Customer Reviews

Myst

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I was excited when I found out that Myst was going to be ported to DS. Within a few minutes of playing, I was already disappointed. It was as if the developers had never played any DS games to see what kinds of things the DS can do. If I were to port this game all over again, here's what I would change:

Pull-down Menus - right now, all the icons are on the main play screen (bottom screen), taking up about 1/3 of valuable real estate. The graphics already had to be made smaller for the DS screens, and then they made it worse by adding icons. I think tabs or a menu button that could open and close the menu would have been better.

Zoom and Pan - There is currently a zoom tool, but all it does is display the exact same image, just a hair larger, onto the top screen. It's not very useful at all. In fact, things are so small I have to use a magnifying glass that I normally use for embroidery. :P

Better Use of the Dual Screens - Perhaps the perpetual icons wouldn't have been so bad if you could swap between screens. But the top screen is hardly used. You can display the "magnified" version of what you are looking at (but if you turn or walk forward it flips back to the title screen) and it used for displaying a map that has text that are about 2 pixels big. The only time in the game you can pan is when you are reading a journal. The journal panning is pretty decent, but on someone else's review they said they should have made it so you read the journals sideways like a book (like how Brain Age is oriented.) I like that idea.

A Better Note Taking Feature - You can take notes using a little keyboard but it's limited. If you've made a mistake typing two lines up, there is no way for you to tap and place your cursor there - you have to delete everything in between! I think a better note taking feature is one where you can use your own handwriting, like on Zelda.

More Screenshots - You can take screenshots of clues, but you can only save one at a time.

I've read several reviews where people complained about the sound. To be fair, the sound is actually pretty good if you have headphones on. It definitely does not sound as good coming out of the DS speakers.

I was finally able to enjoy the game after A.) I used a magnifying glass B.) used headphones C.) took notes with pen and paper instead of the in-game tools. I would not recommend the DS version unless you are willing to put up with all that. However, Myst itself is a great game which is why I gave it a fun rating of 4 stars. If you have never played it before, try the PC or console version.

Myst is a great game, but I suggest you find another platform to play it on. This port is riddled with bugs. When flipping through the books, the pages skip around, the upper screen has become distorted, the touch screen controls are finicky, you can't read anything without using the zoom feature, and the screen capture tool (used as a form of note taking) flips books back to page one before taking the shot. I've only played it for about an hour and I can't believe Nintendo let them release the game in this state. Bottom line, don't buy this version of Myst. The developer who ported this doesn't deserve your money.

Like most others I was excited to see Myst coming to the DS. I should have listend to the reviews. This game did not transfer well to the DS. It is extremly hard to nagivate and the screen is very little. The zoom feature may as well not be there it does nothing to help you look at things. If you love this game and own a DS DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY! I would highly recommend you try it out from a game rental site before you buy it. I plan to trade mine in with only an hour played.

Myst is a wonderful puzzle game, I am having much fun playing it on the ds, but there are certainly some drawbacks. The screen is to small for this game, but I can make do with it. The biggest problem is the multitude of glitches. This is the first ds game I have ever had glitch up on me. If you like Myst, get it. But if otherwise, consider a different puzzle game if you can't tolerate glitches.

Myst. The title alone will bring you memories of joy or pure frustration if you were around when the game originally hit PC's years ago. Since then, there have been numerous sequels and spin-off's, with the original Myst being ported to countless systems as well. Now, all these years later, Myst comes to the DS for some odd reason. One may think that the game may be reconfigured and really put the DS' technical capabilities to use, but alas, it doesn't. What we get here is the same game of yesteryear, with the only difference being that Myst has not aged well at all. The once pretty still visuals have become dated and stale, and the fact that the game has been cropped and shrunk down makes things harder to see than ever before. Not to mention that the point and click style of gameplay, which would seem to be something that work on the DS, just seem less interactive than before. Myst as a whole is still a chore to get through as well, but those who enjoyed the game back in the day will find that most of the original's audio quality is here, and there is a bonus island to play as well. Whether or not you get that far however is another question entirely. All in all, if you enjoyed Myst way back when and you own a DS, this may be worth a look; but for those uninitiated with the Myst series or the old point and clicker genre, avoid like the plague.

I remember watching my male cousins play the original Myst on the PC and dreamed of playing it myself. When I saw this in the store, I snapped it up. What a mistake. A DS screen is naturally small, which I considered, and as such, needs well thought out graphics. The graphics in this game are grainy at best. This lack of clarity makes the puzzles extreamly hard. Many times I have missed important clues due to the fact that they are very small and not clear. This also makes for terrible navigation since you never really know which way you are going. I honestly cannot enjoy the puzzles in this game because I simply can't see.

In short, if you are a Myst collector, this would be a game for your collection. If you want to actually play this game, I would suggest another platform.

I love Myst. I have been a fan for over a decade now and have played all of the Myst games. However, this is the first time that I have played it on a platform other than my PC. While the game is great and the play on the DS with the stylus is fun, I am disappointed with the graphics. I know, hard to believe when refering to Myst, but there it is. The pictures are fuzzy and are not as clear as on the PC. Since I have played the game several times before, it doesn't affect my gameplay, but I think that if I were coming to the game as a newbie, I would have trouble finding all of the clues needed to solve the puzzles. It's difficult to make out what some of the items are and the video messages are hard to diciper. It's still an amazing game and I highly recommend anything and everything having to do with Myst, however, you might want to play it on your PC before you use it on your DS.

I love Myst. I have every version (original, Real Time, etc) and every sequel (Riven, Exile, etc), so of course I had to have the DS version as well. What a let down! Half the fun of the Myst series is the beautiful and fascinating detail of the Ages, which you can barely see on the DS screen. The other half of the fun in Myst is finding out all the little tasks you have to do in order to complete your work in each Age, and quite frankly, if I didn't already know what to do in each Age, the itty bitty screen pictures wouldn't have helped me. Reading the journals (another important thing in any Myst game) is annoying, with all the scrolling in every direction, and little touches like the opening animation in each Linking Book are gone. I can't recommend the DS version of Myst, but I highly recommend getting the PC version and playing it on the biggest monitor you can find (with the room lights out, too... you really feel like you're there!).

I am a huge fan of the PS version of this game and was very excited to see they were making it available for the DS. I read the reviews on here and thought it couldn't possibly be as disappointing as the reviews showed. Well, don't kid yourself. The reviews are right. The graphics are pretty bad, the screen is too small making you nearly squint to see the finer details and there are some glitches. It's not worth it. Not even buying a used one is worth it. Sad.

For a challenging and visually amazing video game, you can't do better than the Myst series. I played this years ago on my PC and absolutely loved it. The game is completely immersive, difficult even for skilled puzzle-solvers, and beautiful to boot. Like everyone else, I was excited to find a pocket-sized version of this beloved game.

Unfortunately, the game does not translate well to the DS at ALL. If you played the original game, you'll know that the graphics in many areas of the game tend to be quite dark, and paired with the small screen on the DS, the only way you'll even be able to see what's going on is if you play this in a room with all the lights off. I got headaches from squinting at the screen, trying to make out key details. The movement and menus also feel clumsy, as though they simply scaled down the PC versions rather than trying to create a new interface that worked better with the smaller platform. The game overall feels cramped, awkward, and tedious. I couldn't get into it at all, and gave up on it a short way in.

If the creators of the Myst series decide to create a game specifically designed for the DS, it might be worth a look, but I don't think any of their existing games can be shoehorned into such a small platform. You're much better off sticking with the large-screen version.