Playing both games back to back FEELS like a big step forward, and I can see the DNA of Riven in a lot of the puzzle games that have come out since (Blue prince, Outer Wilds, Submachine...)

I am a bit apprehensive about the rest of the Myst series though, I know they aren't as well received...

I've already talked about the incredible final puzzle and my disappointment w/ how the remake changed it, but aside from that & a few flaws still present in the puzzle design, I can say that Riven is one of the best puzzle games I've played, and I recommand it to anyone with any interest.

Something I noticed in the remake : the character acting and modeling is honestly incredible. The faces show a lot of subtle emotions, and it feels SO fresh compared to the over-the-top "acting" of the two brothers in Myst.

The times I felt stuck were more because of me than any fault of the game, but there are still issues with hidden levers, passages, and leaps of logic (a LOT less than in Myst)
A flaw of the open world: sometimes you don't know if you can solve what's in front of you or if you should come back later

Where Myst was about a small family drama, Riven ups the ante and opens the door to a lot of worldbuilding.
The environmental storytelling is still very strong, but what surprised me in both games, is how great the writing is.
Reading the lore books was such a pleasure, which I really didn't expect.

The decision to switch from small and contained puzzle-worlds to a big open island was certainly risky, and it does cause some problems, but the feeling of freedom it provides makes it worth it.

Riven feels huge, both in terms of exploration, and in story and lore.

Riven, on the other hand, blew me away even by today's standards.
By 1997, devs were becoming more familiar with 3D. SM64 and Quake 2 were out, so the lack of free-roam was becoming outdated, but even then, the open nature of Riven's world feels breathtaking as soon as you open the game.

There's a lot of backtracking with slow-moving animations, a lot of hidden passages, clues and levers that are hard to see, a few leaps of logic... Myst suffers a lot from 30 years of evolution in puzzle design.

Also need to mention the horrendous acting for all 3 characters in the game.

Myst was ahead of its time, which is both a compliment and a critique. For all its atmosphere and environmental storytelling, there are a lot of quite obvious game design flaws, too.

Which makes sense, devs weren't used to making puzzles work in a 3D environment, even without free-roaming.

I feel like if I played the original in 1993 it would have been mind-blowing. For context, 1993 was Day of the Tentacle, Doom, and Link's Awakening.

Exploring a full 3D world with that level of realism was unheard of. There is a reason why Myst stayed the best-selling PC game for nearly a decade.

Myst is... I mean for its time it's certainly impressive. The atmosphere of desolate solitude, the player left alone with these machines and these abandonned islands, there's an impressive level of detail put in these worlds.

Reminds me a lot of Submachine, which leaned even more in that direction.

I knew I would have loved the show at 14 at least.
It's packed full of everything I adore about art and anime, so there was never any doubt in my mind that I'd love Eva.
Maybe that's also part of why I never watched it. Sometimes it's scary to watch something you know you'll love.

And of course the theme of connecting with others despite the pain it can bring is still pretty relevant to me, even if I'm not 14 anymore.
I wonder how I would have received that message at that age. Would it have changed me? Or would I have been blind to the show's themes?

The passion poured into every frame, every design, and every interaction is palpable.
Watching the intricate ways in which every machine is designed and drawn reminds me so much of Eizoken.
And the struggles of each character feels so intimate and sincere that you can't help but connect with it.

With media that's considered "classic", "foundational" or "must-watch", there's always a risk, watching it years after its time period, that it's become obsolete or that better works have iterated on the same concepts.
Eva is so pure and so raw in its expression that it doesn't fall into that issue.

But that ship has sailed, and instead I've lived in that overwhelming shadow, watching shows inspired by and referencing Eva.

Yet even so far removed from when I feel I should have consumed it, it's still such a powerful experience.
30 years later, Eva still manages to fascinate me.

It's weird watching it now, at 27 years old, with friends over a Discord call.
It feels so detached from when and how I SHOULD have watched it. It should have been at 14 years old, and it should have been a solitary and introverted experience, that changed my entire worldview.

This puzzle is THE culmination of the entire game, the climax of every other puzzle, it SHOULD be complicated, it SHOULD ask you to backtrack, think, and visualize the entire archipelago to solve it.
The new version barely requires any thinking and feels incredibly anticlimactic.
6/6