Oh Spire timed puzzle how I loathe thee... I should love Myst IV Revelation, it's essentially a game full of mechanical puzzles which is the kind of thing I adore, disguised as being more by having a very pretty environment and a story wrapped around it, but I just can't ever bring myself to complete it, I've tried 4 or 5 times now and the same thing happens, I spend a certain amount of time frustratingly fighting against the controls and the game itself and after a while when I hit a particularly tricky problem I finally realise that I find the "story" (what there is, which isn't much) is not engaging me in the slightest, and I just can't face yet more hours of frustration to get to the end of a game I don't care about and so uninstall it. I'm writing this having just uninstalled it again in frustration. So here's why I dislike it: 1) Because the game runs at full screen, on large monitors the "beautiful" graphics look awful and pixelated, and you miss clues because things are hard to see (reading d'ni, a trapped rock, a pathway, how many notches you've just moved that slider) 2) The game interface is so slooow, having to backtrack to see if you've missed something is painful as there is a lag between each screen which becomes more and more frustrating. Your cursor hand takes too long before changing to show an interaction so if you're scannng a scene you can miss vital clues because the cursor didn't change quick enough to tell you you were over something. The cursor hand is too clumsy for fine movements so that trying to move sliders and leavers is an exercise in patience and frustration, and in timed puzzles is god awful (I hate you Spire) 3) Some puzzles are too ambiguous (yes you've got the right names but unknown to you you're putting them in in the wrong order, but we will never tell you that... no the sliders start at 1 not 0 but we never tell you that either, so you slooowly backtrack and backtrack looking for clues that aren't there). Not for me.
As soon as I reached the Villein's maze puzzle about 3/4 of the way through the game I had to stop playing and uninstall the game, I just couldn't stand it any more. Obduction exacerbated all I hated about Myst and Riven (loved Myst 3-5). The developers seem to delight in mazes, and I think they are dreadful contrivances in games. I started to lose track of what teleport swapped with what other teleport out of the dozens all over the place, and that you had to somehow psychically know that when teleport A swapped with teleport B it would create a bridge, or open the back of a room in the place you just teleported FROM that you couldn't see unless you teleported back by a different teleporter, it became SO frustrating... the age old myst "you've just flipped a switch which unknown to you has effected something you can't see, or realise it has effected". Ended up loathing this game. 60% of your time was spent back-tracking, and then re-backtracking over and over through the maze like connections between worlds, you have to learn a base 4 numbering system and at the same time how to express that on an alien symbolic machine, which if you aren't strong at maths is a living nightmare, there are winding passages all over the place and the uniform rocks/trees make it so easy to miss turning or to completely lose you sense of orientation. Backed this on Kickstarter and I'm glad I supported Cyan as they are passsionate about what they do and deserve support, but the logic behind some of the solutions is so opaque that playing it just ended up an exercise in total frustration. I don't wish to be spoonfed answers "the code to the door is xxx" on a piece of paper, but nor do I expect a puzzle to rely on a single obscure piece of info, or reference that if you miss it leaves you at a loss and you can't progress without it. Ended up looking up the endings on YouTube, and glad I did as the pay off and "acting" really wasn't worth the effort.