URU: The Ages Beyond Myst Review

URU: Ages Beyond Myst was a great new installment in long Myst series. Just to give you some history the pervious games were released in the following order: Myst, Riven, Exile, and now URU. The only one I’ve never played is Exile, but from what I’ve heard it isn’t all that great compared to the others. All of the Myst games are adventure/puzzle games that take place in strange but elegant worlds, with all sorts of strange contraptions. Anyways, URU starts off in the desert in Nevada. There is a person there to talk you through the beginning if you need it, and once you get your way passed the first puzzle your are taken to a place called Relto which is like your “home base”. Relto is a floating island in the clouds with a little hut on it where you keep your books which transport you to the other “ages” or worlds.

The Ages

There are a total of four ages which are all just simply amazing. I’ll just give some brief descriptions of each age.

-Gahreesen: You start off in a building, and it is important because you get your KI (a device that is strapped to your hand) in the beginning which will be important later on. When you make it out of the building you find that the building your are on, as well as another large fortress type of building across from you are rotating. This world looks kind of junglish with a lake or river and some waterfalls.

-Teledahn: I like to call this on the mushroom world. It’s difficult to figure out what to do in this age at first but later on you will figure it out. Teledahn and Gahreesen are somewhat related because you cannot finish one without the other. This world is next to the sea with strange mushroom type plants around metal docks. You find out later that this place was being used to research some of the aquatic life.


-Kadish: The world of really tall trees. This is an interesting world and it is important to remember what you may have seen in a certain room in this world. The Kadish environment is also just stunning.

-Elder Gira and Elder Kemo: So, there are kind of five ages but these two ages go together. Gira is in a desert and Kemo is in a garden and is the most appealing age to the eyes in the game.

Game Modes

Before URU was released it was simply referred to as Myst Online. As you may have seen in recent news, the multiplayer portion of the game has now been scrapped (add-ons are now going to be offered in place of the online play). I never got a chance to try out Live but I know that it wasn’t easy to get online and the process and game play was somewhat buggy. Players had to be invited into the online community and from reading around this invitation could take as long as two to three weeks+ to receive. Since Live is no longer “live”, I am completely focusing on the single player.

Overall feelings

This game was a journey into some beautiful worlds, with stunning graphics, sound effects, music, and a great story. You main objectives are to research and discover the lost civilization of D’ni. Like previous Myst games you have to do quite a bit of thinking and reading. This game is not easy and people that have never experienced any of the older Myst games may find it very frustrating and not quite understand what to do. I took a full two pages of notes and printed off three pages of screenshots to help me remember what was going on and to help solve the puzzles (yes, it is that involved). To me Myst has its on genre in the gaming world leaving the player with an incredible experience. It’s very easy to overlook clues, buttons and books so if you plan on playing this game keep an eye out.

The only things that I didn’t like so much in this game was the fact that if you fell out of one of the ages (or were about to die) you were sent back to Relto, then you have to link back to the world you were in. This process of linking takes some time to load and can get a little annoying. Another thing was that it was sometimes hard to control the player once and a while, but it was nice that you could switch between first and third person. The last thing being that the game can be very complex at times. It might be good to look at some hints once and a while. I tried not to, but once and a while I had to resort to some hints. I was really glad though, when I could figure out a difficult puzzle on my own.


The Good
-Stunning Graphics
-Great sound effects and music
-Excellent Story
-Good game play

The Bad
-Loading times were long
-The “back to Relto” when you fell got annoying
-Controls were a little awkward, not too bad though
-Can be very complex

Final Statement The Myst games are not for everyone. I have always enjoyed them so I kind of know what to expect and how things work. I thought this game was fantastic and I am eagerly looking forward to the add-ons. My score for URU is a 9/10.