I came to this sceptical. Riven is a deep, engrained part of my childhood. I see Myst, I buy Myst, but I wasn't sure what I was going to get. I went in with VR, having enjoyed Myst VR but not being shocked by it. Riven VR, I was shocked by. If nothing else, thank you Cyan for the chance to walk into the scarab room on Temple Island in VR with Robyn's unmistakable soundtrack chiming in. I actually cried. For those who don't have some primordial semi-traumatic connection to this game, the elevator pitch; this is a sequel to Myst, but you can kind of come in without playing Myst because of Riven's raison d'etre - tactile, world-contextualised puzzling. This is video game a la mise en scène. This world is not made for you, you happen to just be here and be thrust into an important role. It's ok to not have any idea of what anything is, the game is to discern this world, what came before you, and what makes things tick. And most especially, why. Part of the fun is sniffing all that out. This is what Cyan are good at. The visuals are in every respect as striking if not more so than the original (the sole exception being the golden elevator on Survey which in the original is so obscenely ostentatious it can only have been Gehn's invention). The tweaks to the puzzles are welcome and appropriate for modern audiences, (although I miss detailed topographic elements to the Big Golden Puzzle, has Google Earth not taught us we can do coordinate hunting without greyscale?), enough to give this old Rivener pause for thought in places,, while still giving succour in my old age; I still find in this game my old friend. VR players, however, may find isolated instances of pixel hunting, and a metric poop tonne of ladder climbing a little extra. Highlights and a turbo button would be welcome. Still, this is an augmented nostalgia bomb for veterans and a taut excercise in worldbuilding and contextualised puzzle solving for newcomers, that cannot be Myst. Missed. You know what I mean.
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First of all I think in many respects this is a better game than Banner Saga. This title I think easily has the more interesting lore and characters (and art! and music!), and has some interesting tweaks to the tactical aspect, but suffers from a critical flaw - the scene to scene writing. I'm not 100% convinced it's a problem merely of translation (from Russian). Some concepts appear to be under explained before suddenly becoming relevant, lines of dialogue have a different result from what is expected, etc. Occasionally there is a line that seems inspired in English, and then others fall flat, as if translated by committee of five year olds. This is compounded by the fact that most of the game is dialogue trees. I personally found the lore and story pretty enthralling, but I'm also convinced that the translation into English (and I suspect every other language as well) should have been from scratch, with ideas to be achieved scene by scene shared but the dialogue itself a rewrite with someone who knew what they were doing. If you can fill in the considerable blanks and missteps in your own mind, though, it's captivating. The source is interesting, execution less so. The combat I think is an improvement over Banner Saga. Gone are dice rolls, every attack does what it says on the tin, so it's more tactical in that respect. Team size has a huge impact on how battles play out (small teams will have each member act multiple times in one round compared to a large team), but once you get the hang of it this is another tactical arrow in your quiver. The game does not hand hold or explain valid tactics, so its trial and error (same goes for the interesting but occasionally opaque levelling and builds), though selectable difficulty and the much more generous save game regimen compared to Banner Saga is a blessing. All in all, a title worthy of a sequel, and a fascinating world to explore, if you're prepared to use imagination to fill in its shortcomings yourself.
