I avoided this game for a while because something put me off about the graphics, it somehow seemed plastic-y or "out of the box" - once I finally gave in and played it, I definitely changed my mind. The amount of detail is super satisfying if you're into this kind of game. You just have to play it to get a real impression and then you'll turn into a tourist trying to check out every angle. And of course the jumbled collage/thrift store style design has a point in the story. It's all really about the joy of exploration here and it's super satisfying how much space there is to check out. Puzzles are on a similar level to Uru, really about finding logically integrated ways to navigate a large space, nothing too crazy. I played on a new laptop with an SSD, so that one puzzle everyone hated was doable, though visually contrived. To be critical, there were areas this felt a little visually and sonically uninspired, compared to other Cyan games. Yes, most of it is super striking, but a lot of it is also piles of identical rocks, and in places I really wanted the premise of the alien life forms to go further into how the environments were designed. After playing something like Outer Wilds, while the realism here is a super satisfying notch higher, it would be cool to see some new ways of navigating beyond walking/unlocking doors/riding train-like things. I'd also have to echo other people mentioning that things are really hard to read on lower graphics settings! And finally, though it's a matter of taste, I wasn't into the music in this one at all, it felt much more traditional and dramatic rather than adding to the immersiveness. Despite all that, I found it a fun and balanced experience. Excited to see this company still trying to push world-building further - at the expense of our computers as always!
I have to agree with a lot of the reviews on here, and say that the emphasis on story-telling took this one a little too far in a direction to make things fun for a Myst game. The closest comparison in the series would be Uru, but the reward there really felt like exploration itself, and finding that the connections between different areas were surprisingly non-linear. In Myst V it feels a little too much like the game is guiding you through one giant journal, pausing constantly for the characters to read things out to you. Once you're done with an area, you're done; you don't learn as much from the settings, or get to linger and enjoy the ride. On the plus side - the puzzle dynamics, aside from one maddeningly random time-based one, are cool and different. I liked the weird addition of creatures you can interact with, and if you read about how the game was developed, they're a smart way to include puzzles that may have originally been multi-player in a single-player game. In addition, the graphics and sound feel like they really nailed what Uru was going for and it's cool to finally explore some areas that were hinted there. The music by Tim Larkin in both games is probably my favorite of the series, though that's up to taste. It's overall a pretty gorgeous game and a fairly similar gameplay to the original Myst, but after what the series started to hint at, it just feels frustratingly linear and occasionally incomplete.
