its alright i guess

first experience with the series started here (mystcraft haphazardly thrown in old minecraft modpacks does NOT count) and I enjoyed it, though many of my headaches seem to stem from the 'modernization' of an old-school point and click adventure game.

TL;DR: as a first-time player? I would recommend this to others who've never experienced it and don't have the baggage of a previous game experience to compare with.

PRAISE:

myst seems legendary for a reason and I definitely got to experience an archaic classic through this remaster. the sound design is very well done and it's obviously high-spec because there's a few original audio FMVs still in the game and they're such a jarring lesser quality i have to imagine the whole game used to sound like that.

the story pulls you in just enough even for it's novelties; i loved having to discover organically what was happening in the greater narrative as i solved puzzles to progress, that my distrusts and uncertainties felt initially unfounded, then developed in ways I won't spoil.

the hint system in the pause menu is very intuitive with organic questions one would ask in each part of the game, and after beating it, i skimmed a while to see how handholdy it could be for some parts, the guide really tells you beat-for-beat exactly what to do to progress the way you want to, if you insist on needing the help after multiple vaguer hints. the funniest one is one where you the player say "i don't care! spoil me! spoil me!" after a warning that learning any more will remove all discovery from the experience.

Chadtrus really said "bet" and did that at the end, huh? my GOAT

it's neat seeing the obvious setup for the next game (Riven) apparently added as a special re-release bonus, with a new Age with new puzzles to build it up.

CRITICISMS:

no subtitles? i'm hard at hearing and i was LUCKY to have heard 'pages' out of one of the expository book sequences to realize i have to find more.

there must be some UI scaling limitations because the clickable areas for the text in the pause menu don't match where they are visually on the screen. you can still visually see which option you highlight before you click, but it is annoying to have to feel around blindly.

the modern controls are funky. i was hesitant to use them at first but after some clickable area frustration I gave it a shot. you can only move your camera view while WASD-moving, which is awkward, and if you use right-click to turn your head, it defaults back to that wasd-movement placement, meaning to 'turn around' you have to putter left and right while pushing the mouse right or left with multiple strokes to actually do a 180. real awkward.

the classic controls seem obviously designed for the way to play, except they have a "multiple clicks in sequence" allowance where if you hold the button you immediately follow into the next check where your cursor is. so if you walk forward and walking forward turns you at an angle and 'forward' is now 'forward-right', you might spin around and because 'forward-right' is now 'backwards' you'll literally go to the spot you just were at, turned around and disoriented, in the span of about 1.5 seconds with only one button pressed. the lack of telling you WHERE a path stops as you auto-skip makes it unwieldy and irritating instead of convenient.

vgg