Not as good as Riven but still fun to play.

This is a really cool, atmospheric game. Creates a sense of wonder. While it doesn't quite live up to Riven, feeling more like a (big budget) spin-off than a true sequel, there's still a lot to love in Myst III. The environments are genuinely imaginative and evocative and Brad Dourif's performance rocks. The puzzles have some satisfying payoffs.

What it lacks compared to Riven is a sense of being an indifferent, living world: Myst 3's puzzles and "Ages" are more contrived, and while it's justified in-universe, it's more like a trip to a theme park than the infiltration of an alien world. The game's structure is more like that of Myst 1, with a hub and spoke thing.

It's good that the soundtrack incorporates more live instrumentation than Myst or Riven did, though Jack Wall's music sometimes misses the mark, being far too bombastic for what's happening. The soundtrack is great, though, and usually blends in properly. It's all nicely implemented with dynamic layering.

The game uses a seamless spherical rendering system that allows you to look around pre-rendered panoramas freely, and interaction animations are less likely to lock you in place. The annoying side effect is that you have to constantly roll your view around as you jump from node to node. One Age, which appears far too dark on modern displays, is particularly disorientating. This game might need a reshade to correct the gamma. The in-game calibration screen is from the CRT era and has no built in gamma tweakers.