No storyline, no challenging puzzles, no fun
There are loads of reviews out there, so I will stick to the negative aspects mostly. The graphics are superb. the environmental sounds are great, the music was quite nice (It was great compared to the dreadful score of Myst IV), but sadly Cyan forgot about to make a real game out of the game.
It starts with the storyline: the plot has some potential, but there is hardly any development in it. After half an hour of play you will probably already know where you will be going and how the ending is going to be. It's not always bad to just sit back and enjoy whatever you are presented with, but in Myst V it doesn't really work. After you have solved one or several not very inspiring puzzles a newly introduced character will hold a monologue. All you can do then is sit back and be bored. I am awed by the way he is animated, though.
The next thing that bothers me. And it really bothers me, are the puzzles. With a puzzle-game I would expect to have at least some fun and challenging puzzles. Well... There are neither in the game. There are two reasons for this: firstly, they have tried to keep the puzzles simple. This often translates in finding a solution somewhere and you, the player, trying to find out how exactly the solution is supposed to be applied. Not that bad, but it does get worse.
In Myst V a lot of the puzzle-solving will involve a slate of stone on which you can draw symbols. You are supposed to find the symbols by solving other puzzles. It does sound like fun and it could have been, if only for two major drawbacks of the game: first there is the crappy recognition of the drawings. Sometimes you have drawn a perfect copy of the thing you are supposed to draw and the game just doesn't recognise it. There were actually two times in the game that I tried the same drawing over and over again and decided that my solution wasn't right. After some wandering about in the game and not finding anything, I felt myself forced to read a walkthrough only to find out that my solution was right, but that I just didn't draw the symbol right. Grmbl.
It does get even worse though: the game accepts any symbol. You can accidentally draw a symbol which you shouldn't know you just yet and consequently find yourself at the very end of a world. It happened to me that just after I had entered a world, I accidently drew the solution of that world. Not a good thing.
Then there are the bugs too. I experienced about three total crashes. I wasn't even thrown back to windows, but a complete reset of the computer occurred. Not very nice. And a couple of times I couldn't walk anymore or stuff similar to that. The bugs can be reproduced by the way.
I shudder at the thought of having to play another Myst. So I am very happy this is supposed to be the last one ever. It's not a total waste of time, but if you are planning to buy this title, be sure to wait until it reaches the bargain bin.