Marred by Bugs, Tedium and Weirdness
I'm glad I finally got to play this after so many years, but it was definitely a flawed entry in the series. First and worst is the game-crashing bug that's triggered by, of all things, having wireless headphones connected. This is just bizarre and it took a lot of internet searching to find out what was going on. I had to play the whole game using earbuds, and even then it crashed once for no apparent reason.
The puzzles are really mixed- some are what you'd expect from a Myst game, are fun to figure out and give you a real sense of accomplishment when you complete them. Others are just tedious and frustrating, like the monkey-shuffling one or the final two, and still others verge on pixel-hunting, forcing you to find tiny switches, hidden notes or chunks of rock that are hard to make out even if you're looking right at them. I had to use a guide a few times, and I never regretted it because the puzzles I was struggling with were genuinely not fun and solving them felt like a colossal waste of time. The control scheme, where you have to jerk around the mouse to do things like opening doors or flipping pages, is also a bit awkward. The ability to take photos and see flashbacks was useful, however.
The story is fine for the most part, but the acting is rather forced, and the entire world of Serenia seems... off, somehow. The puzzles there are of lower quality, and while interacting with the people there brings a bit more life to the usually solitary, silent Myst experience, the presence of a group of mystical nuns and having to go on dream quests felt like a weird fit, as though it had been grafted on from a completely different game. The culmination of this is an out-of-nowhere new age music video sequence that, while certainly surprising and different, doesn't really feel like part of a Myst game.
It's probably worth playing for fans of the series, but be prepared for a different experience and don't expect a masterpiece this time around.