Gameplay wise, I feel Obduction is right up there with Riven, well ahead of Myst and the rest of the series. TL DR Nostolgia wise, nothing can really beat Myst. Of course that just be my nature to be pessimistic about things, and I probably wouldn't know it until I see it. The story is decent (and as typical for many games, I'm left at the end wondering what happens after the end) At times I feel that there isn't really any new innovation the genre can have. Most of it's puzzles a variation of shuffle this bit of world from here to there, with a lot of walking inbetween. For any longtime fan, it has little of the WOW factor that Myst introduced. The genre is unfortunately a bit niche though. It's a good game after all, I don't think Cyan can make a truly bad game. Obduction perhaps has it's own strengths. The maglev was also one of my favorite parts I think of any of the games in the series, perhaps seconded by the ball coaster in Exile. For example, in Riven we learn of the D'ni numbering system and I think written language, although I'm not sure. I think in Riven, however, many concepts were starting to be firmed up. Granted, it can generally be excused as artistic license. I feel like that in Myst, since everything was new, there were a lot of things we wouldn't necessarily call canon in the D'ni lore today. Riven, in my opinion, had some of the best puzzles in the series, as well a cool backstory and current story. I still remember both 23 years later, even though I can't remember yesterday.) It's the kind of game you might expect to see for. (Set the clock to get to that marker, and enter the fireplace code. To that end, you could "finish" the game in about 5 minutes. Even today it's still a favorite among many, but it's puzzles were rather weak. Obduction might well be right up there though. Gameplay wise, I feel Riven was, and possibly still is, Cyan's strongest game. By the time EOA came out 12 years later, you could almost literally, get P&C adventures for a dime a dozen, and there was very little novelty left. Then again, as has been said above, when Myst came out, it was helping to define a new genre of adventure gaming, if not creating it.
Exile and Revelation only had Cyan in an advisory role, and EOA was only made due to the publisher trying to recover as much as they could from existing assets. While I've been a Cyan fan since 1993, and so would buy pretty much any game they made (I even snatched up their pre Myst games when I saw they had been ported to windows), I think Myst and Riven will always be the best for me. This may partly be for to business reasons. In my opinion, the games got weaker and weaker. Exiles saving grace though is the "endgame" which is utterly genius and absolutely fantastic, and I think this is the main reason why people loves Exile so much. Some of the levels are also confusing to navigate and the whole 'themepark' theme was not very interesting to me (less interesting that the somewhat similar concept in Myst). Many puzzles are either too easy or have some sort of obscure logic with a dissatisfying solution. I was suprised at how weak some parts of that game is. They never reach the complexity or depth of Rivens puzzle/story/world merge but it's a great compromise nontheless.ĮDIT: For the record I replayed Exile recently. But kind of like Riven they are integrated into the world and you need to take that into account when trying to solve them. It will give you a lot of puzzles to solve that you can attack right away. Obstruction is a mix of both but is mostly similar to Myst. For puzzle-solving gameplay Myst is a better title, it gives you a lot of puzzels that stand on their own and unlike in Riven you can start trying to solve them straight away instead of walking around contemplatining the purpose of the world. For a game that can easily take 15-20 hours that means a lot of the time will not be spending solving actuall puzzles. That said Riven is all about doing virtural archeology and undertanding the world to beat it, there is only 2 main puzzles and a bunch of smaller obstacles. It's a puzzle that is litteraly impossible to quess or figure out unless you truly undertand the world/story of Riven, but once you do it becomes suprsingly easy.
The fire-marble puzzle alone asks you to undertand the purpose of the world's infastructure and Ghens motivations, at the same time the act of solving it will further develop the character of Ghen in a subtle way. The way that game makes worldbuilding, storyline and gameplay one and the same is unmatched so far in the gaming industry.