Rating: 
Summary: Obsessive....believe me here...and it's a good thing!
Review: I reviewed this game earlier...but changed my email. I was formerly kaz48@juno.com, but I moved, and with it, got a whole new, but utterly delicious view of this world. Before Riven I was a lost soul, wandering this planet with no direction. It has all changed. I am a new person. I have moved out of my old home, and into D'ni. Actually, to put it less dramatically, my parents have been trying to pry my fingers off the computer since I got Riven. Either I have been playing this game or talking to other fans in a chatroom. I finished the game, was so impressed by the ending that I played over and over again. After finishing those, I decided the real world was no match for this one, so I joined a Riven Mailing list, chatted, online role-played...anything that would keep me in this wonderful vision. I made myself a really cool webpage devoted to Riven...I am totally obsessed, brainwashed, whatever, so you shouodn't listen to my review, but I still say you should buy it! The graphics are outstanding...I use them as desktop images, and people can't believe that they are not photos of real places, which they aren't, of course. The sound effects are awesome, I met the guy that did them, and he explained how they were done, but they also were nominated for an award... The music is just as great, I just ordered the soundtrack about 2 minutes ago. There's nothing to complain about the animation, especially some of the little ones no one notices, like rooms rotating and waves breaking. The actors are really good, and I wish that it was possible to be nominated for an oscar if you were in a game, rather than just movies. The actor that played Gehn, John Keston, is especially good. I have been teaching a few of my friends at school to play it, every chance I get, and I play it. The people all watch me and stare and say "What level is that?" and I have to ewxplain that this is not a normal computer game, you don't go through levels, it's a *world*. You have to live Riven...breathe it, speak it, walk it...do Riven every chance you have...before an entire world is lost.
Rating:
Summary: Don't listen to the people who gave this game 1s and 2s!!
Review: Pay no attention to the people who gave this AWESOME game 1s, 2s, and other low scores! They are complete WACKOES!!! They don't know what the heck they are talking about! Me and my mom played this game and never got sick of it! So to all those who didn't like it... SHUT UP! What's wrong with you people! It was 100 times better than MYST. The puzzles were harder, the game was longer, the sounds were better and more realistic, the graphics were PERFECT! What else is there to say! This is one game that NO... I repeat... NO MYST fan should miss. Again... PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE PEOPLE WHO GAVE THIS GAME LOW BLOWS!! THEY DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT!
Rating: 
Summary: Don't buy it - play Myst again
Review: I'm waiting for Riven since I finished Myst. Although the graphics are fabulous, the game is awful. The puzzles aren't difficult, but sometimes so tricky that the game becomes stupid. Some things just lack sense. If you really liked Myst, don't buy Riven. The only thing you will find both in Myst and Riven is the kind of graphics and the point and click. Don't expect to find the same kind of intelligent puzzles Myst had. After some play, you really get sick of this game. If you really want to play it, borrow from a friend. Riven maybe is the worst game sequel I've seen. It's really sad, because Myst is one of the best games ever.
Rating:
Summary: It's not MYSTerious at all
Review: When I got Riven I thought that it would be almost as good as MYST or at least a fairly fun game. It's not!!! The game starts out with Atrus sending you to Age 5 or Riven. From there the game starts to get dull. MYST was made around 1993 (I think) and for that time the point-and-click, first person view was amazing, but now that isn't big news. What MYST lacked in real people, it made up for by its MYSTerious places and ages. Riven dosen't do that. It's just a boring game. The tech support line must be buzzing. Riven has many errors in it. (you can download patches to fix these). Many of the movies push my computer to the max, and that still isn't good enough. The movies are a drag on the game because they make it hard to move around since the game is filled with them. The final word here is unless you want to spend your free time waiting for the movies to end and figuring out puzzles that you don't realize exist. DON'T BUY THIS GAME!!! (If you do get it, get the cheat book.)
Rating:
Summary: Buy it. Gehn is waiting for you...
Review: THE best game ever made in all time! Anyone who doesn't like this game should be dragged into the street and shot. The graphics are incredible, the plot is mesmerizing, and the puzzles would give Einstein a run for his money. But don't buy it as a challenge; buy it as an adventure! Catherine and the Moiety need your help... don't let them down! Help Atrus! Capture the evil Gehn for all of eternity! Go to the 5th Age and save a dying world!
