This is not the best of Myst games (Exile is), but it's not the worst either. Ages are very interesting and beautiful. You have both tropical jungle and crystal flying islands. Music is immersive and varying. Once they even started singing in Polish! Clearly the best thing in game (this song too). Unfortunately, sometimes puzzles don't make much sense or can be solved by accident. Few of them require you to spend long time travelling around to see the results. It's not always obvious, what causes what and where. Some puzzles required arcade skills and timing to solve, which is not fun in games like those. The story gets quite illogical at times (let's solve in 5 minutes a puzzle that has been said to take 5 years to solve). Also, this is the first Myst where it is not perfectly obvious who is evil and who is not and you can even unwillingly make a wrong decision at the end. The game has built-in solution and I had to rely on it few times. You can take photos and make notes in-game so you *almost* don't need a piece of paper this time. And piece of paper is more fun. Still, this is Myst. Buy it, if you like such games and you want to collect whole series like me. I have nice memories and I don't regret purchase (but wait for discount, unless they include OST in purchase). I would solve the game myself if I had infinite time.
Compared to the other games of similar type I can say that this game could easily be much better. - Puzzles are too easy, maybe three times in the entire game I got stuck for longer than 5 minutes. There were couple of nice mechanics that could be used more often. Instead, game is 60% about jumping from edge to edge and all edges are brightly painted white and there are never more than necessary so you always see the route. - Graphics have low performance-quality ratio. There are games on GOG with similar quality that don't use so much resources (The Witness). Although my computer is not the fastest one, I think performance could be improved by removing things like day-night cycle (it has been used maybe twice, in very basic puzzles, and in 1/5 of worlds for graphics), this could allow to bake shadows. The style of graphics is quite nice, though. Has a potential for something more and seems little wasted. - Game is mostly linear, you are forced to visit locations in the open world in specific order. Only at the beginning you are given more freedom. At the end there are few moments where player is given what looks like a choice (cutscene waits for player input), but only accepts one response. - I haven't seen a single glitch. And since Unreal Engine is quite buggy, this only shows that creators have done an amazing job. Character always grabs edge when expected. - Music gets quite boring. There are violins and violins in various configurations, but locations vary enough to ask for more advanced instruments, especially since it has industrial theme in one place. - The story may not look amazing at the beginning, but once you reach the end, it makes you reinterpret places and objects you've seen and they suddenly make a lot more sense. You will remember this game longer. I got this game for free as a prize for spending enough on other games. I don't think I would buy it, though. Took me about 8 hours to complete in one go.
