[gmueckl]

Riven was difficult, but that doesn't do the game justice in my book. To me the game is a masterpiece in how it integrates storytelling with the world design and the puzzles so tightly. I'd have to spoil parts of the game to give good examples. There's one particularly fiendish puzzle that connects the numbers puzzle with animals appearing all over the place and a series of places all over the world that have weird wooden spheres embedded in rocks. And you have to find a well-hidden secret chamber first to see that this connection might even be there.

This is also part of why the game is so difficult. It does expect the player go through a certain sequence of events to advance the plot. But all of this is in a very open world that presents you with a lot of puzzle pieces that you can't do anything with initially. This breadth of possible options makes it harder to identify those pieces that the game wants you to connect in the puzzles. I've read a long while ago that the Millers have underestimated how much this drives difficulty. They said that later Myst series titles are designed to be more sequential experiences with less interconnected pieces as a result.