While I was previously aware of Riven: The Sequel to Myst, I did not know until just recently that there were four more sequels, or that the story of Myst has now been told in full. Knowing there is a definitive conclusion to the story in Myst V: The End of Ages does make me want to do a full series playthrough, but that's going to have to wait a while because Riven has burned me the hell out.
I know it doesn't help that I also played this for the Sega Saturn, which is curiously absent from Backloggd's list of consoles. Riven only saw a Saturn release in Europe and Japan, and I feel this may be why it was overlooked. As it happens, a lot of my complaints about Myst's Saturn port carry over here. Riven is made more clunky and slow than it ought to be due to limitations of the hardware, and there's a significant loss of image quality over its PC counterpart as well. To be fair, it still looks pretty damn good even if it may be compromised, which just goes to show how much time, money, and pure artistic effort went into rendering the Age of Riven in the first place. Myst fit comfortably enough onto one CD, but Riven is broken into four discs, a necessity considering how much more animation is present. There are fewer static shots than the previous game, and even something as simple as seeing waves crash or flies buzzing around adds a lot more ambience.
The five islands that compose the ruined Age of Riven are also gigantic. There are multiple ways to and from each island, and much of the puzzles you solve span over multiple regions, requiring far more meticulous note taking. It's quite easy to get lost, but the Riven is fun enough to explore that navigating its world never gets too frustrating. You've been sent here by Artus in the hopes of finding his wife, Catherine, who now leads a rebellion against Artrus' father Gehn, a tyrant who has started his own following in a desperate attempt to free himself from this world in which he's been trapped. Gehn has mechanized much of the island, constructing strange steampunk inspired machines to create new linking books, though his methods are flawed, and repeated failures fill him with madness and regret. The story is communicated both in the environment (and quite effectively at that) as well as large info-dumps (which are a lot less effective.)
As you explore Riven you see brief glimpses of people in the distance, giving you the sense that this world is still very much inhabited. The lonely atmosphere of Myst is alive and well, now punctuated by an eerie sense that you're always being watched by groups with unknown intent. Are they hostile, or fearful? In truth it's a bit of both, but it leaves you with a sense of dread that you can't shake from the moment you set foot on the island to the second the credits roll. The fact that you're repeatedly told Riven is on the verge of total collapse also gives a sense of urgency that Myst simply did not have. It's great. It takes everything I liked about the tone of Myst and expands on it in ways that allow Riven to have its own identity without losing sight of what made the original work.
Puzzles are more of a mixed bag for me. On one hand I like that many of them span large portions of the game, at least in concept, but I also found it easy to lose the thread on a few of them because of this. It also becomes harder to see the solution coming together when you spend significant chunks of time away from a particular puzzle. An especially complicated one comes in the form of decoding the numeral system used by the inhabitants of Riven, which is needed to read codes written in Gehn and Catherine's journals. The in-game solution comes in the form of a game you play in the schoolhouse, which is tucked into one of the furthest corners of the game map. It's pretty easy to miss this, and I don't think I'd blame anyone for just looking up a guide to figure out what these symbols mean. However, doing so would rob you of the satisfaction of cracking the code yourself. Simply put, there's times where the game wagers your gratification against how long, winding, and complicated its puzzles are, and I don't think it always works out.
Riven's massive size and non-linear design also means a whole lot of disc swapping is required. I don't normally mind this (and might actually find it a little nostalgic) but the amount of times I had to pop open the Saturn did get kind of annoying, and it really doesn't help your immersion when you enter a room and get told to swap the disc out for the seventh time in a single sitting. God help you if you make it a couple rooms after a swap before realizing that actually you need to turn around. I understand this is the compromise Saturn owners had to make to play Riven, I'm not sure there was a more efficient way to spread data across all four discs. On the bright side, Riven didn't make it sound like my Saturn's disc drive was having conniptions like Myst did.
