[PC] Space Quest III: The Pirates of Pestulon (1989)

How:
Got with the Activision Quests sale at GOG.com.
Pros:
- Very nice, consistent graphics and smooth animations
- Nice, rewarding puzzles as usual
- Less dead ends than previous installments
- Nice mood and some tense moments (e.g. fighting with the killer robot)
- Amusing close-ups and cut-scenes
Cons:
- Very abrupt ending, passed from a score of 308 to 598 in a matter of minutes
- Many unused inventory items
- I finished the game without playing Astro Chicken and thus without deciphering the help message within the game. This means I solved puzzles blindly without any clue regarding the plot (except for what I gathered from the manual).

My final score. This time I had absolutely no idea what I missed before reading a walkthrough.

The mini-game you get to play at the burger place...

...looks strangely similar to Joe Galaxy (Italian comic).

[PC] Space Quest II: Vohaul's Revenge (1987)

How:
Got with the Activion Quests sale at GOG.com.
Puzzles:
As in all Sierra games I played until now, I never cheated by setting game speed to "low" in any occasion.
Pros:
- Genuinely fun to play, with some funny scenes (hopping on the keyboard when miniaturized!) and funny commentary from the game itself
- Amusing ways to die
- Some quite challenging puzzles and red herrings
Cons:
- The parser does not improve much upon the previous episode
- Some illogical puzzles (give the Cubix Rube to the beast?)
- Not much of a plot
- Less climatic ending than in the previous episode (just push a button, enter a pod and sleep)

An amusing Alien reference - if you get kissed, a baby alien will eventually come out of your stomach!

Final score, and Alien ending!

[PC] Space Quest: The Sarien Encounter (1986)

How:
Never played the game before, got during the Activision Quests sale at GOG.com.
Puzzles:
I only had to look up one puzzle, namely how to get the shard of glass from the crashed pod. I did have the idea of taking glass from there, but couldn't find any. It turns out that it only works if you examine the pod from behind (not from the side).
Pros:
- The command-line based interface is a favorite of mine
- Red herrings and moderately challenging puzzles make the game very satisfying to beat
- Amusing ways to die and optional puzzles (e.g. buying the wrong spaceship)
- The unfolding story remains fascinating, as simple as it is
- Likable main character
- Nice, tense escape moments
Cons:
- Some random, unpredictable deaths
- Parser is not so smart

Getting the maximum possible amount of buckazoids at the slot matchine.

My final score. Will I ever finish a Sierra game with the maximum score?
Basically I didn't talk to and kiss the Sarien guard this time around.

[PC] Sam & Max Hit the Road (1993)

How:
Played the Amiga version but stopped due to loading times, played again the talkie CD version on ScummVM.
Pros:
- Excellent graphics and fluid animations
- Nice puzzles, moderately challenging
- Nice cut scenes
- Excellent voice-overs and dialogues
- A truly unique adventure with unforgettable characters and witty humor
- Some funny mini-games
Cons:
- The animated cut scenes are very sparse (I think only two in total)
- Some places are hard to see (e.g. the kitchen in the back of the bigfoot convention center)
- The crazy place with small doors and inverse gravity is an example of gratuitous madness, which I don't like (similar to the Isle of Wonder in King's Quest VI)

[Amiga] Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (1992)

How:
Played the PC (CD) version but never finished it, finally got to play it again with ScummVM amazing support for Amiga files.
Endings:
Out of the three possible paths, I finished the game in the "collaboration" mode (with Sophia), both bad and good ending.
Pros:
- Multiple ways to solve puzzles and multiple game modes increase the game's longevity noticeably
- Excellent graphics, animations, and fitting music
- Marvelous, immersive sense of adventure
- Just the right amount of comedy one would expect from an Indy movie
- Likable, well outlined characters with custom animations
- Nice, well-balanced puzzles
Cons:
- No sound effects in the Amiga version

In an attempt to make Sophia run away from the cage, I managed to trap a crab inside with her.

My final score after finishing it the first time on Team mode.

