Realms of Illusion

List Price: $19.99 Discount Price: $9.20

Features:

• Over 20 mind-bending puzzles
• Various degrees of difficulty: easy, medium and difficult puzzles
• 8 brilliantly inspired and diverse worlds
• Includes built-in hint system
• Non-linear style of gameplay

Accessories:
PC Gamer (1-year)	Games for Windows: The Official Magazine

Customer Reviews:

Waste of Money [Posted on 2006-01-21]
The puzzles on this game are way too difficult, grapics are bad, and its not in the least bit exciting.

Puzzles that makes sense...and lovely graphics, too! [Posted on 2006-02-15]
Having just endured Myst V, I was looking for something to take my mind off the last Myst game and redeem my faith in puzzle software. Realms of Illusion has done just that.

The graphics are very wonderful and, with a minor hitch or two, have run very well on my two year old Dell. I'm the type who will stop every few feet just to look out over the scenery or just pause to enjoy the view, and I must say I've enjoyed Realms immensely. Since I live in a tropical climate, snow scenes are always my favorites and Realms has a lovely one I can wander through, pretending the AC isn't humming away.

The puzzles are a good mix of hard and "easy," and you have to use logic and reasoning. I don't hesitate to use online hints when stuck, but I've not had to do that often with Realms. My teenage sons would look over my shoulder and ask about the puzzles in Myst...then say "And that's supposed to make sense?" With Realms, they say "That's cool."

The voicework is not the best and the rendering of the woman you match wits with is passable, but not memorable. (She's still MUCH better than the Bahro in Myst 5) Neither of these detract much from the game, however.

Overall, very enjoyable!

A New Realms of Illusion game?  [Posted on 2006-03-13]
I ordered this game on-line without realizing The Adventure Company just reissued their "Sentinel: Descendants in Time" under this new title. Amazon and all who sell it should state this in promos or adds. I ended up cancelling the order, but did enjoy the original - Sentinel very much; so, I still recommend the game to puzzlers.

Puzzles with nothing in between . . . [Posted on 2007-03-09]
I had such high hopes for this game based on what the screen shots looked like. When I got into the game, I found out that they were misleading. For a typical Myst clone, it's got several things that are very unlike Myst. For starters:
1. Too many puzzles for the sake of puzzles. At least in Myst, they all made sense in the larger framework of the story. Here they just get in the way.
In one world, there were 4 puzzles for an area that was smaller than half the original Myst island. That's another problem.
2. Small worlds. Unlike Myst, you have these tiny areas that are artificially prolonged due to excessive puzzles. Literally, it was two steps, puzzle, take elevator, another puzzle, go across small bridge, puzzle. Then to get down the last elevator, yet another puzzle. And then, that's it for that world. You can't even go back and explore later, because many visible areas are just inaccessible. You can see them, but Invisible Wall keeps you from stepping out into them. You have literally spent hours solving puzzles just to get back to the starting out point in the game. At least with Myst, you knew the puzzles paid off. It didn't just open two more steps to another puzzle.
3. In-game hint guide. You know when they do this, they know there are too many obscure puzzles. Frankly, the over amount of puzzles and tiny worlds are what make this game frustrating. Some are easy, some just plain stumped me and I had to go to a walkthrough for help. The in-game hint system only goes so far, and some of the solutions are way out there. You would literally never think of it on your own, or worse yet, you know what you have to do, but the sheer size of the task is overwhelming. Like one puzzle in a teeny world in which you have to somehow memorize the sounds coming from these colored foghorns. And they are all so similar that you just finally get to the point you want to move on and not spend hours memorizing all these sounds just to go up a set of stairs to- you guessed it, another puzzle and then out of this microscopic if beautiful world. There is literally no pay off, unless you count the hideous voice acting and awkward characters. Dormouse? I'm not sure I get what they were after here.
The game is maybe a great beta that they could have refined and made about twice as large to do it justice. The little bit of the worlds that I saw were gorgeous and just about at the time you'd get into one, it was over.
Like this game for instance. Only for serious puzzle lovers.

Good Show [Posted on 2008-02-03]

The graphics are gorgeous, the worlds imaginative. The puzzles are terrific, even if a couple of them sent me to a walkthrough. Good integration of plot ideas. The story doesn't have the depth and organic thrust of the earlier Myst games, but then they were the best. Pretty good nevertheless.

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