A decent game worthy of any Myst fan but too short and lacking the depth and character of previous games.
Overall, I would say that I was satisfied with playing Myst V but my final impression of the game would be that it's way too short. I finished the game in about 12 hours, probably the fastest I've ever finished a game. The game is divided into four primary ages with a tiny "home" age and an introductory age that you begin the game in. Each of these ages is disappointingly small and leaves you not with a sense of being immersed in incredible worlds, but more about being constrained to the boundaries of a game.
The graphics themselves are quite good and I was definitely satisfied on that point. Because Myst V is a fully 3D interactive game, the graphics cannot really be compared to the pre-rendered photo-realistic graphics of previous Myst games. For those who played URU, I would say that the graphics in Myst V are superior and the interface is much more comfortable. The interface in URU was rather clunky and didn't have the same smooth feel to it that's typical in first person shooter games. Myst V does not have that problem and you can move through the world without having to feel like you're fighting the controls.
The puzzles in Myst V, a hallmark of the myst games, were fairly satisfying. The had a feeling of being just about right - not too difficult and not too easy - although several of the puzzles can be solved by brute force and luck instead of actually solving the puzzle and that's no fun. I would have been happy if they were more difficult, but any easier would not have been fun. I also had the feeling that the puzzles made more sense then you sometimes get in these games. They are more integrated into the environment and less about just pushing random buttons and levers.
Myst V introduces the concept of a Bahro tablet upon which you can draw symbols that command the Bahro in the ages to perform certain actions. The game doesn't explain how to use the tablet or tell you what it does, leaving it up to you to divine its use, but that is part of the adventure. You cannot carry the tablet with you at all times and figuring out how to use it, how to get it where you need it, and how to get it to do what you want adds an interesting twist to the series that I wholeheartedly approve.
One thing that is conspicuously missing from the games is all of the "stuff" that you can poke and prod in previous Myst games. There are no plants you can water, no generators to charge and no desk-lamps to turn on. Everything you interact with is an element to one of the puzzles and takes away a lot of the sense of detail you find in previous games.
With the exception of Yeesha's journal that you put together in the introductory age, there are no journals, notes, research materials or other reading materials that you find in large abundance in the previous games. Instead, you meet a character named Escher who appears at various times as you move through the ages and who gives you advice. I couldn't help but wonder why if Escher was trying to help me and could clearly pop in whenever and wherever he wanted, why couldn't he just tell me how to get through the door or activate the thingy. The things he said were also vague and seemed silly to me. I could have done without him and I would have preferred the mounds of journals to read instead.
The story is also not terribly interesting. You get some information from reading Yeesha's journal and you get a smattering of gibberish from Escher but ultimately, the point and the conclusion of the game seem rather weak. For a game that was billed as the last of the series and for a game called "End of Ages", I would have expected something more spectacular, but it was not to be.