[Amiga][PC] Nippon Safes Inc. (1993)

How:
Played it on the Amiga several times as a kid, but never managed to finish it.
Pros:
- Excellent graphics and nice animations
- Overall a pleasant and relaxing adventure
- The Amiga version, although with no music, has simple sound effects which somehow help to establish the right adventurous mood
- The "Parallaction" system is actually nice: you play a parallel sequence of events from three different perspectives, with the characters interacting with each other
- Some nice puzzles
Cons:
- Pixel hunting needed in several occasions
- Few hot spots, and repetitive locations
- In-game jokes about the programmers and the game itself completely break the mood
- Not clear which places can be explored (e.g. in front of the prison at the beginning you can go left or right, but it all looks the same), can leap places by accident (this happens frequently)
- Not very intuitive interface, especially for combining objects
- Actions cannot be interrupted, plus path-finding is sometimes annoying
- Some graphical glitches and bugs
- Japanese language is used incorrectly
- Items have no description
- Some obtuse puzzles
- The PC version has some very annoying and distracting music, and no sound effects

The "Kinza" ticket is in fact a ticket for Ueno (上野).

Not surprisingly, this Italian game also features political references.
A statue of Andreotti is also appearing in the museum.

And this is where the title of the game comes from.

[PC] Puzzle Agent 2 (2011)

How:
Got with the Humble Weekly Sale: Telltale Games.
Pros:
- Immersive, creepy atmosphere
- The amusing dialogues, funny characters and excellent writing never let the interest down
- The hand-drawn graphics and fitting music contribute to create a unique game experience
- Several scripted sequences bring about a cinematic feel to the game
- Excellent voice acting
- Compelling mystery
Cons:
- Some puzzles are extremely easy, and in general they are quite repetitive
- Too linear, the game basically tells you where to go and what to do

[PC] Deus Ex (2000)

How:
Played the demo when it came out after finishing Half-Life. Didn't like the game, expecting it to be a shooter, came back to it out of curiosity with a Steam sale.
Ending:
I played through all three endings.
Pros:
- Very cool graphics, just the kind I like
- Amazing music
- Very fine dystopic sci-fi story with surprising turns of events and cool characters
- Excellent voice-overs and acting for the most part
- Exploration is rewarded
- Game difficulty and length depend on the way it is played (stealth vs shooter)
- Taken in small doses, the game offers a unique, fun and rewarding experience
- Plenty of optional content and highly non-linear
- The game offers several possible ways to reach objectives and do things. For example, I couldn't enter an area due to a game-crashing bug, but I took an alternative (more difficult) path and still made it.
Cons:
- Several graphic (collisions) and sound (music / sound efx balance) glitches
- The game is extremely dark 90% of the time
- Ending cut-scenes are underwhelming
- Some conversations are not logged
- If you attack or otherwise damage a character and do not kill him, everyone instantly knows where you are
- Not many cut-scenes
- The game is excessively long, more like a game and its sequel
- Some showstopping bugs (I couldn't enter Canal Road in HK without losing all inventory and crashing the game - had to take the difficult path)
- Enemies do not give the alarm if they see a door opening, a dead fellow, or other suspicious events
- The game misjudges your behavior with no good reason. Some NPCs (Carter, Navarre) described me as a naturally born assassin even though I didn't kill anyone, but Navarre did as a consequence of me being spotted by the enemy.

One of the three endings. Here I merge with Helios AI.

My final skill set.

My final set of augmentations. I mostly used the subdermal radar transparency, silent running, and the spy drone. Auto-healing also helped in the final chapters.

[PC] Portal 2 (2011)

How:
Got it together with the first episode in a Portal bundle sale on Steam.
Pros:
- Excellent gameplay and very well balanced puzzles
- Cool untold story that slowly unfolds, additional details can be grasped by doing more things (e.g. save a turret from incineration)
- Awesome graphics full of nice touches
- Excellent writing, dialogues and voiceovers
- Amazing environments and overall mood
- Great music
- Much more lengthy than the first episode
- All gimmicks (portals, light bridges, propulsion gel, etc.) come with a cool, "musical" sound effect
- The story continues with an awesome, lengthy co-op

Cons:
- I didn't like the colored gels too much, too many puzzles with them
- Some glitches

A hidden portrait of Cave Johnson and Caroline.

[PC88] Cosmic Soldier (1985)

How:
Found about this game after reading of Psychic War on the レトロゲームの塔 blog.
Pros:
- Nice setting
- The character leveling system is mildly interesting
- You can recruit allies among the enemies
- Generally well balanced, requires some strategy
- Nice variety of monsters
- The accompanying android idea is not bad
Cons:
- No music at all
- The few sound effects are unpleasant
- Requires a considerable amount of grinding
- Junk shops are totally useless
- Limited variety of weapons and armors, and no special attacks whatsoever
- Very limited and repetitive gameplay mechanics
- Only one save slot per party
- Very high encounter rate
- Ugly interface, the game could have looked much better with a bigger first-person view

My winning party. This must have been my fourth or fifth party overall.

