RHEM IV: The Golden Fragments SE Reviews

I'm a Myst Lover and also love RHEM series very much. Unlike Myst, not so dreamlike scenary, not so romantic music there. But It's not the point. In RHEM, I'm sure that you can concentrate and enjoy challenging puzzles to the full. Each game in the series is independent and you can play 4 without playing the previous ones. Starting from 1 may help you to get used to some "RHEM"ish thing, but I don't mean that 1 is easier than 4. (When I played 1 for the first time, I had no idea to do at all.) Obsere carefully up and down, left and right. Are you stuck? Observe again! Have fun! Have lots of a-ha experiences!

The biggest accomplishment this game has is it's puzzle design and the variety there of. You'll be challenged in every area of your brain. The game(s)(all four do this pretty well imo) don't get old for me because just about every puzzle you come to next is different from the last one, at least in some way. And most of them are really good; some mind blowingly clever, and difficult! Be prepared for a challenge even if you're a seasoned puzzler. And have a pencil and plenty of paper handy. The graphics are pretty good imo, I like the art style and overall the aesthetics are very nice. The storyline might be very lacking but the most enjoyable part of the game for me was progressing through it so that never really bothered me. This type of game doesn't really need a story for me to enjoy it. The reward is the sense of accomplishment you get after thinking about a problem really hard and solving it.

I have yet to finish it as of right now, but I find this one enjoyable. If you're the type that likes to take a LOT of notes, then this game is for you. Prepare to have your mind blown at some of the puzzles. Edit: There seems to be a bug in my game - near the red door by Meanedes's house. The clock with the three hands. The hands are supposed to move, but they don't. If anyone knows how I can fix this, please reply in this review. I've already contacted Knut Muller, but I have yet to hear back. 2nd edit: I got help from Knut himself. He was extremely helpful. I've been replaying the game, and the bug is now fixed. But I can't seem to add up the numbers fast enough before they change. That's not the game's fault, it's my own. I'll just have to be fast.

It's HARRDDD. If you enjoyed the original Myst, you'll love RHEM. If you're the kind of person that easily gets stuck and frustrated, RHEM is probably too difficult. I enjoyed a lot of the puzzles, but had to look up hints/solutions for many others, and ultimately gave up before finishing it. The other caveat is that this game is technically pretty janky. Once most of the map opens up, you'll find you have to spend a lot of time back-tracking and even though you know exactly where to go, it takes a LONG time to navigate between areas, even with transitions turned off. Also, sometimes Esc takes you to the menu, sometimes it quits the game without saving. I lost some progress accidentally this way. If those two things don't bother you, then RHEM IV is absolutely worth playing. The puzzles are really good and there are a lot of them.

Though not for everyone, it's very rare that game that obsesses me as much as the Rhem series has. As many others have characterized it, I would put it in the category of point and click games similar to Myst. Whereas Myst has a bit more of a story, better art overall (though I actually love the very mechanical nature of the Rhem art), Rhem has only the bare minimum of a story arc to tie the games together and relating to the mysterious land of Rhem. After a short cut-scene of your cart arriving in Rhem and a note from one of the few story characters, you're dumped into a puzzle experience that has almost no hand-holding and some very difficult puzzles. The puzzle style in Rhem is to have a device/button that initially is unable to be solved (and most are very resistant to brute force solving) but has all the hints needed to solve it somewhere in the world. These hints can be nearby, clear across the map, or even on the back of a door that you need to circle back around to. The puzzles are fair though much harder than Myst's in my opinion. Many also require some deduction and multiple clues pieced together to solve. I'd recommend this game to anyone who enjoys the Myst and Riven games, doesn't mind graphics pretty similar to the original Myst graphics back in '94, and has a fair amount of patience. One warning though on Windows 11. I'm not sure if it's the operating system (Adobe Director, which is what the game is built on ended service in 2017) but there's a few major bugs currently in the game. Occasionally the audio will start cutting short which requires a game restart to fix. And on rarer instances the game straight up crashes to the desktop. In addition, when using full screen mode the game resizes the monitor to fit it's max resolution (and it does the same to secondary monitors as well). While there is a windowed mode, the game becomes fairly small on my monitor with 1440p resolution.

While not for everyone due to the high bar of difficulty Rhem IV and the Rhem games in general are some of the most pure puzzle experiences you can get. The difficulty is a necessary element for these games to feel so satisfying - they drop you into a world that you slowly unlock over time - finding a new area wouldn't feel rewarding if getting to it was easy. Every puzzle has a hint for it somewhere across the map, and the puzzles require some creative thinking to solve, but when you enter a complex code into a console and click the button to open a door, when the door slides open, it is a feeling only a Rhem game can evoke. Rhem IV has one of the most non linear maps in the series, as well as one as probably one of the series' hardest puzzles, but it also ends up being one of the best. The extra content included in this special edition is also a nice treat, extending the game for a few more hours and terraforming some of the map in such a way so that it feels like the content was supposed to be there all along.

I would highly recommend this game !! It was so much fun. The puzzles are hard because you have to figure them out, not because they just don't work. They all work. Get a huge notebook and take lots of notes and be very organized.

The RHEM series of games by Knut Mueller is absolutely the best series I have ever played. They have extremely difficult puzzles, but each can be solved logically without outside help. The closest game to RHEM is Myst, but RHEM has a less organic feel, and more logical. Where Myst has some solutions based on nature, sometimes hard to discern, RHEM always has a clear path to an answer - the hard part is deciphering that path.

Massive puzzle game with endless frustration and pain. Makes Myst series look like games for babies.

One of my top 5 favorite adventure games of all time, below only Myst, Riven, and RHEM III. Seriously, this game is great. The only thing you need to know about it beforehand is that, like the rest of the RHEM games, it's extremely difficult. RHEM is a series for people who have an eye for detail and are diligent notetakers, so if that doesn't sound appealing to you, you probably won't enjoy this game. But if does, buy it, grab your notebook, and make yourself a pot of coffee (or tea!) for some quality adventure gaming.