Riven (1997)

Like its predecessor, Riven is mostly a 'beautiful void'. Atrus has sent you to Riven to rescue his wife, Catherine. The catch: Riven is also the prison to which is father, Gehn, was exiled years ago. Oh, and there's no way back until we can summon Atrus. Riven is undoubtedly one of the more vexing games of the franchise. It's also absolutely /soaked/ in Myst lore. You'll learn about the D'Ni numbering system, the names of beasts and technology, and even learn about how Ages actually *work*. That said -- far too much of this game relies on that knowledge. If you can't get your head around Riven's D'Ni influences, you're going to be clicking without understanding. All of the relevant story is given in an info-dump right at the beginning, and then you're tossed into Riven with little context or clues as to what's going on. Which is kind of the point, I guess: the Stranger doesn't know this world, so the player doesn't either. You're both figuring things out as you go. Riven is a huge, beautiful, puzzle-and-story-rich game, but it's definitely not the one I would choose to introduce new players to the franchise.

Title says it all! Mac-ify this thang!!

The SCUMMVM engine prevents my typing.

The best out of all the Myst games :) I play this game for hours and years

Even in 2021, 'Riven' still looks pretty good (apart from the low resolution). At the time it was originally released it must have been truly amazing. The video scenes aren't bad this time around, either. Compared to Myst, the world feels much more cohesive and fully realized. There's a lot to explore and moving around is less confusing because it features more rendered images, there are only two places where I repeatedly missed the right junction. Interestingly, it feels as if there are fewer puzzles in 'Riven' than in 'Myst'. Part of the reason is that the environment simply makes more sense and you usually get direct feedback, so you don't have to guess as often what a mechanism is supposed to do. The game still requires a lot of patience and there are two very convoluted overarching puzzles that must be solved before you finally get to read a couple of journals that explain what's going on. Neither game gets this part right: In Myst, all of the information is front-loaded, in Riven you stumble around for hours before you get to it. I don't get why Cyan didn't distribute the journal entries more evenly to keep the player engaged. Anyway, while I doubt anyone will be able to solve the game without resorting to hints at some point, a lot can be derived from your surroundings. As in Myst, sounds are as important as the visual clues. You'll also get to decipher a weird numbering system that is pretty cleverly designed, but very hard to figure out completely. As I later learned, the code sequences are randomized, so you may get lucky and get an easier one to solve. TL;DR: Imho, this game is very much worth your time even in 2021!