The End. All playing characters and enemy sprites are seen dancing with pom-poms as if nothing ever happened.

[PSP] Shin Megami Tensei: Persona (2009)

How:
Heard about it in Japan.
Ending:
I did not play the epilogue part (a few more hours worth of gameplay).
Note:
Press Start during battles to make them considerably quicker. Without this feature, the game is an absolute pain to play.
Pros:
- Cool blend of isometric goodness and first-person dungeon crawling
- A LOT of cool monsters with funny moves and animations
- Handy auto-fight
- Very nice character graphics and animations for the different skills of all personas
- Every monster and every persona has a rationale/story behind it. For example, the くちさけおんな monster actually comes from an urban legend and behaves as the legend tells.
Cons:
- Background music is an annoying collection of distracting and out of place songs. Totally spoiled the cool mood from the original game.
- Most of the personas you create cannot be "equipped" because of level requirements, which is too high for at least the first half of the game.
- Fights can be trivially easy or frustratingly difficult even with the same exact monsters. Charmers can charm you forever, and infinite looping situations can and will take place unexpectedly.
- Too many demon combinations and too many persona skills make the game content overwhelmingly complex.
- Clichéd, unlikable playing characters (the hip-hop type, the bully, etc.).
- Very high encounter rate and repetitive gameplay.
- The game overstays its welcome by a large margin.

[C64] Halls of Death (1983)

How:
Searched for other C64 rpg's on CRPGAddict master game list after enjoying Sword of Fargoal.
How to play:
"/" : down
":" : left
";" : right
"@" : up
"+" : use stairs
"p": spells
Movement can be made faster with F1.
Spells: Sleep (1), Teleportation (2), Lightning (3), Fireball (4).
Levels:
I was proclaimed: Apprentice Bumpkin, Yokel, Trainee Warrior, Warrior, Swashbuckler, Seasoned Adventurer, Hero, Dragon Slayer, Champion, Necromancer, Sorcerer, Superhero, Guardian.
Pros:
- Cool first-person view animation on the lower right
- Spells can be used to destroy walls in the dungeon
- The game forces you to take careful choices, because:
   1) a successful game sees you going back to the surface (i.e. you need to backtrack or teleport)
   2) stats grow with items found in the dungeons, and decrease with enemy encounters, traps and magic spells
   3) game ends when any of the three stats (Strength, Psionics, Constitution) falls below zero
   4) using spells consumes both Strength and Psionics, is not always successful and becomes mandatory at the deeper levels (vs wraiths)
   5) Strength and Psionics points can be transferred to each other with a 1:3 ratio
- Gameplay can get addictive and very tense especially during the ascent phase
- Successful ascents are very rewarding
Cons:
- Fight success only depends on the strength and magic levels of the PC
- Grinding is possible only to a limited extent, as it depends on what items you find in the dungeons and the outcome of encounters
- There is no use for the collected treasure
- No sound
- The time you can spend in the dungeon is only dictated by luck, since Constitution depletes as you fight and it can only be recovered by finding Stamina, which is rare

This is as far as I got. Getting the Lord of Light rating is a matter of grinding for treasure, perhaps one day I'll do it.

[PC98] Venus - ヴィーナス (1994)

How:
Read about the game from the True Love review on Hardcoregaming101.
Ending:
I finished the game with 3 out of 4 girls without walkthrough in one go.
Pros:
- Very nice character pixel graphics, fitting very well with the backgrounds
- Generally fitting music
- Many endings (each ending is an AV recorded by the main character for his almost bankrupt company)
Cons:
- Gameplay is very simplistic, just set a date and go there
- Very few places to visit
- Very few events
- House items have descriptions but no use at all

[C64] The Sword of Fargoal (1982)

How:
Read about it on CRPGaddict, bought C64 Forever and played it right away.
Note:
Apparently this is the first game ever with random dungeons.
Pros:
- Simple, yet addictive quasi-roguelike gameplay
- Some interesting game mechanics (proximity sounds, pit traps usable as stairs) and magic spells (beacons, teleport)
Cons:
- Dungeons are quite repetitive
- The game gets almost unplayable from level 15 down
- Very few types of monsters
- Waiting at the temple to heal the character can take a lot of time

Actually, of those 8:54 hours several were spent regenerating health while doing something else.

