Riven was astounding to my adolescent imagination, and it's a joy to see that legacy carried on with games like this. There were some very clever and challenging puzzles in here. I really enjoy the way they let the puzzles breathe and speak for themselves. It required me to be genuinely observant. There were times when I got frustrated, but eventually I realized it was just because I refused to slow down, look closely, and think things through. I couldn't typically rely on the game to give me the next step, which was a breath of fresh air. Some nice music. I felt as though the voices were fine, but could have used more personality or character. For a game dabbling with the idea of many alternate worlds, everything looks very mundane and samey. I appreciate the opportunity to make a choice at the end. It was something I could reason through and I suppose people will make different calls based on their own sensibilities. But overall the story felt too vague. That works to some degree because it's dealing more with broad themes of power, technology, knowledge, and balancing these with ethical decisions. But it was so vague that for me it lacked impact by the end. Ultimately, though, it's about the quality of the puzzles, and I was very satisfied on that front.

Story mode took me I think about 7 hours on normal. Story was really dumb and pointless. Many things just happen for convenience or just to move the plot along. It was pretty fun until I realize that the way to beat it is to find that one weird trick in each fight and just repeat that ad nauseum. Most of the time I would just hold block, then sweep from a distance, or if they get close use a throw. Actually trying to fight improvisationally and use special moves never worked for me, but maybe that's because I lack the necessary reflexes. I don't play with other people or online so that probably detracts from the experience. On the other hand if I did that I would probably just get frustrated and stop anyway. It's a very beautiful game visually. I just wish the story would have tried harder to do something interesting, challenging, meaningful... or anything. Or that the characters weren't simply cookie cutter tropes. Overall I found the game to play great. I've played older MK games and always found the AI to be impenetrable. This game was manageable. In a way learning how to deal with each opponent was satisfying. As I tried to go into each match using the same techniques I realized the same strategies wouldn't work on every opponent. Periodically I would have to discover a different tactic. But again it was too easy to find one move that broke the match. Maybe on harder difficulties that wouldn't be the case, but I have no desire to see the story again. The elder gods are morons.

I play through the whole game without fighting, feeling good, then the game requires me to fight at the end, undermining my whole playthrough, just to then require jumping through obscure hoops to get a good ending. And if I don't play perfectly then I can get locked out of the good ending without even knowing it and be required to replay the whole game. Sucks real bad. Plus the humor just doesn't land for me. Like an annoying hyperactive teenager screaming at me. I wanted to like the story and the emphasis on peaceful resolution, but there's too much pushing me away.

Game has a ton going for it in terms of writing, voices, animation, music, etc., but actually trying to complete the game without any help was an extreme exercise in futility for me. I finally broke down and looked up a walkthrough about halfway through the game and there were some things that I could tell I probably never would have gotten. It just feels like stuff I essentially would just have to get lucky or have to be able to read the developers' mind to get. Which is too bad because I like it otherwise. If the game had some way of nudging me in the right direction I would have liked it a lot more.

This is a game that is screaming for a real modern remake/remaster, like the one Day of the Tentacle received. In my experience thus far, it pains me to say every version of this game is borderline unplayable. Which is tragic because there's so much greatness that is apparent in it: the way that different characters can beat the game in very different ways, the fact that NPCs carry on actions that the player must react to for different effects, the free roaming puzzle box nature of the mansion. Unfortunately, in the pc versions, it's easy to get to an apparently unwinnable state without even knowing it. For me, this is essentially broken game design and it certainly doesn't fly these days. I've read that the NES version fixes some of this, but it has crippling censorship. There is a hack that reverts this, but the game keeps locking up eventually. I haven't tried it myself, but apparently the version on Steam is just played via ScummVM and is hacked so that the keypads in the game don't work properly. Please! Remaster this game and fix its issues because I think there's a game I could really love in here.