Riven (1997)

If there is one problem I have with Riven, it's its movement scheme. The world is pre-rendered, so you don't have free movement, and this feels clunky. Sometimes you can miss things because you can't turn the camera where you want, or you don't notice that a path exists that woud be easy to spot if you could just turn. Worse, often I would click on something to interact with it, and either because I misclicked or because it wasn't interactable, I'd inadvertently move to a new location, which is frustrating. I haven't played the remake yet, but this would seem a big reason to get it instead. If there is a second problem, it's the puzzles. They are HARD. Admittedly, this can be part of the appeal. Too many modern games hold your hand too much, and that's not an issue here. When you solve something, you can rightly feel smart and proud. But you'll almost certainly need a guide. At least the game is fair; I don't think you can make it unwinnable, so you're free to try your ideas. In principle, everything can be solved. The difficulty is that at the beginning and for some time after, you get no guidance as to short or medium term goals. For the first hour of my playthrough, I was able to make progress not because I knew what I was doing, but because I was clicking on what was interactible and seeing what happened. When I relented and looked up a walkthrough, it was in no small part because I wanted an idea of what I should be trying to accomplish. Despite these issues, I enjoyed myself with Riven, playing it for the first time in 2024. The story is slow to start but quite deep. The world is richly realised and imaginative. It takes the small hints of worldbuilding from Myst and adds layers and complexity to them all. And there's some impressive acting, especially from the main antagonist. I'm glad I took the chance and pushed through the early issues.

Patience fortitude and a little help from the internet walk throughs make this game an adverture. Terrific!

Cant stop playing it over and over

After playing Myst (or, more specifically, Real Myst) for the first time, I quickly downloaded Riven. While Riven does have some lovely areas to explore, some great puzzles, and fantastic music, the game itself grows very tedious very quickly. The game picks up where Myst left off: you are to do a favor for Atrus, and then go home. The gameplay begins with the player character aimlessly exploring a series of islands. Unfortunately, this aimless wandering doesn't let up for some time. Pixel hunts are found often, and clues for puzzle solutions are often obscenely vague. Particularly horrendous is the "eyeball puzzle." While Myst did have one or two tedious puzzles (the underwater maze was poorly implemented), it still had some of the greatest puzzles to be found in a game from beginning to end. Riven, on the other hand, does not. Furthermore, Riven has a seemingly non-linear nature: the player can explore several of the aforementioned islands without solving a single puzzle. While this may be nice for the casual crowd, those that actually want to beat the game will find the obscure puzzle solutions and labyrinthine level layout to be headache-inducing. To add insult to injury, this non-linearity is, for the most part, an illusion. Most of the puzzles must be completed in a specific order, and the player will doubtlessly spend many hours wandering about in order to figure out what to do next. Some may find this to be fun. I do not. There is a huge bright side to all of this, however: the presentation. The graphics are great, even in 2010. The entire island seems to come to life with vibrancy and The sound is brilliant as well, and the music is atmospheric and wonderfully composed. It's just a shame that there is no "skip sequence" button, because the player will find himself/herself viewing the same mine cart sequence about fifty times. Nevertheless, the FMV in this game really is great, and the live-action acting is actually pretty good. To conclude, get this game if you are a die-hard fan of Myst clones or a casual gamer looking for some pretty scenery. Otherwise, stay far, far away.

I would gave Riven a 2.5/5 stars. Among the Myst like games it is one of the strongest - the environments look awesome, the sound design is great and the puzzles are as complicated as it says on the tin. Thing is... it is not a kind of game that I like, because I dislike backtracking and all the Myst games consist on backtracking via clicking and clicking and clicking and clicking more to relate some clues to puzzles. There is lot of trial and error, there are many instances of pixel hunting, and in general it consists of puzzles that can be resolved via an algorithm, and if a puzzle can be resolved via algorithm I rather have machines do that puzzle or be paid to code that algorithm. Reviews are generally positive as very few people who disliked Myst got to play Riven, so you know what you get in here. Personally I am more fond of some less ambitious clones like Rhem.