I played Myst in my youth, got stuck over and over and finally gave up. When Riven came I was so impressed by the music, graphics and story that I pushed through for years. Might have been nearly a decade, with fairly long pauses in between. I had to look up how to solve one or two puzzles but overall I got through it with persistence more than IQ.

After that I played through Myst by just looking up everything I couldn’t solve, for the story. The 3D version of Myst has a hint system built in that makes it much easier.

I would suggest to give yourself a couple of days to a week to solve a problem by yourself and if that’s not enough you look it up. The story is where the Myst universe shines, but the original game actually doesn’t reveal a lot of it. It gets more intricate in Riven. The books that go along with the games are really good, they bring a lot of backstory into it. It’s an epic story spanning thousands of years, similar to The Lord of the Rings.