Rating:
Summary: myst addicts beware: stock up on food & drink
Review: Riven is addictive. The graphics are great. The wait was worth it. Don't be too quick with the spacebar and zip mode. There's stuff you need to find out first. I got it to work on my NT 4.0 box without incident even though it's "not supported." I downloaded three CDs to the "data" directory so that I didn't have to swap'em so much. I was disappointed that I couldn't use shortcuts to link to files on another partition so I could have all five CDs on disk at a time. I became immersed quickly and found the puzzles interesting, if not all that challenging. I expect they're more straightforward for those of us with a math/cs background. You definitely need to keep notes and figure out where things are to solve some of the puzzles. This was the most challenging thing for me because I'm more logical than topographical. "Tales from Topographic Oceans" would be good companion muisc.
Rating: 
Summary: My computer wasn't ready for Riven!
Review: I absolutely love the problem-solving involved with both Myst and Riven, but I was disappointed in Riven. Not by the graphics (hardly!) but by all of the upgrading that must be done. My computer must be really outdated because it takes about 5 mintues to transition when the game is in movie mode! Right now I'm pretty much stuck because I have to click on something at a certain moment, but it takes to long! I guess all the upgrading will be good for the computer, but I must admit I liked Myst slightly better. Maybe because it had more of a story. (Maybe it's just because I couldn't even hear what was being said at the beginning of Riven). So, I guess I'll just hope my computer is upgraded before I lose interest already!
Rating:
Summary: 'Twas a kick-ass game.
Review: The graphics were cool. I copied one for my Windows background, I hope that's not copyright infringement or anything... Anyway, the graphics were cool. Except for the pitch-black ones, I got lost a few times in the beginning. But when I shut off the lights in the room, as per the instruction book's suggestion, it was fine. But I have a few complaints. I agree with wanting to be able to go anywhere and not this clumsy point-click-and-you're-there style of movement. But such a notion would make the game too expensive, with all the CD's for each island's nook and cranny. And aren't your conversations with people a bit one-sided? I'd like an interface like the Journeyman games (a preview for Journeyman 3 is included with Riven), where you choose questions to ask the people you meet.
The last is a bit unfeasible, but I'd like to be able to be evil and betray Atrus. (cackling evilly) I'd like to give Gehn the book to Tay and have him send shock-troops there... become a traitor. I want the freedom to choose, like how I can play as either the Global Defensive Initiative or the Brotherhood of Nod in Command & Conquer. "And so he asked me if I wanted to be evil, and I said yeah, baby, yeah, baby, yeah! Evil's good, baby! 'Cause I'm the Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight!" (The Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight, on The Tick) I think I've scared you enough.
Rating:
Summary: Very disappointing
Review: Riven sets high expectations, and doesn't deliver. The main problem is that the core technology is about 4 years old, and feels like it. In the meantime between Myst and Riven, two major technologies have come out that show the inadequacies of the Myst technology. First is the panoramic view technology that was used in Zork: Nemesis and the recently released Zork: Grand Inquisitor. Being able to look 360 degrees around you was a major improvement over the Myst engine, and Riven's pseudo-panoramic views are not as immersive. Second, the Quake engine by id software proved that you can have a great game with less-than-Myst-quality graphics, and still have an immersive world. What Quake offers is the ability to see a point in your environment, go there, and look around from that point of view. Too many times in Riven I wanted to explore over rocks, or in a crevice, and found myself unable to get there, because like in Myst, the Riven creators selectively rendered individual scenes of the world. So, those are two personal grievances based on the level of sophistication of the Riven engine. How about the gameplay? Here again, Riven fails to deliver. From bugs in the programming (which the patch fixed), to obscure and hard to see hotspots, the game doesn't even live up to Myst's level of enjoyable gameplay. At some points the game devolves to nothing more than "Click every pixel in the image, because something must be clickable". Also, the game's story seems to have less human involvement than the last game. In Myst, even though you didn't see many people the game had an intriguing story line. After quite extensive playing of the Riven game, and solving many puzzles, I was frustrated by the lack of human intrigue. The people that you do see (at least up 'til the point I stopped playing) run away, or just don't talk. The pacing of the game just feels wrong, because it doesn't give you enough intrigue to hold your interest - just a lot of pretty machines and animals and scenery. Add to all this the fact that you have to swap CDs quite often during the game, and the game ends up being more trouble than it's worth. If you haven't tried it, go out and get Zork Nemesis. It's a much more involving story, and the gameplay is much better.
Rating: 
Summary: Riven is bigger but not better. Actually, its awful.
Review: Riven contains the same beautiful details that made Myst such a phenomenon, however it fails to achieve the overall quality of the previous entry in this series. The pacing of puzzles and clues is completely unbalanced. Some of the puzzles are made more difficult by a cavalier attitude toward providing clues. After laboring through puzzle after puzzle, hunting for clue after clue, the finale of the game comes too easily and quickly. Though visually stunning, Riven,in the end, fails to be as entertaining as Myst or many other games currently available.
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