Ultimately I think Riven won't stick with me the way Myst does, likely due to not having experienced it at such a formative age, but it is a solid step forward and a much better game. There's some design elements that don't hold up to the test of time, and the Saturn is no doubt a terrible way to play it, but its atmosphere is just as strong today as it was in '97.
I know it doesn't help that I also played this for the Sega Saturn, which is curiously absent from Backloggd's list of consoles. Riven only saw a Saturn release in Europe and Japan, and I feel this may be why it was overlooked. As it happens, a lot of my complaints about Myst's Saturn port carry over here. Riven is made more clunky and slow than it ought to be due to limitations of the hardware, and there's a significant loss of image quality over its PC counterpart as well. To be fair, it still looks pretty damn good even if it may be compromised, which just goes to show how much time, money, and pure artistic effort went into rendering the Age of Riven in the first place. Myst fit comfortably enough onto one CD, but Riven is broken into four discs, a necessity considering how much more animation is present. There are fewer static shots than the previous game, and even something as simple as seeing waves crash or flies buzzing around adds a lot more ambience.
The five islands that compose the ruined Age of Riven are also gigantic. There are multiple ways to and from each island, and much of the puzzles you solve span over multiple regions, requiring far more meticulous note taking. It's quite easy to get lost, but the Riven is fun enough to explore that navigating its world never gets too frustrating. You've been sent here by Artus in the hopes of finding his wife, Catherine, who now leads a rebellion against Artrus' father Gehn, a tyrant who has started his own following in a desperate attempt to free himself from this world in which he's been trapped. Gehn has mechanized much of the island, constructing strange steampunk inspired machines to create new linking books, though his methods are flawed, and repeated failures fill him with madness and regret. The story is communicated both in the environment (and quite effectively at that) as well as large info-dumps (which are a lot less effective.)
As you explore Riven you see brief glimpses of people in the distance, giving you the sense that this world is still very much inhabited. The lonely atmosphere of Myst is alive and well, now punctuated by an eerie sense that you're always being watched by groups with unknown intent. Are they hostile, or fearful? In truth it's a bit of both, but it leaves you with a sense of dread that you can't shake from the moment you set foot on the island to the second the credits roll. The fact that you're repeatedly told Riven is on the verge of total collapse also gives a sense of urgency that Myst simply did not have. It's great. It takes everything I liked about the tone of Myst and expands on it in ways that allow Riven to have its own identity without losing sight of what made the original work.
Puzzles are more of a mixed bag for me. On one hand I like that many of them span large portions of the game, at least in concept, but I also found it easy to lose the thread on a few of them because of this. It also becomes harder to see the solution coming together when you spend significant chunks of time away from a particular puzzle. An especially complicated one comes in the form of decoding the numeral system used by the inhabitants of Riven, which is needed to read codes written in Gehn and Catherine's journals. The in-game solution comes in the form of a game you play in the schoolhouse, which is tucked into one of the furthest corners of the game map. It's pretty easy to miss this, and I don't think I'd blame anyone for just looking up a guide to figure out what these symbols mean. However, doing so would rob you of the satisfaction of cracking the code yourself. Simply put, there's times where the game wagers your gratification against how long, winding, and complicated its puzzles are, and I don't think it always works out.
Riven's massive size and non-linear design also means a whole lot of disc swapping is required. I don't normally mind this (and might actually find it a little nostalgic) but the amount of times I had to pop open the Saturn did get kind of annoying, and it really doesn't help your immersion when you enter a room and get told to swap the disc out for the seventh time in a single sitting. God help you if you make it a couple rooms after a swap before realizing that actually you need to turn around. I understand this is the compromise Saturn owners had to make to play Riven, I'm not sure there was a more efficient way to spread data across all four discs. On the bright side, Riven didn't make it sound like my Saturn's disc drive was having conniptions like Myst did.
Ultimately I think Riven won't stick with me the way Myst does, likely due to not having experienced it at such a formative age, but it is a solid step forward and a much better game. There's some design elements that don't hold up to the test of time, and the Saturn is no doubt a terrible way to play it, but its atmosphere is just as strong today as it was in '97.