Myst Masterpiece Edition

This, to me, is the quintessential computer game. You could not experience an adventure like this through any other entertainment medium. If you are willing to forget that you are playing a game and do not analyze it from the usual player perspective but instead really imagine that you are a person who got "stranded" on this mysterious island... Well, few games will compare to the adventure you'll experience in this game. The only other requirement you need is patience. You can absolutely beat this game without a walkthrough, just take your time, read everything there is to read, and just focus. Don't think about this game as a collection of challenges, don't think about beating the game, just be there on Myst island and you'll be in the right mindset to beat the game. Also, if you are a Linux user, do not worry about this game not having the Linux seal of approval from GOG. I am a complete Linux newbie and I just finished the game on PopOS using ScummVM, and it worked perfectly. Not a single crash or any sort of issue, just make sure you get the ScummVM launcher and load it up from there manually.

Myst is an interesting game, especially in light of the effect it had on the games industry when it was released. At the time there was literally no other game like it, and it tended to polarize gamers who either loved it or derided it as not even really being a game, but just a slideshow that you clicked on. In my opinion, some of the "copycat" games that built on the style of Myst were better games (but a lot of them were really bad), but I also never played Riven or any other sequel so I can't speak to those. The thing I liked most about Myst was the imagination put into its environments. There's almost a light steampunk vibe to the design of the various areas, and I really liked the sense of atmosphere given to each area... there is very little explanation for why these strange structures are here, they just are. I thought that minimalist style worked really well for Myst, but unfortunately it also left the player with little in the way of direction. There is an area in the game where the player can receive hints about how to proceed, but the player never needs to find these hints and on my first playthrough I didn't, so I was basically wandering around at random, poking randomly at things with no idea of what I was supposed to be doing until I checked a walkthrough. The puzzles themselves are also rather strange, which fits with the style of the environments but also makes them tough to solve on one's own. To be fair, I was younger at the time and might have had more luck figuring things out on my own if I played it for the first time today. But overall I think it's far more interesting as a milestone in gaming history than as a game in itself. It's probably worth checking out at GOG's price if you've never tried it before.

While everyone seems to have problems on Windows 7 64-bit, it instantly worked for me; I didn't even have to enable compatibility mode or something, I just pressed "Play" and everything worked without any trouble (including videos, saving and even alt-tabbing). So I assume they fixed the issue and Myst is now also playable on Windows 7 64-bit!

I am playing the Real Myst Masterpiece Edition on Win 10, 64 bits. It's a new computer that I just built July 2022. The graphics are good! They aren't Skyrim, but they are not the poor-quality that some others have described. I've seen new games with worse graphics, because they use the object-not-found depiction to make lego-looking crap. This is not an RPG game. It IS an adventure game, because you ARE exploring various lands. That is the definition of adventure. It's not a thriller. You are solving a mystery. It is mostly a philosophy question about the good twin and evil twin. Or are they both good/evil? See, that was what I had in mind when I played this back in the day. You have to draw your own maps, and write down clues, including text and graphical clues. Lazy people shouldn't bother with this game. This is for intellectually curious and industrious people. You have to be thorough and observant. Those are dirty words in the 2020s. They were not dirty words in the 1990s. We didn't expect the game to hand us things on a silver platter. Yes, it is heavily-ladened with puzzles. So, if you do not like puzzles, do not buy this. I see so many people getting on here and whining about how horrible this game is. I also have the original CDs here at home. This was a VERY unique game for its time. I was enthralled by it! Back in the day, we had 7th Guest, Might and Magic Clouds of Xeen, Dagger of Amon Ra.... We had the Bard's Tale trilogy behind us and the Baldur's Gate games in front of us. I feel that a ton of people, who do not understand what an adventure game is, and had completely false expectations of the game, have gotten on here in an attempt to drive the rating into the ground. Why this didn't work on Win 7 or Win XP, I do not know. It worked on Win 8.1, and it works on Win 10. I did not have to do anything to make it work. It just worked. Maybe people have some funky setting in their Windows.

My Mac Performa 630CD in late 1994 with 4 MB of RAM and a 33mhz processor, and 250MB of hard drive space, played this game into the wee hours of the morning. I still have my official Myst Journal that came with the game, with hand-written diagrams and notes, from '94. Myst wasn't even so much about gaming, it was a revolutionary way of interacting with a computer, a mouse-driven GUI in a high resolution environment. Nothing else did this back then. It was amazing then, but obviously silly to think about now. The atmospheric sound, animations, art, and story still hold-up today, people should really respect Myst, even if they wouldn't enjoy it now.