I salvaged Myst 3: Exile many many years ago from a sales bin, tried it,
and got a bit daunted by the quite steep progress curve from the very
beginning. You could turn some weird objects and press some buttons, and
absolutely nothing seemed to happen. It seemed obscure and obfuscated.
Since then it had been sitting on my games shelf, waiting to get a chance,
while more modern games appeared alongside. So this summer I decided to
give it another go. (Yeah, this story might sound a bit familiar to some
people here. Don't worry, it won't be as long.)

  While equally daunting at first (I go walking around, turning wheels
and pressing buttons, and nothing seems to happen), but I decided that
this time I'm going to break it. There *has* to be some idea behind all
this, I just have to find it.

  Perseverance paid off, as I slowly started discovering the idea of how
things worked and how the puzzles are solved. I started making some actual
progress!

  Many times I seemed to hit an impassable wall, as nothing I tried seemed
to work, or something was just way too complicated to try to solve by
trial-and-error (eg. because of thousands of possible combinations), but
in the end I always managed to solve the problems, and clearly in the
intended ways (ie. by deducing the answers from the hints rather than
trying blindly thousands of combinations).

  I'm a bit proud to say that I completed the entire game without ever
looking at any walkthrough tutorial whatsoever. All by myself.

  I really liked the game. It's a nice change of pace compared to all the
violence-filled action games and level-grinding-filled RPGS. No pressure,
no worries, just explore and examine things at your own pace, and try to
find the subtle hints that aid in solving the puzzles. I really liked
especially that. ("I just can't figure this out. There *must* be a hint
somewhere. But where? *looks and looks* Ah! That's it. Right in front of
my eyes!")

  I liked it so much, in fact, that I ordered Myst IV (which seems to
follow the same conventions).

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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