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Pleasantly Surprised, For the Most Part Like quite a few other gamers, I was resistant to Uru despite being a hardcore MYST fan. The notion of a Multi-player on-line experience (as URU was originally intended to be) built around the MYST concept just didn't appeal to me. Plus, scuttlebutt about some of the more skill-oriented tasks in the game put me off. Well, I finally broke down and got the Complete Chronicles, and I have to admit to being pleasantly surprised. This isn't MYST; it's an adjunct to MYST and as such comes off very well, both in terms of atmosphere and gameplay. To begin at the beginning, you start the game by designing an avatar--a physical representation of yourself in the game world. This is one of the things that I originally disdained as pointless, but setting up and dressing the avatar gave me an inordinate amount of pleasure. It was cool to be able to change clothes and paint your toenails, instead of having the avatar look the same all the way through, as in most 3rd person games. That being said, Uru Complete Chronicles includes the original Ages Beyond Myst and both expansion packs that were later released when the on-line game tanked. In Uru, you're introduced to the conflict between the D'Ni Restoration Council, a group of people bent on exploiting the D'Ni culture, and Yeesha, the daughter of Atrus, who seems to have been dead quite a few years, but who has left messages for you in various places. Yeesha sets you a complicated task that involves traveling through several ages. This was by far the most enjoyable segment of the game for me. The puzzles were sensible with a large proportion of mechanical tasks. Even the skill tasks weren't as difficult as I had been led to believe. If you've played any console or arcade game that features jumping (super mario brothers comes to mind) you won't have any problem with this. The one irritation (which continues through the whole game) is that you can't save as you go; the game automatically saves your progress and if you fall off a cliff or something, you're reloaded back at a neutral starting point and have to make your way back. Although this makes sense as far as the game story goes, it means gameplay delays. To D'Ni was the easiest segment. In it, you finally get to explore the underground city that's been referenced since MYST came out. Fans of the series will get a kick out of this; others may not care. For the most part, the entire game focuses on one particular task, which necessitates quite a bit of linking back and forth and running around. There's also LOTS of reading, some of it unnecessary to gameplay but still interesting. One minor problem with the Complete Chronicles at this point was that some of the To D'Ni stuff was accessible right from the beginning of Uru, so that by the time you got to the point in the game where it was relevant, you forgot it. At least you didn't have to go back through every place you'd ever been to see if anything had changed. Path of the Shell was my least favourite section of this game. I'm sorry to say, it was so frustrating and incomprehensible that it about destroyed the game for me. On its own, I'd only rate it 2 stars. There was not enough information provided within the game to be able to solve certain sections. Plus, solutions often involved long arbitrary wait times that were impossible to predict; you needed to be told about them right out. And one of these would have been plenty. Also, POTS froze and crashed and acted weird. I had to enter the solution to one puzzle about 20 times before it actually did what it was supposed to do. All in all, a disappointing ending that left a bad taste in my mouth. Uru Complete Chronicles lasted me well over a month and there is still opportunity to explore certain areas. Eventhough Path of the Shell didn't thrill me, I'd certainly play any more expansion packs that Cyan wanted to release. It's a great value and a good time for the money.