[Android] Detective Grimoire: Secret of the Swamp (2014)

How:
Found on Adventuregamers.com after looking for some nice Android games. Bought from the Play Store.
Pros:
- Outstanding voice acting and soundtrack
- Amazing artwork with fluid, cartoonish animations and high quality cut-scenes that are just a pleasure to look at
- Very likable characters with funny, smart dialogues
- Nice spooky setting
- A lot of attention to detail (e.g. different voice recordings for the same sentences, animated buttons, each character has some small peculiarity)
- Different puzzle mechanisms (e.g. construct deductions from sentence fragments) bring some change to the usual inventory-based puzzles
Cons:
- Too many interface gimmicks that do not get used in the end (e.g. count of suspicious facts for each character, notes, etc.)
- Rather short
- Very easy
- The liquid mini-game has always the same solution (i.e. green)

[Android] ラピスと不思議なラビリンス (2013)

How:
Found by looking for nice Japanese 脱出 games on Google Play.
Note:
Could not finish the game due to a bug (shaking the mobile does not work as expected), nevertheless this happened a couple of puzzles before the ending.
Pros:
- Very nice pixel art
- Some clever puzzles involving the motion sensors of the mobile
Cons:
- The game feels like a random mix-up of fantasy elements and unrelated puzzles
- Item descriptions appear on the bottom-right, which is usually covered by the hand during play
- Some items are only needed for the sake of collection

[Android] The Lost City (2012)

How:
Read some review on Adventuregamers after explicitly looking for more Android games to play.
Pros:
- Beautiful graphics and very fitting animations
- Nice, well-balanced puzzles
- Fitting music
- Immersive atmosphere
- Nice game for some relaxed, light-hearted adventuring
Cons:
- Music is a bit repetitive, could be much better with a different theme per season
- Underwhelming, almost non-existing finale
- The overlaid text is too much in the way
- Essentially a back-tracking game, can get tedious
- Some mechanical puzzles can be solved before the PC has a way to find the solution, but the game does not accept the solution even if correct (e.g. combinatorial puzzles)

[PC] Gemini Rue (2011)

How:
Got with the Bundle-in-a-Box Adventure bundle.
Pros:
- Excellent graphics and music, reminiscent of Beneath a Steel Sky and Blade Runner
- Rather lengthy (took me about one day from start to end)
- Very nice puzzles, including terminal-based investigation
- Memorable setting and writing
- Addictive gameplay, amazing story and turn of events
- Very likable characters
- A lot of cool scripted cutscenes
Cons:
- A few interface glitches
- The action sequences can be frustrating (very akin to the first Tex Murphy games)

Comparisons:

Tex Murphy: Mean Streets (1989)

Gemini Rue (2011)

[PC] Jurassic Heart (2013)

How:
Read about it somewhere, possibly some indie gaming site.
Endings:
Got the good, normal and terrible endings (all endings).
Cool tip:
Play with "Iqtu - Dinosaur Document" looping in the background! Download here. You can listen below.
Pros:
- Very nice, smooth graphics
- Cool, humorous idea and setting
Cons:
- Too short
- No music

[PC] Quantumnauts (2010)

How:
Bought both Quantumnauts games from the official website after playing Oz Orwell.
Note:
Played the Italian version.
Pros:
- Nice puzzles
- Nice story and setting
- Cut-scenes have good quality
- I have a weak spot for this graphical style
- Some cool situations (e.g. the talking statues near the end)
- Gameplay never gets boring or monotonous
- Some red herrings
- The game actually manages to get funny once the player realizes it is meant to be a comedy
Cons:
- Many typos and grammatical errors even in the original language (Italian)
- Text is too small and difficult to read
- The main character often stands in front of interactive objects, must move him away all the time
- Animations are not smooth at all
- No sound effects
- Some annoying pixel hunting (e.g. the crack in the cave)
- Very slow navigation
- Missing descriptions with most actions
- Humor is sometimes out of place

[Browser] Worldgate Ep.1-3 (2012-2013)

How:
Covered in the monthly freeware section on adventuregamers.com.
Pros:
- Immersive world
- Simple and neat graphics, music and sound effects
- Nice puzzles, some of them moderately challenging
- Intriguing twist at the end (chapter 2)
- Cool to meet the ancient beings (chapter 3)
- Cool wrap-up explanations of the puzzles and devices met in the previous episodes (chapter 3)
Cons:
- Some interface problems (e.g. to analyze an inventory item, you click on its bottom-right corner, which can also happen accidentally)
- Small continuity problems (the journal is updated in the middle pages if the player does thing in a different order)
- The inventory can grow out of the allowed space if the player has more items than expected