Is Riven harder than Myst, or is it just me?

[tygor_tora]

Playing Riven for the first time today, after finishing the 2020 remake of Myst. I think what threw me off with this one is that there doesn't seem to be any initial hint to get you started on the path, like with Myst. Of course, exploration's going to be a thing, but I was wandering the starting area and pressing buttons for a full fifteen minutes before I gave up and googled some guidance. I didn't really need to do that with Myst. I found the note, then Atrus's message, the library, figured out the tower clue stuff, and the rest just fell into place. The puzzles were still kind of esoteric and tricky, but a lot less "how the hell was I supposed to figure that out?"

[Ghidrah1]

I bought the 10th anniversary edition in 04 and then Mysts 4, 5 and Uru a few yrs later, (when I found out they existed). I wasn't into the Myst 1 1st island long before it became obvious I was never going to be able to keep track of all the junk I was discovering let alone make sense of something found on one island that related to something 2 or 3 islands later.

[cyxceven]

Personally, I found Riven A LOT easier than Myst. Everything pointed somewhere that had new info. I was also able to solve a lot of observational puzzles while completely missing some clues, but still having notes to show how I did it. Feels like there was a lot more "multiple ways to get there" left in on purpose. It shows how much better Cyan was getting at making games.

Myst just sorta left you to your own devices to figure out the one route. But that's just my experience.

[Ghidrah1]

I bought Steam's Real Myst because I couldn't brain out how get original Myst to play on my win 10 PC. But turned out to be good because included Rime.

[Lofty]

Both Riven and Myst SEEM hard, but the moment you actually read the bits lying around and just solve 1 puzzle? The next puzzle becomes obvious and so on. They said it themselves, everything can be solved through just reading and common sense.... I feel that's the problem, because point n clicks for years both before and after have absolutely insane puzzles sometimes and you really had to be inside the creator's heads to damn well get it XD Riven / Myst are not like that... just take some time to explore, read and test and you'll get it.

Only thing I ended up having problems with in Riven is the room with the little stones with animals on, and that's only because 1 of the things doesn't quite look the way it should which threw me off ((damn mutant fish frog....)).