Myst III: Exile - Reception

Reception

Exile was generally received positively upon release; the PC version holds a 79% favorable rating at Game Rankings and a 83% rating at Metacritic. The game was the best-selling title in North America within a week of release, selling 75,000 copies within two weeks. Exile sold one million units within twelve months.

Exile's graphics and sound received nearly universal praise, and were credited with completing the game's immersion. The puzzles were described as less difficult and more contained, meaning that players did not have to experiment with switches and then click several screens away to see the effect, as in Riven. Macworld's Peter Cohen praised Presto for giving out bits of story throughout the game, rather than providing exposition only during opening and closing sequences. The pacing and rewards system was also appreciated by reviewers. IGN concluded their review of the game by stating that Presto had done "a pretty good job with a notable addition to the series". The Daily Telegraph offered even stronger praise, saying that Presto had crafted the best Myst game in the series thus far, a sentiment that was echoed in other publications.

Criticism of the game included complaints about the four-disc format of the game, which required players to swap out the installer disc with one of the other discs every time the player entered a new Age. Gamespot's Scott Osborne noted that due to the frame-by-frame nature of gameplay, it was occasionally difficult to discern where players were allowed to venture and what areas were unreachable. The Los Angeles Times reported that bugs including a lack of sound, incompatibility with certain graphics cards and system crashes were present in as many as 10 percent of the first shipment of discs. Reviewers who had not enjoyed Myst or Riven stated that there was nothing new or substantially different in the game to warrant interest; The New York Times observed, "Exile has everything you loved or hated about Myst and Riven."

Despite strong sales, Exile was considered commercially disappointing compared to the phenomenal sales of the first two games, which had sold nearly 10 million units by the time of Exile's release. GameSpot editor Greg Kasavin told Time magazine that "Myst is no longer as relevant to gamers as it used to be" and that "it represents an antiquated style of gaming" compared to the 3-D action games being released at the time. Soon after Exile's release, Presto announced it was discontinuing software development; the Xbox title Whacked! was to be the last title produced by the company. Presto employee Michael Saladino pointed to the maverick style of the studio and its inability to develop more than one title at a time as reasons for its folding. The next game in the Myst series, entitled Revelation, would be produced and published by Ubisoft.