Amazon.com: Myst Uru: Complete Chronicles: PC: Video Games

53 Reviews

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(8)

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4.0 out of 5 stars (53 customer reviews)

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102 of 104 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Alot of gameplay here!, September 7, 2004

By	B. GOODWIN "dragon678" (LIMA, OHIO United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars

Being a MYST fan, I almost didn't get this because of it going on-line as a type of MMORPG originally and I don't like those games.

But when I saw the this with both expansion packs, I couldn't resist (also had heard by then that the on-line was canceled because of little support). And what a value. There are many hours of gameplay here. It is also pretty hard, so have some patience because some of this hard to figure out.

The graphics are as always fantastic (especially the water. It looks awesome and I think they know it because there is water everywhere in this game). The scenery is more interactive than ever and there are alot of things moving here.

The sounds of the game are very good to, especially with some good headphones. I spent some time looking around checking everything out and I wasn't dissapointed.

You can also change your Avatar (this is a 1st or 3rd person game and you will need to use both) from clothes, to face, to sunglasses. And you will collect more items along the way which you can change in to.

Some of the puzzles were wierd, and they reminded alot of playing Riven which is one of the things I didn't really like as you had to go back and forth alot between ages. But there are many puzzles to solve and this is seamless, so you never know when you are playing Ages Beyond MYST or one of the expansion packs. There are also alot of books to read here (and you have to read them all or you will miss vital clues and answers for some of the puzzles), more than any of the other MYST games (maybe even more than the other 3 put together).

I had alot of fun, and if you are a MYST fan, this is an unbeatable deal.

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63 of 64 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Pleasantly Surprised, For the Most Part, March 16, 2005

By	wysewomon "wysewomon" (Paonia, CO United States) - See all my reviews

Like quite a few other gamers, I was resistant to Uru despite being a hardcore MYST fan. The notion of a Multi-player on-line experience (as URU was originally intended to be) built around the MYST concept just didn't appeal to me. Plus, scuttlebutt about some of the more skill-oriented tasks in the game put me off. Well, I finally broke down and got the Complete Chronicles, and I have to admit to being pleasantly surprised. This isn't MYST; it's an adjunct to MYST and as such comes off very well, both in terms of atmosphere and gameplay.

To begin at the beginning, you start the game by designing an avatar--a physical representation of yourself in the game world. This is one of the things that I originally disdained as pointless, but setting up and dressing the avatar gave me an inordinate amount of pleasure. It was cool to be able to change clothes and paint your toenails, instead of having the avatar look the same all the way through, as in most 3rd person games.

That being said, Uru Complete Chronicles includes the original Ages Beyond Myst and both expansion packs that were later released when the on-line game tanked. In Uru, you're introduced to the conflict between the D'Ni Restoration Council, a group of people bent on exploiting the D'Ni culture, and Yeesha, the daughter of Atrus, who seems to have been dead quite a few years, but who has left messages for you in various places. Yeesha sets you a complicated task that involves traveling through several ages. This was by far the most enjoyable segment of the game for me. The puzzles were sensible with a large proportion of mechanical tasks. Even the skill tasks weren't as difficult as I had been led to believe. If you've played any console or arcade game that features jumping (super mario brothers comes to mind) you won't have any problem with this. The one irritation (which continues through the whole game) is that you can't save as you go; the game automatically saves your progress and if you fall off a cliff or something, you're reloaded back at a neutral starting point and have to make your way back. Although this makes sense as far as the game story goes, it means gameplay delays.

To D'Ni was the easiest segment. In it, you finally get to explore the underground city that's been referenced since MYST came out. Fans of the series will get a kick out of this; others may not care. For the most part, the entire game focuses on one particular task, which necessitates quite a bit of linking back and forth and running around. There's also LOTS of reading, some of it unnecessary to gameplay but still interesting. One minor problem with the Complete Chronicles at this point was that some of the To D'Ni stuff was accessible right from the beginning of Uru, so that by the time you got to the point in the game where it was relevant, you forgot it. At least you didn't have to go back through every place you'd ever been to see if anything had changed.

Path of the Shell was my least favourite section of this game. I'm sorry to say, it was so frustrating and incomprehensible that it about destroyed the game for me. On its own, I'd only rate it 2 stars. There was not enough information provided within the game to be able to solve certain sections. Plus, solutions often involved long arbitrary wait times that were impossible to predict; you needed to be told about them right out. And one of these would have been plenty. Also, POTS froze and crashed and acted weird. I had to enter the solution to one puzzle about 20 times before it actually did what it was supposed to do. All in all, a disappointing ending that left a bad taste in my mouth.

Uru Complete Chronicles lasted me well over a month and there is still opportunity to explore certain areas. Eventhough Path of the Shell didn't thrill me, I'd certainly play any more expansion packs that Cyan wanted to release. It's a great value and a good time for the money.

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26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Worth playing if you can abide with the differences., February 9, 2005

By	Chris K.N. "Gourmet Spam" (London) - See all my reviews

If you're thinking of buying Uru, one thing to bear in mind is that although Uru is linked to the Myst series, it's just not Myst-- it's an almost totally different game (which is why URU wasn't released as "Myst 4", and why "Myst 4: Revelation" wasn't called "Myst 5")...what Uru is is something very different:

Uru was originally released as a "massively multiplayer" online adventure game, but the online service has since ceased. So now Uru exists as a 'stand-alone' application for use with a single P.C. and this leaves us with something very unique-- an adventure-game by the makers of Myst, designed in the style of Myst, but based in a first-person/third-person-perspective, quake-style, 3D environment...

...this isn't such a bad thing if you're expecting it, however if you're expecting Uru to be just like Riven, Exile or Revelation, you're probably going to be disappointed...

...for instance, it's 3D environments render in 'real-time' with standard 3D textures, which just can't compare to the breathtaking pre-rendered graphics that make the regular Myst series so visually stunning; and instead of the usual Myst interface, you steer an on-screen character around Uru's environment using a combination of mouse and keyboard, as you would in an online multiplayer or 3D action game (although if you're anything like me you'll end up playing most of the game in the optional 1st-person perspective).

It's not all bad however-- if you approach it with the right set of expectations it's actually very worth playing. What we have (since the demise of Uru's online component) is Rand & Robyn Miller's answer to Quake (but without the guns) which is, in itself, pretty exceptional...

...it features the same quality of environment as the average 'proprietary QuakeII engine'-based 3D action game, but on a smaller scale and with generally more invention and variety in the design of the levels. On the downside, the interface is clunky and the control system clumsy. For example, the left & right turn-rate could be a whole lot faster, and when in 'third-person view' the hotspots are only clickable when in direct proximity to the character.

Uru does take some getting used to, and can be disappointing if you don't know what to expect --I went from lamenting the fact that they ever even tried to make a game based in a 'real-time' 3D environment, to wishing they'd just used the QuakeII engine to eliminate the existent control-scheme issues; and I'm now quite interested in seeing what might be achievable for Myst with the new generation of proprietary game engines.

Ultimately, Uru is just not as good as the other regular Myst titles, and I wouldn't purchase Uru before purchasing Revelation, but having said that, Uru is worth playing, if you can abide with the differences.