, but they were certainly troubling. I'd suggest saving often, just in case.
Finally, there is an error--or what I assume is an error, since it appears only in the Masterpiece Edition and not the original Myst--involving the clue to the final puzzle. I won't spoil the puzzle, but the clue is displayed incorrectly, giving you false information as to how to complete the last problem. I was eventually able to solve the puzzle purely by dumb luck, but I really shouldn't have had to. Watch out for it!
While I know it seems like I listed quite a few faults--for it is true that Myst is not flawless--they do not overshadow the fact that the game is incredibly enjoyable. Experiencing its calm, attractive, otherworldly environments is worth the (small) price of admission alone, and the myriad puzzles will tease your brain for hours, while managing to avoid being overly complex or cheap. If you've got time and a good deal of patience, and don't mind a game repeatedly asking you to stop, look, and wonder, Myst is definitely recommended for you.